Amy Jackson in 'Ekk Deewana Tha'.

Remember those Charagh Din ads with vapid young foreigners in strangely printed shirts—always white—awkwardly pretending to be Indians? In the last couple of years, Bollywood has gone all Charagh Din with a vengeance, deciding that the best way to sell a celluloid dream to audiences is to bring in the goris.

Gone are the days when girl-next-door Juhi Chawla with her frizzy locks, ice princess Ash or even Kajol’s uni-brow could be relied on to make the pitch. Today we need to recruit foreigners to play an Indian heroine. White foreigners, not black, because well, then, what would be the point?

Even as our actresses try to look more like Cameron Diaz, with their blonde streaks and skin whitening treatments, we have an influx of lily-white foreigners who are being bronzed and tanned—and not very well—to be made to look more desi. This, of course, defeats the purpose of casting a foreigner in the first place.

We now have the Brazilian-Arabian Bruna Abdullah who’s acted in I Hate Luv Storys and Desi Boyz; the Brazilian Giselli Monteiro who played the very Punjabi Harleen Kaur in Love Aaj Kal and a forgettable Indian teenage schoolgirl in the even more forgettable Always Kabhi Kabhi; and the latest Bollywood recruit, British model Amy Jackson in Ekk Deewana Tha.

The foreign invasion would be entirely understandable if these actresses—along with being easy on the eye (as they are)—were such superlative performers that their acting prowess made you forget their nationality or race. But such is not the case. They display zero acting chops and are as successful in essaying their role as say Katrina Kaif would be playing Winnie Mandela. Picking Amy Jackson to play a demure Malayali girl makes about as much sense as selecting Salma Hayek to play a blonde, all-American cheerleader. Can we really see a Hollywood director making that call?

Not only do these girls not look the part—despite the bizarre and uneven body paint job as with Amy in Ekk Deewana Tha—their grasp of Hindi is so negligible that none of them can dub their own lines. And when they are allowed to do so, you really wish they hadn’t. Of course, our brave directors have many ways of getting around this minor obstacle. In Giselli Monteiro’s case, they simply didn’t give her any lines to speak in Love Aaj Kal, making her character seem like a precursor to the silent movie star in The Artist.

So why are these ladies playing Indian characters—more so, when we have a bevy of more than capable Indian actresses who can do the job. The South Indian actress Trisha won huge critical acclaim for the playing the same role as Amy in the original Tamil version. Why not stick with her—especially since you wouldn’t even need to darken her skin to make her look Indian.

Then again, now that our own set of lily-white actresses from Dia Mirza to Ash to Katrina are becoming fairer by the minute, they may soon become too “white” to play Indians anymore. With Shah Rukh, John Abraham and Shahid Kapoor all extolling the virtues of being fair and creamy, our male actors may too meet the same fate. Maybe this is a covert international cultural relations programme where our untalented actresses will act in Brazilian and British films wearing white foundation, and their novice actresses will invest in more and more bronze to play Munni and Banno.

On the one hand, a Lakshmi Menon has to shift to America to be featured in a 12-page spread in US Vogue because she was considered too dark to make it in the Indian modelling industry. On the other, Bollywood and our Indian ads are throwing open their films and campaigns to the palest of them all much to the confusion of audiences. It’s equal opportunity employment for all. We all win, black, brown or white!

This article by Rajyasree Sen was originally published on Firstpost.com.

• Bollywood Brawl. Actor Saif Ali Khan was arrested and released on bail by the Colaba police on Wednesday evening for allegedly assaulting South African businessman Iqbal Sharma and his father-in-law at Taj Mahal hotel restaurant, Wasabi, on Tuesday night. Sharma said the actor accosted them after they requested the management to ask Khan and his group, which included Khan’s girlfriend Kareena Kapoor and actresses Amrita Arora and Malaika Arora Khan, to quiet down. Khan says he acted in self-defense and that CCTV footage from the restaurant will serve as proof. [The Times of India]

• Bad Calls. Authorities in the US have cracked down on California-based companies, American Credit Crunchers and Ebeeze, that used call centres in India to defraud customers of over $5 million since January 2010. The callers pretended to be law enforcement authorities and called people who had inquired, applied or obtained online loans and falsely told them that they had defaulted on their loan and threatened to immediately arrest and jail them if they did not agree to make a payment. [The Indian Express]

From churros to cupcakes, a dessert fiend’s guide to the South Mumbai neighbourhood. Download the map here.

