Mumbai - Epsilon City

I am in Mumbai on vacation now. It's a frenetic city that deals, above all else, in two commodities: space and time. Small fans with high RPM. Flat screen TVs. Door delivery for just about everything.

It's fascinating how alive the city and its people are. They look annoyed half the time, they crib about the infrastructure and the traffic and the astronomical rent and everything else. And yet, they taske such an inordinate pride in showing around and telling you the things you simply must do while you're there. Even those who have just moved to the city a few weeks ago. Kulfi at Kulfi Centre in Chowpatty. Channa Batura at Cream Centre. Sizzlers at Kobe's. The myraid shops selling antique furniture, spyglasses and Bollywood LPs in Bohri Mohalla.

A number of these things have to do with food, as you might have noticed. This may have something to do with the fact that most of the recent recommendations have come from a confirmed foodie. But, as someone who does applied statistics for a living, I've never let data get in the way of my results. So my theory is that this is simply a variant of the same concept that drives space-saving multipurpose furniture. People have to have time to eat, no matter how busy they are, so making a Mumbai tour a mostly gastronomic one allows them to comment one the one thing they have the time to developsome expertise in.

On the face of things, a pista kulfi sounds like a trivial thing. Like the error term in the large, precise mathematical model that goes by the name of life in mumbai. But I guess the important thing is, the error term is what makes the rest of it work. Blank it out, and all you have is a long work week and a paycheck that can barely go the distance.

I don't know what my life will be like if I move to Mumbai someday. I'm not even sure I want to know. But this much I know: if I do live here, my salvation will depend on two things. One, the ability to find my own little error term. Two, the will to drive across the city in the middle of the night to go get it.