Mulji Jetha Wholesale Cloth Market

Step through one of the low entrances off Kalbadevi Road and Mumbai changes register entirely. Mulji Jetha Market is not a mall and makes no effort to be one: it is a dense, low-ceilinged warren of galas — narrow shop-cabins stacked to the rafters with bolts of cloth — threaded by lanes barely wide enough for two hand-carts to pass.

• Cotton lawn, poplin, shirting, suiting, synthetic dress material and sari fabric arrive by the bale, are argued over in Gujarati, Marwari and Hindi, and leave on the heads of porters who move through the crush with practised, unhurried authority.
• For anyone curious about how India actually clothes itself, this is the machine room rather than the showroom.
• The market takes its name from Mulji Jetha, a nineteenth-century Bombay cotton trader whose family endowed the complex in the 1880s, at the height of the city's mill boom. That timing matters.
• Bombay's mills were turning out cloth by the mile, and the bazaar belt around Kalbadevi, Bhuleshwar and Zaveri Bazaar grew into the wholesale clearing house for it — a place where a retailer from Nagpur or Nagercoil could fill an order and be back at the terminus by evening.
• Mulji Jetha came to be described as the largest cloth market in the subcontinent, and although the mills are long gone and much of the stock is now powerloom and synthetic, it still supplies shops across the country.
• Like much of old Bombay's bazaar belt, it has lived with fire risk and recurring talk of redevelopment, and parts of it have been rebuilt over the years; the trading culture has proved harder to displace. Come knowing what it is.
• This is a wholesale market: most galas sell by the thaan (full bolt) or in minimum quantities, and traders are working, not performing.
• Walk in, look, ask politely before photographing a person or a shopfront, keep to the side of the lanes, and never block a porter.
• Visitors who want a few metres of fabric are better served by the neighbouring Mangaldas Market, the retail cloth bazaar alongside, or by the sari shops on Kalbadevi Road.
• The market pairs naturally with a half-day walk through the old bazaars — the jewellery lanes of Zaveri Bazaar, the spice and utensil streets of Bhuleshwar, and the Victorian-Gothic bulk of Crawford Market (Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Mandai) a few minutes south.
• Eating well here is easy, because Kalbadevi and Bhuleshwar sit at the heart of Mumbai's Gujarati, Marwari and Jain trading community, where pure-vegetarian kitchens are the neighbourhood norm rather than the exception — but this is a large, mixed bazaar district, so read the board and confirm at the counter before you order.
• Long-running Gujarati bhojanalayas within a short walk serve unlimited thalis of dal, kadhi, shaak, rotli and a sweet; farsan counters along Kalbadevi Road sell khaman, patra, fafda and ganthiya by weight; Udupi-style rice-plate canteens near Princess Street and Marine Lines do idli, dosa and quick thalis.
• Sweet shops around Bhuleshwar are good for shrikhand, penda and dry farsan, and many kitchens will prepare Jain versions without onion, garlic or root vegetables if you ask in advance.