• Murder Plot. According to the Mumbai police, journalist Jigna Vora was privy to Chhota Rajan’s plan to have crime reporter J Dey killed. The police have filed a chargesheet, in which they have claimed that Vora and Rajan spoke to each other 36 times in the months preceding the murder. One of the 13 accused in the case also attested that he met Vora in Navi Mumbai a week before the murder, and informed her about Rajan’s plans to kill Dey. [The Times of India]

• World Rent Rankings. According to real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield’s Office Spaces Across the World 2012 report, Nariman Point, which earlier occupied the eighth spot on the list of most expensive central business districts in the world, has fallen to number 15. It saw a rental decline of approximately eight per cent in 2011 due to diminishing interest on account of higher prices, and lower quality and age of construction. Hong Kong maintained its position as the most expensive office location in the world for the second year running. [The Times of India]

• Email Surveillance. The government will ask email service providers such as Yahoo, Google and Microsoft to route all emails accessed in India through servers based here, even if the mail account was registered or made outside the country. Email accounts of suspected terrorists have been out of surveillance for Indian security agencies since they were made outside India. [The Economic Times]

According to guitarist Abhishek Mathur, the member’s ability to stick together can be put down to two big factors: not only have they grown tighter as individuals but also as a band. “Our fan base has increased,” said Mathur. “We’re taken a lot more seriously.” If the group ever needs a sense of reassurance, they need only think back to the third weekend of November 2011, when they performed to an audience of thousands at the Bacardi NH7 Weekender festival in Pune. Just a couple of hours later, the MTV Unplugged episode featuring the band aired on TV screens nationwide; they were part of a roster that included far more established Indian indie acts like Indian Ocean and Rabbi.

The Silent Sea may have taken almost three years to release, but Advaita began recording it soon after Grounded In Space reached the shops. Thanks to the fact that their jam pad happens to also be a recording studio, run by keyboard player Anindo Bose, song ideas often become demos the very day they are conceptualised. As a result, there’s little discrepancy between how a song will sound live and on the CD.

That’s not to say their gigs are short on improvisation. Advaita, as fans know, are like a sub-continental Pink Floyd by way of the Mekaal Hasan Band. The spacey, electronica-tinged folk-fusion rock sounds of their debut are very much evident on The Silent Sea, with a few experiments into new though not completely alien sonic territory. For instance, “Mo Funk”, named after tabla player Mohit Lal whose bols open the song, is not funk in the traditional sense of the genre but it features two things we’ve never heard on an Advaita tune before: Carnatic vocals, provided by Hindustani classical trained singer Ujwal Nagar, and the strains of the Indian harp known as the surmandal. If the songs aren’t as immediate as those on Grounded In Space, it’s because “we’ve stayed away from doing anything too commercial,” said Mathur. “We’ve become more confident.”

And while the group still sounds older than its years—the members’s ages range from 22 to 31—one difference between albums one and two is that the latter seems a fair bit more romantic. So along with typical existential musings such as “Where we come from? Where we going to?” on CD opener “Dust”, English-language vocalist Chayan Adhikari also pines for an unnamed someone on “Gorakh” asking “Where are you? I’ve been looking all over”. According to Mathur, there’s more “love, longing and separation” examined on The Silent Sea, which he described as “a more serious album” because “we’re also older, we’ve seen more of life”.

Perhaps it’s that maturity that makes the band one of the most disciplined around. Despite having other jobs as freelance composers, session musicians and music teachers, they practice a minimum of three times a week. “That’s fixed,” said Mathur.  ”The good thing is that we all like to write music. That motivates us.”

The Silent Sea by Advaita, EMI, Rs295. Buy it from Flipkart.com.

