Cross Maidan

Cross Maidan is the smallest of the three great greens that step down the spine of South Mumbai's Fort precinct — Azad Maidan to the north, the broad Oval Maidan to the south, and this modest rectangle in between, hemmed by traffic on every side and held apart from it by a low iron fence.

• Its name is a legacy of the city's Portuguese period, and today the ground is a working patch of matting pitches, gravel paths, benches and banyan shade that the surrounding offices treat as their back garden.
• Come early and the maidan belongs to cricket.
• Coaching camps put boys in whites through throwdowns from first light, several matches overlap on the same worn square, and fielders from one game drift through the outfield of another — the improvised maidan cricket on which Mumbai's formidable batting tradition was built.
• By late morning the pitches empty and the shaded edges fill with clerks, students and couriers from the banks and chambers of Fort.
• Through the cooler months parts of the ground are handed over to exhibitions, book fairs and handicraft melas under canvas, so the maidan you find in December may be half tented; the fenced garden corner, with its lawn, walking loop and small children's play area, usually stays open to strollers.
• The pleasure here is the frame as much as the field.
• Churchgate station and the Gothic bulk of the Western Railway headquarters stand just across Maharshi Karve Road, while the streamlined facade and fluted tower of Eros Cinema, a 1930s Art Deco landmark, closes the view from the south-west.
• Ten minutes' walk south lies Oval Maidan, whose facing ranks of Victorian Gothic and Art Deco buildings were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2018 — which makes Cross Maidan a natural first stop on that architecture walk.
• Fashion Street's pavement clothing stalls run along Mahatma Gandhi Road on the far side.
• For food, the Churchgate–Fort grid is one of the easiest parts of Mumbai to eat vegetarian in, because the district's Gujarati, Marwari and Jain business families have sustained thali houses and Udupi-style cafes here for generations.
• Expect unlimited lunch thalis, idli-dosa-and-filter-coffee counters, and carts at the maidan corners selling vada pav, ragda-pattice, sandwiches and sugarcane juice.
• Mumbai is also a great seafood city, so plenty of all-day restaurants nearby serve fish and meat: look for the "pure veg" board at the door and confirm at the counter before you order, including whether egg is used in bakery items and sandwiches.