Backpacking has its internal contradictions. A Western traveller in search of the Real India ought to stay around with Indians rather than with compatriots. However, overland travellers typically ended up in each other’s company, staying in the same hotels and frequenting the same restaurants. Duly disembarked in Bombay, I did search for accommodation away from other backpackers, but I ended up in Carlton Hotel in Colaba.

The area attracted all kinds of people and in a matter of days, I had met a French trio who duped, drugged and robbed me of almost all my money. When I rushed to the airport to search for them, I learnt that they had just left for Pakistan, the leader on a first-class ticket.

The experience instilled in me a deep distrust not only of French backpackers but of French culture in general. In those days, I knew nothing about Claude Lévi-Strauss, Louis Dumont or Michel Foucault, but my experience in Bombay meant they would have a hard time getting into my good books. On the other hand, being fooled, tricked or robbed was an everyday Bombay experience. When I told others about the incident, they narrated similar incidents. I was “hung up”, but so were many others. It was an essential part of the Indian experience.

For a period, I joined up with travellers from Southeast Asia, who earned money by street painting. To save money, I slept on the street, or under the Gateway of India. The local police also kindly let me sleep at the police station. However, to get out of the area, I shifted to a small hotel in Santa Cruz far away from Colaba. This hotel charged Rs. 50 a month. A monthly train pass cost only Rs. 8, allowing me to attend yoga classes at the Kaivalyadhama yoga centre near the Taraporevala Aquarium on the Chowpatty Seaface.

I shared the room with two budding actors one of whom, Punyadas, suggested that I should properly be considered a “banjara”, i.e., a tribal wanderer. My other roommate, Rana, put things differently:

Thou shalt leave the things behind

Because there is nothing to linger up with

Put an end to the Self

And thou shall be No thing

but Every thing.

This was also the way that I saw it. Simple living and frugality were my ideals, even as I chose to roam. As a matter of fact, many Indians at the time did not have that choice.

The historian Frank Conlon has told me that when he came to Bombay a few years earlier, poor men desirous of communicating a clerical look, would keep the cover of a fountain pen or a ballpen in their breast pocket for show only. I have not seen this, and the days when urchins would follow me in the street screaming “pen, pen” (or “pennu” in the south) are probably gone forever.

However, I do remember low-paid salarymen earnestly requesting me for a watch or a transistor radio, preferably of foreign origin. Luxury items were few and far between, and there were strict import restrictions.

Tellingly, VS Naipaul opens his book “An Area of Darkness” with a story about the high value put on imported cheese. Haji Mastan and other smugglers had begun to supply the black market with imported goods, but simple living was a lot for most.

I am revisiting my stay in Bombay in some detail because first impressions often leave a lasting imprint. As the Danish historian Benedicte Hjejle has noted, the first posting of government officials in British India formed the matrix through which they subsequently saw India. The same applied to me: Colaba and Bombay became my Gateway to India. They instilled in me an enduring interest in the problem(s) of order.

Although I failed to see many of Bombay’s tourist spots, I did get a grip on the geography of the city. When Pakistani terrorists attacked the Taj Hotel, Victoria Terminal, and Leopold Café in November 2008, I knew the places. Initially, I bought into their lie that they represented the Deccan Mujahedin, i.e., that they were South Indians. Having reached Bombay by sea, I ought to have imagined their arrival from Pakistan by sea.

Café Leopold was among their first targets. The following poem by the sociologist Dipankar Gupta indicated why the terrorists took a dislike to the place.

Cafe Leopold in 2001, Colaba Causeway, Mumbai

Age grow me old in Cafe Leopold,

With its currents tingling by the sea.

As I grow older, may it get Leopolder,

No better fate for me.

It’s busy and caring,

People look without staring

It’s like home without meaning to be.

So why die by the Ganga,

In a bier anonymous

When you can go out like a swinger,

And be one of us

In Cafe Leopold by the sea.

Here mugs of cold malt

With peanut and salt,

Or hot coffees and teas

With your best savouries,

Stack high your sweet memories.

Girls shush up the stairs

Tumbling flowers in their hair,

To boys with boasting stories.

Blank eyes read the menu,

They can rattle it by heart.

Waiters pretend they’ve known you,

Are playing their part.

The tables fill fast as orders fly,

From families, loners, and lovers on the sly.

The portraits on the wall are known to all,

They spring a smile with each recall.

Tourists stagger in, mottled hot in the face

Seeking cool balm in mid marketplace.

See sailors there on leave from the docks,

With tattooed muscles and uncaring locks,

Glinting smiles thru gold capped teeth,

At fidgeting children swinging their feet,

Such are the memories I wish to bequeath

Thinking Cafe Leopold on Colaba street.

After some days, my anxious parents transferred enough money for me to continue my journey. An elderly man I had often found sitting on a string cot in the Colaba area advised me to hire a coolie when getting on the train.

That was the system in India, and it would be wise of me to follow it. With his sensible advice and sufficient money, I left Bombay for a different India.