There are two sets of photographs on display. The first, “Postcards from the Forest” is paired with notes written to recipients left to the viewer’s imagination. They are rambling ruminations inspired very loosely by what you see in the photos; a statue in a cemetery, a mist-shrouded clearing in the forest, autumnal leaves. They are not brilliantly shot, more the result of a particularly observant amateur photographer being at the right place at the right time.

The second “Toy Train” set—sized to be nearly palm-small and running the length of four walls like you’d imagine a train track—is more enticing; frozen moments placed in no seeming connection to one another and boxed framed like little gifts. In miniaturising, there is always the risk of becoming twee, especially with the offer of a magnifying glass to inspect them closely. Except here, Shanghvi’s wide-reaching lens is able to sidestep that hole precisely because of the randomness of it all. There’s a spotted dog, a tawny horse, a pair of jeaned legs in neon-laced sneakers, discarded sofas in the forest, abandoned rooms, rickety bedposts, and chappals, that together hint at some of the magical realism that infuses Shanghvi’s writings.

At 6th Street Yogurt, which is located across the road from Parsi General Hospital on Warden Road, they use imported fruit paste made with whole fruit and sugar as opposed to the fruit pulp, natural yoghurt and skimmed milk used at Yogurtbay. Like at Yogurtbay, they don’t use additional artificial sweeteners at 6th Street, and as a result, their yoghurt is not cloying. You can choose from four flavours: original, raspberry, strawberry and chocolate. (Later this week, 6th Street Yogurt will start serving smoothies, and next week, they will add waffles to their offerings.)

The original and strawberry flavours are excellent. The sweet and tart original (plain yoghurt) flavour was the creamiest of the four while the strawberry, though not speckled with real strawberry pulp like at Yogurtbay, tasted of real fruit as opposed to an essence. If you prefer tart flavours, go with the raspberry. Sadly, the chocolate yoghurt tasted as though it was made with chocolate that had a low percentage of cocoa. You can sweeten each flavour further by choosing one or more of over 25 toppings that include chocolate or fruit poppers, chocolate buttons, Oreo cookie crumble, fresh fruits, fruit compotes, rum and raisins and marshmallows. The molten Ferrero Rocher sauce, dark cherry compote, rum and raisins and the citrus fruit poppers are the best of the lot, and taste just as good with any of the flavours. If you’re baffled by the choice, we recommend pairing the original with the decadent Ferrero topping; the strawberry with the citrus fruit poppers; and the chocolate with the dark cherry compote.

Yogurtbay, which has an outpost in Breach Candy, has a worthy competitor in 6th Street Yogurt. They needn’t worry too much, however, because as far as flavour innovation is concerned, they’re still in the lead with their rotating selection of dessert-flavoured frozen yoghurts like blueberry cheesecake, tiramisu, and peanut butter and jam. If you’re looking for an alternative however, you couldn’t do much better than 6th Street Yogurt.

Prices start at Rs40 for a small cup of frozen yoghurt and at Rs20 for toppings. This review was conducted anonymously.

• Heat Wave. Temperatures soared to 35 degrees Celsius yesterday, making it the highest temperature of the year recorded so far. Despite rising heat levels, the weather bureau says winter has not ended yet, with about nine more days left to go. You can expect day-time temperatures to rise further in the next two days. [The Times of India]

• Mass Resignation. 50 pilots have resigned from beleaguered airline Kingfisher in the last one week, taking the total tally of pilots who have quit up to more than 300. The carrier cancelled more than half of its flights on Monday, and currently operates just 16 planes of its total fleet of 64. [Economic Times]

Crispy lotus stem.

SPECIALS
• Koh, the fine dining Thai restaurant at the InterContinental Marine Drive, has launched a set lunch. The three-course quick lunch option comprises an amuse bouche, an appetiser and a main course. The four-course lunch comprises soup, an appetiser, a main course and dessert with green tea or jasmine tea. Your choices include papaya salad; green Thai curry; laksa curry noodles; crispy lotus stem; organic brown rice; and a sashimi platter. The quick lunch is priced at Rs850 per person (excluding taxes) and the relaxed lunch at Rs1,245 per person (excluding taxes). Intercontinental Marine Drive, 135 Marine Drive. Tel: 3987 9999.

