On location ... Bollywood dancers.Credit: Getty Images
Robert Upe discovers that Mumbai is a city of melodrama, on film and in real life.
There's tension in the warm air at Mumbai's busiest railway station. The city's rail network moves 6 million passengers a day and, during peak hour, more than 4500 people cram and wriggle onto trains meant to carry 1800. A good many hang out the doors and windows.
But it's not the rush along the platforms or the crush in the carriages causing anxious moments at Victoria Terminus. Indian security forces with rifles are hunkered down behind a wall of sandbags on platform one and are galvanised by my digital camera.
They follow me with their eyes, which are barely visible between the top of the sandbags and below their tinny-looking combat helmets. One soldier steps out and signals ''no photos''.
I obey.
It's a shame, because Victoria Terminus, officially known as Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, is a picture of architectural splendour. The station was designed by English architect Frederick William Stevens and opened in 1888 and its gothic style, with stained-glass windows, turrets and gargoyles, gives it the look of an Indian palace.
Lonely Planet describes it as somewhere between Notre Dame and the Taj Mahal, with a hint of fairytale castle.
As grandiose as a railway station is, I'm bothered by the journey here - past rows of slums; past a vast open-air laundry called Dhobi Ghat, where the impoverished beat and hand-wring clothes back to office-white cleanliness; and past beggars who press their brown-eyed faces against the windows of our car and plead for handouts while we're jammed among auto-rickshaws and ubiquitous black-and-yellow, 1960s-style taxis.
It's one of the peculiarities of Mumbai that the taxi meters in these small cabs - often as impossibly crammed with people as the trains - are so out of date that a conversion chart has to be used in conjunction with the meter reading to calculate the final fare.
In his epic novel Shantaram, Australian Gregory Roberts is also disturbed by the poverty when he arrives in Mumbai (formerly Bombay). ''As the kilometres wound past, as the hundreds of people in those slums became thousands, and tens of thousands, my spirit writhed,'' Roberts writes. ''I felt defiled by my own health and the money in my pockets.''
While writing his 2003 book, Roberts frequented Cafe Leopold in Colaba, one of Mumbai's major tourist precincts. As I sit in this cafe with a Kingfisher beer to quell the heat, I see bullet holes in the walls, scar tissue from the Mumbai terrorist attacks on November 26, 2008.
Co-owner Farzad Jehani answers questions freely about the assault on the cafe and remembers Roberts, who years earlier had been a regular along with a stream of travellers who have made this one of India's most popular cafes.
Jehani shows us where the terrorists barged in from the main road and where they exited by a side door, throwing grenades and firing machine guns and killing 10 people, including two of his most loyal waiters. He points down the street, indicating the route the terrorists took towards the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, where a siege ensued.
The hotel reopened fully just last month but in defiance of the terrorists Jehani's cafe was back in business days after the deadly intrusion.
Nearby Victoria Terminus was also targeted by terrorists with AK-47 rifles during the co-ordinated attacks around the city that killed at least 166 people, perhaps explaining the edgy soldiers I encountered at the station.
It all makes for an improbable film script, something even the melodramatic Bollywood movie industry wouldn't dare dream up. Bollywood is the reason I'm here but it's difficult to focus on any one place or event in this chaotic city of 19 million people, where everyone seems to have purpose, whether its scrounging a morsel or filming the next blockbuster.
''There's a buzz about the city,'' says Prahlad Kakkar, a pony-tailed ad man, cigar connoisseur and Mumbai restaurateur.
''Everyone is going around doing things with great intensity. No one is hanging around picking their nose. Mumbai offers life, it offers opportunity, everyone wants to be a film producer,'' he says of India's financial capital and home to Bollywood.
About 900 movies are produced a year by Bollywood, most of them an exuberant and schmaltzy fusion of romance, moralising, music, dance and colourful costumes.
All over the city there are billboards of the biggest stars, among them the legendary Amitabh Bachchan and his son, Abhishek, who share the limelight in Paa; Shahrukh Khan, who is said to have ''billions'' of fans; and the flawed Salman Khan, who has faced charges as varied as culpable driving and hunting endangered deer in west India. These demigods stare down at me from their billboards wherever and whenever I am stopped in traffic (which is often), their eyes seeming to follow me like those soldiers at the train station.
The Mumbai Mirror reports that ''chaos, traffic jams and a near-stampede'' ensue when Amitabh Bachchan steps from his house to greet fans. ''Every single day, crowds throng my gate. I have never been able to explain this incredible outpour of emotions,'' he tells the newspaper.
