English: TAKEN DURING WIKIPEDIA TAKES MUMBAI 1 PHOTOWALK (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today was another free Sunday so I decided to make the most of it at Phoenix Mills. Christmas is celebrated with great commercialism in Mumbai and I love seeing the decorations with snow and reindeers and rosy cheeked Santa Clauses all over the show. With street urchins selling Santa Caps and oddly enough  felt reindeer horns even those who don’t want to celebrate Christmas will just have to say Ho Ho ho. There are Christmas Puddings and pre-Christmas lunches, the best in town being the spread laid out by the Yacht Club yesterday afternoon. With turkey and ham and a whole load of goodies, this much awaited club event was a sell out as we discovered when we went to the Club to place an order for some turkey for Christmas. The place was a buzz with satisfied members literally licking their chops as they tottered down the staircase.

Christmas is oddly enough celebrated with great glee in Mumbai – almost as enthusiastically as Diwali. Perhaps it is something to do with the chill in the air and the general feeling of relief that another year is soon coming to a close. I love going out to the shops not necessarily to buy anything but just to see the decorations. The main hall at Palladium was decorated with fairy lights and snow flakes and seemed busier than I’ve seen it for quite a while. I reached there fairly early in the afternoon and the footfalls had just started coming in. By the time I left five hours later there were cars parked all along the ramps of the parking lot! And literally car loads of people were pouring out of the lifts. The central courtyard had some cars and stuff for the children to play on but I felt they looked tacky and quite scary.

The shop I enjoyed visiting the most was the Foodhall on the top floor . This shop which has a lot of gourmet stuff also has a regular grocery section for everyday provisions. But it has a bakery and an Indian sweet sections.It also has a promotional counter where every day new food items are promoted along with a small demonstration and tasting bites. This store will soon go online and will home deliver which is great considering that the worst part of this store is the checkout – it is long and always painful and worse still, if you have frozen food in your cart, it’s bound to melt by the time you get home! So I think I will try the online shopping experience as I’ve been doing these past two months.

Ever since I’ve become housebound and the traffic even more horrendous I’ve been ordering groceries on line. What I find best about this way of shopping is that I can actually keep two or three windows open simulatneously and decide which is the cheaper site to buy from. But the downside is that you get to miss out on the touch and feel experience of shopping – somehow despite all the chaos and mess of the roads and markets, I miss bump and grind experience of Indian shopping ( this is how Mr. Biyani of Foodhall and Pantaloon fame described shopping in his malls often criticised for having narrow aisles and a somewhat tacky feel. However I find shopping online shopping a real boon and have been using  localbanya.com and  bigbasket.com . Out of the two I prefer localbanya as believe it or not bigbasket had only ONE broom to choose from!