• Celini, the Italian restaurant at the Grand Hyatt, will host a two-day Melbourne food and wine festival from Wednesday, February 22 to Friday, February 24. The visiting Australian chef will serve smoked pomfret salad with rice; sugarcane prawns with sweet chilli sauce; scallops with pearl tapioca and salmon caviar; pork belly with Vietnamese slaw; coconut panna cotta with tapioca; and chocolate shortcake. Grand Hyatt, off the Western Express Highway, Santa Cruz (East). Tel: 6676 1234.

• Khandani Rajdhani, the vegetarian Rajasthani thali restaurant, is hosting a food festival until Wednesday, February 29. They will serve dal bati churma; papad ki subzi; Jaipuri mewa pulao; khoba roti; missi roti; malpua and sevaiya kheer. See here for locations.

OPENINGS
• Di Bella Coffee, an Australian coffee manufacturing company, has opened a chain of coffee shops in Mumbai, in Bandra West, Bandra Kurla Complex and Shivaji Park. They serve the Di Bella brand of coffees in the form of cafe lattes; affogatos; cappuccinos, espressos, and cafe mochas. They also serve hot chocolate in flavours such as mint, coconut, and Danish toffee. The food menu includes salads, sandwiches, muffins, croissants and cookies. See here for locations.

• Sveda, a new fine dining Indian restaurant, has opened in Andheri. The restaurant serves Mughlai and Peshawari specialities such as gaajar and adrak shorba; rajma saagwala; dahi ke kebab; Amritsari seekh; galouti kebab; tandoori pomfret; kakori kebab and dum biryani. Daily, from noon to 3pm and 7pm to 11.45pm. Sagar Tech Plaza Complex, Saki Naka junction, Andheri (East). Tel: 6177 1010.

WINE APPRECIATION
• On Saturday, February 25, Bonobo, the lounge and restaurant in Bandra, will host a wine appreciation session by All Things Nice and Godrej Nature’s Basket. It will include a tasting of seven wines, from India, South Africa and France. The wines will be served along with a selection of cheeses. From 6pm to 8pm. The session is priced at Rs1,299 per person. Kenilworth Mall, Phase 2, off Linking Road, same building as KFC, Bandra (West). Tel: 2605 5050.

LAUNCH
• Rémy Cointreau, the French spirits and champagne manufacturer, has launched the Mount Gay rum collection in India. The 1703 Old Cask Selection; Extra Old; Eclipse Silver; and Eclipse are available at Bungalow 9, Indigo, Tote on the Turf, Olive Bar & Kitchen and InterContinental Marine Drive.

BRUNCHES
• Silver Beach Cafe, the all-day restaurant in Juhu, is now serving Sunday brunch. The menu includes eggs, soups, salads, sandwiches, pizzas and grilled meats. The brunch is priced at Rs1,200 per person (excluding taxes) and includes unlimited sangria. Jaldarshan Building, near the Hare Rama Hare Krishna Temple, Gandhi Gram Road, Juhu. Tel: 2620 8930.

• The Elbo Room restaurant and lounge in Bandra has introduced a multi-cuisine Sunday brunch. You can choose from eggs; waffles; kheema pao; chicken wings; jacket potatoes; beef burger; and chicken pasta in cheese sauce. The brunch menu will be served from noon to 1am. Plot No. 500, Sant Kutir Apartments, off Linking Road, behind the Levi’s showroom, Bandra (West). Tel: 2648 3316.