The Bollywood movie industry is dominated by family clans such as the Bachchans, the Kapoors and the Choprah-Johars. One Mumbaikar whispers the clans are like mafia and says it is hard to break into the movie industry unless you have family connections.
''It's a legacy that I act,'' the younger Bachchan admits when I meet him at Novotel Mumbai Juhu Beach. The hotel is in the middle of the Bollywood ''scene'' and courts Bollywood's most famous for press conferences and appearances.
''Acting is very important to me,'' Bachchan says. ''I love singing and dancing and I get to dance with beautiful leading ladies with 50 people in the chorus line behind us. It's a celebration, I love the trip.
''I always wanted to be everything like an astronaut and a racing-car driver and then I realised I can be everything by being a Bollywood actor.''
Travellers can also get into the act. Westerners are frequently recruited off Mumbai's streets to be movie extras. A small payment is offered for a day on the movie set, usually involving a lot of waiting for a moment in front of the cameras at Film City, which sprawls over hectares on the edge of the city next to Sanjay Gandhi National Park. It's so hot that it's easy to empty a bottle of soft drink every few minutes, so imagine the discomfort of standing around in costumes under the glare of powerful lights.
It's more comfortable to visit the studios as a tourist, rather than an extra, but to gain access to Film City you need prior permission. That's most easily achieved by arranging a Bollywood tour through a hotel.
Film City is where the stars work but it's back at Juhu Beach where many live and play on the edge of the Arabian Sea. Most of the beach is lined by apartments and hotels - including an eerily abandoned multi-storey hotel that appeared in Slumdog Millionaire - but there are several access points to the sand between the buildings and the stray dogs that sometimes stare at you with menace.
Juhu Beach is not a place for swimming. It is polluted and people openly defecate here. It is used by joggers and power walkers in the mornings - ''Good morning, sir,'' they say as they pass by. There are school groups taking exercise classes and there are beggars with sand between their crippled toes.
The beach is at its best in the evenings when the sun sets into the Arabian Sea and on weekends when it takes on a carnival atmosphere with screaming children on portable amusement rides, youngsters playing cricket, donkey rides, fairy floss and dancing monkeys, which break your heart.
There are hawkers selling spicy street food such as bhelpuri, watermelon and corn cobs on sticks. There are others with balloons, toys and cheap wooden musical instruments. Wherever I look, people are having fun or being industrious. The spirit of Bollywood is here and as far as I can see, no one's picking their nose.
Robert Upe travelled courtesy of Accor and Qantas.
FAST FACTS
Getting there
Qantas has a fare to Mumbai for about $1415, flying to Singapore (8hr) and then Mumbai (5hr 15min). Fare is low-season return from Sydney and Melbourne including tax. Australians need a visa for India for stays up to six months; apply at www.vfs-in-au.net.
Staying there
The Novotel with swimming pool under coconut palms fronting Juhu Beach has a Bollywood package that includes three nights' accommodation, breakfast, airport transfers and a one-day tour of Bollywood film sets for 34,000 rupees ($790). See www.novotel.com.
Eating and drinking there
Try iconic snack foods such as vada pav, a deep-fried potato patty with green chillies, ginger and turmeric between bread; and bhelpuri, a rice-and-potato combination with tamarind. Cafe Leopold is at Singh Road, Colaba Causeway, see www.leopoldcafe.com. It is not advisable to drink tap water.
Touring there
Dhobi Ghat, a traditional open-air laundry of hundreds of concrete washing pens where up to 200 families toil, can be seen from the overpass at Mahalaxmi railway station.
Gateway to India is a landmark monument opened in 1924 to commemorate a visit by King George V and Queen Mary. The triumphal arch is opposite the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel.
Victoria Terminus should not be missed for its architecture but also for the dabbawallahs who pick up hot lunches from nearly 200,000 homes daily and deliver them in tiffin boxes to office workers all over the city, with rarely a lunch going astray. The deliveries are made on the rail network by 5000 dabbawallahs. The best time to see them on the move and sorting tiffin boxes at Victoria Terminus is between 11am and noon.
For shopping, head to Linking Road in Bandra, teeming with street stalls selling clothes, shoes, bags and jewellery.
When to go
November to February (avoid monsoon season from June to October).
Bollywood classics
Shootout at Lokhandwala (2007), a true story about a 1991 gunfight between gangsters and the police; Salaam Bombay (1988), a tale of a young runaway boy on the streets of Mumbai; Lagaan (2001), a comedy centred around the game of cricket.
Sign up for the Traveller Deals newsletter
Get exclusive travel deals delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up now.