Girls Day Out!!!

My friend P is true blue gujju and loves her street food. We ( El and I ) visited her place yesterday she took us to the famous Khau Galli in Ghatkopar to eat some as she puts it "time-pass kachra". Narrating an incident from the middle is no fun so as Frauline Maria would say " Lets start from the very beginning ...

P invited El and I to spend a day at her place. Her husband V had to work so we would have the whole place to ourselves, she also offered to take us to Khau Galli in the evening. We agreed as it seemed like a good way to spend a lazy saturday afternoon and an absolutely topping way to spend an evening making our way through the delicacies offered by the street food stalls.

El and I met up a little early at R City Mall and did a bit of Ten Pin bowling (just for the record your truly won) and from there we hit the stores for some window shopping at the expensive boutiques and tried on some dresses at a chain store. I was in the pits as none of the dresses would fit and El had a mini battle on her hands as she tried to lift my spirits. It was only after I ploughed my way through a lovely Irish Caramel Frappe (courtesy EL) and a load of pep talk (again from El) the gist of which was something on the lines of, "the dresses at these stores are actually made for stick insects and not for real women" did I start feeling better.

We had just finished our respective drinks when P called with the all important message"All Clear, you guys can come over". We took a rickshaw and landed at her place around 3 p.m. Since this is an honest account of all that transpired yesterday I have to record that we had to make a few frantic calls to P after we got hopelessly lost (both El and I have absolutely no sense of direction) and P had to come and collect us. But as they say " Alls well that ends well" we finally arrived at her place. We spent a couple of hours chatting (read gossiping), eating pizza(with a wheat bread base, P is very health conscious), playing cards and watched a movie on TV. Time passes really quickly when you are having fun and before you could say "Khau Galli" it was time to go there.

We hit Khau galli at about six-thirty in the evening. The place was positively teeming with people and it seemed like the whole of Mumbai had turned up there for a snack. The aromas from the various stores mingled with each other and gave the place a character of its own. There were stalls selling pav-bhaji, chaat, dosa (some boasting of 40 different styles of dosas), sandwiches, golas, ice-cream etc. Since we had a late pizza lunch (big mistake) none of us were in a mood for anything heavy so we decided against having dosas or sandwiches. At this point I would also like to record that even though the MET department claims that the monsoons have arrived in Mumbai, I beg to differ, apart for a few scattered showers here and there which have done nothing to cool the city, the monsoons have yet to arrive so as a result it is still sweltering hot. This was another reason which really put us off having anything hot. So to cool of a little we started off with pani puri. It felt absolutely divine as we ate the cold-sweet-sour water filled puris. As far as a I could taste the only other ingredient in this manna-for-heaven like dish was boiled whole moong (I dont know what it is called in English and at this point I am feeling too bored to google it). From there we moved on to a small quaint store that P claims has been around since her grandfather's time. Here we had a very unique concoction " Masala Soda" and " Masala Thumbs Up". It may not sound like much but it taste absolutely great. To round things off El and P ate sandwich ice-cream which is a slab of vanilla ice-cream sandwiched between two biscuits, very interesting concept and tasted just about nice.

We did a spot of window shopping (EL and P) and shopping (me) after which I received a sermon from El, when-you-window-shop-you-only-look-you-no-buy which had me meekly nodding my head. As all good things must come to an end it was time to go home, but not before we made plans for a similar outing only change being that we fast the whole day before we hit Khau Galli so as to do justice to the food on offer !!!