Ravan (actually Ram) Pawar and Eddie Coutinho still live in the same chawl but are now young men who must make a living in Mumbai. After some detours, including encounters with a nymphomaniac, a gangster and the police, Ravan ends up driving a taxi while Eddie works as a mechanic. Both of them also go to the same acting class and join the crowd of hopefuls that want a break in the movies. After a few months, without consulting one another, both Ravan and Eddie adjust their ambitions and try to get jobs as extras, rather than cling to hopes of being noticed as potential heroes. Their first assignment has them shimmying with Helen. But life and Bollywood being what it is, there are still numerous obstacles in Ravan and Eddie’s paths. However, it seems there’s a spotlight (and a soundtrack) at the end of the tunnel.

The Extras has some charming bits as well as sections that seem self-indulgent and unnecessary. The novel meanders and darts through events, slowing down sporadically to catch its breath. “Aunty’s bars” (permit-less drinking joints), wedding bands, a jigsaw-puzzle of a chawl—Nagarkar is at his best when he writes about the world of Mumbai’s middling, struggling set. His irreverence is delightful and he doesn’t shy of taking the occasional pot shot at the country’s political establishment. Interspersed in the novel are little essays about different aspects of the city. In the latter half, the essays are replaced by letters written by a gangster in exile.  Some of these are fun; a few seem entirely superfluous, like the poems penned by an extra that show up in the latter half of the novel.

It isn’t just postcolonial politics that makes English an awkward vehicle for many stories set in India. Much of the country speaks in different tongues and so, when a story is written in English, there’s a layer of translation that warps attempts at realism and credibility. Take for instance, Ravan. As a Marathi boy who grew up in a Mumbai slum and the son of a woman who makes tiffin for labourers, Ravan is unlikely to speak or think in English. Yet, just as he had in Ravan & Eddie, Nagarkar uses English with wicked fluency, fashioning it to match the rhythm and tones of the languages heard on the streets of Mumbai. Nagarkar’s language stands out because he doesn’t use non-English words to craft his illusion. There’s no chutneyfication, no lingo to learn, no patois to decipher, no glossary to look up. It’s all in English that dots its i’s and crosses its t’s properly. You may not actually hear this language on the streets but Nagarkar’s uses it in a way that makes The Extras read like a quintessential Mumbai novel.

The Extras by Kiran Nagarkar, 4th Estate, Rs599. Buy it from Flipkart.com.

Deepanjana Pal is a journalist and the author of The Painter: A Life of Ravi Varma. She is currently a consulting copy editor at Elle magazine.

• Copy Cat. The Prime Minister’s scientific advisor CNR Rao, along with three other scientists, have apologised to international journal Advanced Materials, for plagiarising lines from an article that appeared in another science journal. The four “sincerely apologise to the readers, reviewers and editors for this oversight and for any miscommunication” they wrote in their apology. Their article contained at least four lines that were lifted without attribution. [Hindustan Times]

• Work Challenge. According to a study, nearly half of differently-abled women in the city have been sexually abused, as compared to only 11 per cent of differently-abled men. Many of the women interviewed for the study reported being harassed in public places, and feeling unsafe while travelling on their own. The study also found that of those employed, 80 per cent were working in the public sector, with most employed at institutions dedicated to their welfare. [Hindustan Times]

Photo: Amit Murugkar.

“You’re going to Annawadi?” asked the man crammed into his cold drinks tapri. Behind thick eyeglasses with one shattered lens, his expression betrayed the barest hint of bemusement. “Well, listen, or you’ll wind up going in circles. Up ahead”—he gestured across the street past the Leela—”at the taxiwallahs’ hut, that’s where you go inside.”

Slightly off the road, surrounded by five-star hotels, just like in the book. It was so easy, I didn’t have time to hide.

“Become invisible, fade into the background, and let life happen around as you write it down.” That’s how Katherine Boo describes her reporting method. Behind the Beautiful Forevers is the extraordinary product of the three years and four months she spent reporting in Annawadi, a slum sitting just off the Sahar airport road.

Boo has backed up her book with video and audio recordings and meticulous notes and documentation. And she has a well-earned reputation, with a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and a MacArthur Fellowship (known as a “genius” grant) for her reporting at the Washington Post on poverty in the United States.

