Khotachiwadi, Mumbai

I love how you can know a place,
and then go rediscover it!

So this time around, as I again planned to spend my little time trying to drown in my bed with sleep at home in Mumbai, friends came and gave me what Bertie Wooster might have referred to as the 'old heave-ho'.. and there we were off with a song on our lip.. swinging like beans in a rattle racing down the South Mumbai streets to old Charni road station, where people milled and scurried and lived their lives in an awful hurry... as we merry in our holiday mood swung our feet out of the yellow and black, set our glasses straight and went calmly skipping about a tiny little lane quaintly named - Khotachiwadi.



Its such an obscure little spot on such a bustling large street, that it is very easy to miss. Much as I suppose the Leaky Cauldron might have been to muggles. So there feeling very stuffed with self content, we walked into this tiny lane and entered, very Alice like, into a whole new world!



It was a world of tiny lanes and larger than life colours. Little wooden houses and carved nameboards. Painted mural walls and overgrown herbage. Old women in frocks and old men quietly contemplating in corner seats. Dogs wagged and cats wound around legs. Cycles leaned against old buildings. Music tinkled out of windows and wet clothes clung to strange walls. Flowers stuck their shy little faces out of corners as in the street I found this adorable sign- 'Stop. Go slow'.



We did indeed.
In the fourth gear life of the city, we slowed it down and parked ourselves.
What a discovery.