6th February 2011 - Bold and Beautiful

As part of Susie's birthday celebrations a group of us ventured down to the Malhalakshmi Horse Racing circuit in South Mumbai to watch the India Derby. I'd booked a table at the Gallops restaurant to start with, overlooking the course....actually, whilst it was nice, it overlooked the area where the horses slowed down after the race so wasn't quite what I had in mind for a base for the afternoon. Never mind, after lunch we ventured into the crowd and tried to watch some racing and place some bets. Step one, Tote or the betting pit? Betting pit - maybe not such a good idea, if I thought that everyday Indian life is chaos then it looks sane compared to the betting pit. Imagine a scrum of around 300 Indians, in a space of approx 40ft square, add in 10 bookies in betting cages plus staff (at least 4 per cage), sprinkle the pressure of trying to bet up to the time of the race and top it off with 35'C with us in shirt, tie and jackets! So having managed to get close to a bookie, waving our money high in the air, we then shouted the number of the horse and were give a slip of paper (handwritten) with a code on it. No name, no numbers that corresponded to the race or the horse didn't fill us with confidence that if we were to win that we would see any money! Call me a whimp but for the next race I went to the Tote!