Since 2003, Boo has been a staff writer for The New Yorker, an institution known for its scrupulous fact checking (made famous by Bright Lights, Big City). It retains a small army of mercenaries to scurry behind its writers and substantiate each detail, every scrap of assertion. But who will follow in Boo’s wake now? Who will wade into Annawadi to corroborate her story? Who will try calling the Ward 76 corporator on his mobile?

At least a couple of reporters, it seems. Residents described to me a steady trickle of visitors, one or two a day for the last week or so since the book came out, flowing into Annawadi.

Approached from the far side, Annawadi is the last bead on a necklace of typical, almost model slums, brick-paved and teeming with the cheerful activity of urban village life. The food stalls were spotless and displayed under glass an impressive idli-vada-upma-poha-dosa-misal variety that bespoke residents’ disparate origins. (Many of the men addressed one another as Anna.) Passing through Sai Nagar, Technical Area and Gautam Nagar, I couldn’t help but suspect Boo had exaggerated the extent of her subjects’ desperation.

Then I laid eyes on Annawadi, and was relieved instantly of any doubt that she’d told it straight. A ramshackle collection of decaying wooden scraps, like a barricade out of revolutionary Paris, shielded it from the road. There was no brick path at the entrance, only mud laid with fragments of flagstone. While in other slums kids may have been small for their age, here children were visibly stunted. Even the dogs of Annawadi seemed defeated, their teats hanging to the ground.

My only quibble with Boo’s description of the setting was olfactory. By 10am, the sun was already coming down hard, but the much-discussed stench was nothing out of the ordinary. The garbage piled up was mostly sorted for recycling; trash fires swirled as they do elsewhere. I took a deep breath of what seemed to be, not to excuse it, standard issue Andheri air.

The sense that did hit me as soon as I walked into Annawadi was this: I had no idea what I had come for. I’d hoped to understand, or so I thought, the rules of reporting from Annawadi. How does a stranger enter these lives, negotiate a relationship to these surroundings, these neighbours? But now the question only highlighted how absurdly facile my effort would be. What could I possibly learn in the few minutes I’d spend there?

“She did a lot of hard work,” offered a man who called himself Ismail chacha. His tailoring stall abuts the residence of the Waghekars, a family the book describes at length. “She was here all the time: summer, winter, monsoon. She was with us when the rains came up to here”—he karate-chopped his thigh a few centimeters above the knee. Beyond him a church service was in session, as a number of men sat listening intently outside a set of steel grills scattered with tiny red crosses. From somewhere inside the hut, a man read Bible stories over a loudspeaker in heavily Southern-accented Hindi.

Annawadi’s residents were unfailingly polite. Boo had left a strong impression, especially among the children, who refer to her as “Katrina didi”. Many declined photos, and some asked whether I was a reporter. I said no—one type of lie I caught myself in—because, well, I don’t think of myself that way. Let me say that, in that moment, I truly wasn’t reporting; I was experiencing a kind of vertigo watching these characters, so vividly drawn, leaping off the page.

I had not yet had my full confrontation with reality. But there was the book’s Manju in the doorway, on orange tiles; there were the few Husains who hadn’t yet decamped to Vasai. As my introductions always came with “good names”, Manju introduced herself as Manjusha; Mirchi’s good name, it turns out, is Akhtar; his younger brother Sonu couldn’t tell me where the evocative pet name came from. The occasional resistance of words serves as a reminder that, as comfortable as the book’s translated dialogue feels, there are still layers upon layers undecoded and inaccessible, for instance, to non–Hindi speaking readers.

Fascinating as it was to meet the people I’d just read about, the uncanniest sensation of déjà vu came from the details that had vanished from recollection, but that I nonetheless knew to expect. Inside the Waghekar house, a pink newsreader appeared on the TV. I recalled that “something had gone wrong with the color”. The facts verified themselves, as it were.

As our reviewer observed, Boo has so skillfully constructed a self-contained, novelistic narrative that she risks preventing us from fully accepting the place as real. It’s no less difficult when we’re standing in it. What I needed wasn’t a fact check, but a reality check.

