Mumbai’s Hamptons

The Spectator

By 7.45 am on Saturday morning there is already a clamour of people gathered around the jetty at the Gateway of India to catch the 8.10 catamaran to Mandwa.

One of Mumbai’s best kept secrets is the fact that on weekends a sizeable amount of its population gets up and leaves the city for some fresh air and fun to a collection of attractive beaches referred to as Alibagh on the mainland of India, about an hour across the harbour.

The group today is a typical one: picnickers, comprised of highly excitable teenagers in wannabe American sports brands; entire Gujarati families — matriarchs, uncles aunts, nephews nieces — all carrying their individual packets of nashta; snobby Malabar Hill types in ironed shorts and Polo Tees; and that gray mass of people — the average Joes — who make up the bulk of public transport users in India.

After the mandatory heaving and grunting, pulling pushing, all hands are on board and the journey begins.

In the ac cabin with its double glazed windows there is a state of high dudgeon as the Bota- Kala family all eighteen of them begin unpacking their delicious home made snacks. They are going for the weekend and will stay at one of Alibagh’s budget motels, no doubt playing antakshiri till the wee hours of the morning. In the front row the terribly pucca Astad Parak a bungalow owner and a regular weekend visitor sits with stiff upper lip barely glancing at his noisy neighbours.

Just behind him the stylish Mark Selwyn, real estate agent to the rich and famous of Alibagh is grumbling about how choppy the sea is. “Today is the first time in the year it’s been so rough. Perhaps because it rained in Alibagh last night...”

Selwyn has been a pioneer of sorts, zeroing in on Alibagh as one of the hottest selling propositions for a certain type of Mumbaiker who wants to get away from it all.

“People who are freelancers have discovered that they can stay in Alibagh — close to Nature — and travel to Mumbai in under an hour when they have to.” In the last few years Selwyn has sold properties to a sizeable amount of Mumbaikers in Akshi, Kihim, Thal, Navgaon, Kashed, and Nandgaon. Already the names of who has bought their dream home sounds like a litany of good living.

Meanwhile on the boat the journey is already half over, and the catamaran’s purser Farid Sheikh handsome in his sky blue overalls is running around passing garbage bags to all those who need them to puke into as a result of the boat’s heaving.

By nine pm the ordeal is over — and much recovered — the passenger’s scramble on to the Mandwa jetty and are on their way: some to manicured beach- front bungalows, others to cheap motels, still others to huts and shanties.

The Alibagh experience has begun.

s_malavika@dnaindia.net