“Dickensian” is an epithet many reviewers have used to convey, I suspect, the empathy and moral realism of the world produced in Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Another of Dickens’ great strengths, however, was the vividness of the imagery providing the backdrop—”the shit in between”, in Mirchi’s memorable phrase—to his novels’ inhabitants, so frequently drawn as caricatures. We forgive Dickens his liberties because we’re always in touch with the texture of experience. G. K. Chesterton saw these virtues as delicately intertwined: “It is well to be able to realise that contact with the Dickens world is almost like a physical contact; it is like stepping suddenly into the hot smells of a greenhouse, or into the bleak smell of the sea. We know that we are there.”

Ironically, it’s this very richness of texture that has allowed for the bizarre simulacrum of literary tourism called Dickens World, a British theme park described by one visitor as “soggy, dank, exploitative”. Had I not known better, I might have suspected he was talking about slum tourism.

The word “Dickensian” has, for me, a different association that I can’t shake: its derisive use in the HBO serial The Wire. Conceived by David Simon, earlier a reporter on poverty in the same region as Boo (and now another McArthur “genius”), the show demonstrates with delicious irony how we fall prey to patronising perceptions of poverty. Crooked journalist Scott Templeton, played by actor Tom McCarthy, fabricates interviews out of whole cloth to create a picture of Baltimore’s helpless—the “undercity,” as Boo puts it—that satisfied the expectations of middle-class newspaper readers.

McCarthy’s also a screenwriter, and not so long ago visited Mumbai while working on a story about India. A friend of mine asked me to help show him around Dharavi. I suggested the tour but he voiced understandable misgivings. Having been on the tour, I’ve learned that it’s much more about plastics than poverty. But it’s well worth identifying what, precisely, gives us pause about being there. (Hint: not the stench.)

A Dickens novel ends with the inevitable, call it the Oliver, twist: the fateful rendezvous of an undercity denizen with the overcity in which he is entitled, by high birth or sterling character, to reside, but from which he has been cruelly and wrongfully excluded. Templeton’s misdeed, ultimately, is not in the violation of journalistic ethics, but in sticking to the redemptive script, call it the Slumdog treatment, that covers up poverty’s real toll. Boo, on the other hand, through the voices of her characters, relentlessly attacks the tendency to counsel optimism, to project on these individuals—not to say characters—the hope that a better life awaits them. They’re just there, eking out what living they can, hoping to avoid disaster.

Speaking of facades, in place of the pair of Italian tile hoardings that once read “Beautiful Forever”, there is now a pair of seemingly dustproof construction site offices sitting out front. After walking out onto the dusty airport road, I began to see Annawadi as if for the first time. I’m on page 99.

SALT WATER CAFE
87 Chapel Road, next to Mount Carmel Church, Bandra Reclamation, Bandra (West). Tel: 2643 4441.
Price: Rs394
Salt Water Cafe’s Caesar salad is large enough for two people. It’s composed of a heap of fresh Romaine lettuce, tender but under-seasoned chicken, grated parmesan, crunchy bacon and flecks of roasted garlic. Garlic is also the dominant ingredient in the creamy dressing, which they prepare in house. The dressing lacked the taste of the promised anchovies, and while we loved some of the bacon bits, a few pieces were as hard as gravel. ★★★☆☆

CAFE MANGII
No. 28, Aaram Nagar 1, Versova, Andheri (West). Tel: 2631 6101. Also at Shop No.1, Trans Ocean House, Hiranandani Business Park, near Fabindia, off Adishankaracharya Marg, Powai. Tel: 2570 5136 and Junction of 14th Road and Khar Pali Road, off Linking Road, in the same lane at City Walk shoes, near Ivy restaurant and wine bar, Bandra (West). Tel: 3209 8000.
Price: Rs414
There was no reward at the end of the 20 minutes that it took Cafe Mangii to serve our Caesar salad. We were served a salad with grilled chicken, boiled broccoli, French beans and pan seared red pepper. The pesto croutons mentioned in the menu description were missing and the dressing, which had a mayonnaise-like sweetness, tasted suspiciously like a bottled one. ★☆☆☆☆

FREEMAN & BAKER
Shop No.5, Sagarika Co-operative Housing Society, opposite Palm Grove Hotel, Juhu Tara Road, Juhu. Tel: 2613 1522. Also at Moksh Gym, Ground Floor, Akash Ganga, 89, Bhulabhai Desai Road, opposite Tata Garden. Tel: 2364 0127.
Price: Rs200
As with most dishes on its menu, this Juhu-based deli, which also has an outlet in Breach Candy, lets you customise the Caesar salad. You may want to opt for that as their basic Caesar salad recipe is largely disappointing. It’s a hurriedly assembled mix of iceberg lettuce, cherry tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes and black olives. The salad is dressed in the kind of pedestrian, sweet, parsley speckled mayonnaise that you generally find slathered on cinema canteen sandwiches. ★☆☆☆☆

CAFE ZOE
Mathuradas Mills Compound, 126 N. M. Joshi Marg, Lower Parel. Tel: 2490 2065.
Price: Rs180
The wholesome Caesar salad at this new all-day cafe in Lower Parel is a great in-between-meals option. Like most food at Cafe Zoe, it’s served in a glass jar with an anchovy-scented dressing on the side. The salad is made up of boiled chicken, parmesan chunks, firm Romaine lettuce and cherry tomatoes. However, it’s quite tiresome trying to mix the thick dressing with the salad and this somewhat takes away from the pleasure of eating it. ★★★☆☆

SPAGHETTI KITCHEN
First Floor, Cross Roads 2, Inox Building, Nariman Point. Tel: 6743 9429. Also at High Street Phoenix, Phoenix Mills, Senapati Bapat Marg, Lower Parel. Tel: 2496 2333. 201 and Second Floor, Fortune Classic, 15th Road, above the Toyota showroom, opposite the Gabbana clothing store, Khar. Tel: 6741 2402.
Price: Rs320
If you scoff at the idea of a salad as a meal, you need to give Spaghetti Kitchen’s Classic Caesar salad a shot. The heaping bowl of Romaine and iceberg lettuce is tossed with bits of crisp bacon, sun-dried tomatoes, croutons, diced red peppers and grated parmesan. If you want to cheat on a diet without getting weighed down by guilt, this is the dish to do it with. Our only complaint was that the sparsely used garlicky dressing left it a tad dry. ★★★☆☆

OLIVE BAR & KITCHEN
Amateur Riders Club Building, Mahalaxmi Racecourse, Gate No.8, Mahalaxmi. Tel: 4085 9595. Also at 14, Union Park, near Le Sutra Hotel, Khar. Tel: 2605 8228.
Price: Rs395
Olive Bar & Kitchen’s Caesar salad was the only one of the eight we tried that contained anchovies. The creamy dressing in the chicken Caesar had a nice balance of garlic and parmesan. The salad was near perfect, but someone with an aversion to salt may call them out on the brackishness of the anchovies and the salinity of the brine-soaked capers. ★★★★☆

SMOKE HOUSE DELI
Next to Spaghetti Kitchen, High Street Phoenix, Phoenix Mills, Lower Parel. Tel: 6561 9618.
Price: Rs349
Smoke House Deli’s Caesar salad was neither awful nor exceptional. Made up of iceberg and Romaine lettuce, boiled chicken, and garlic toast in place of croutons, it was as basic as they come. Instead of an anchovy-infused dressing, it came with the kosher, garlicky version generally used as the substitute in vegetarian Caesars. ★★☆☆☆

INDIGO CAFE WINNER
Clifton Trishool Housing Society, Oshiwara Village, off Link Road, Lokhandwala, Andheri (West). Tel: 2633 5709.
Price: Rs335
If you’re obsessed with taking food pictures like we are, you will want to snap up this artfully composed salad, which comprises a poached egg balanced atop a mound of crisp lettuce. The show stealer is sinewy Parma ham that rests over crisp garlic croutons and leaves that are dressed with an anchovy-scented emulsion. We could find absolutely no fault in this dish that combined all our favourite ingredients. ★★★★★