Shree Shitaladevi Temple

Turn off the noise of Mahim's main road into the narrow lanes behind it and you arrive at a shrine that has given its own street a name.

• Shree Shitaladevi Temple stands on Shitladevi Temple Road in Mahim West, a compact, brightly painted complex hemmed in by tenement buildings, tailoring shops and flower sellers.
• It is not a monument in the grand sense — the building has been repaired, refaced and enlarged many times over, and little of its earliest fabric is on view — but it is one of the island city's original village deities, and the neighbourhood around it still treats the shrine as an everyday anchor rather than a sight to be ticked off.
• Shitala Devi is venerated across much of northern and western India as the goddess who presides over fevers, poxes and the heat of the body.
• Her name comes from the Sanskrit for "cool", and the ritual vocabulary around her leans towards cooling, calming things — water, neem leaves, turmeric, red cloth and simple offerings rather than elaborate ones.
• At Mahim she is a gramadevata, a village deity: the protective mother of a settlement that long predates the city that grew around it.
• The rhythm inside is brisk and domestic — chappals off, a bell, a quick darshan, a smear of kumkum, and back out into the lane.
• Tuesdays and Fridays are the busiest ordinary days, and Navratri fills the street with queues, lamps and singing.
• That role makes more sense once you know Mahim's history.
• Mahim was one of the seven islands gradually joined together to form Bombay, and several of Mumbai's oldest quarters still keep their own presiding goddess — Mumbadevi in the Bhuleshwar bazaars, Prabhadevi a little to the south, Shitaladevi here.
• Visiting is free and unfussy: leave footwear at the stand outside, dress modestly, keep phones down near the sanctum and ask before photographing anyone at prayer.
• Half an hour is plenty unless you want to sit a while.
• The shrine pairs easily with a walk out to the Mahim foreshore and causeway, the green quiet of Mahim Nature Park, or Shivaji Park in neighbouring Dadar.
• Food nearby rewards a little planning, because Mahim sits between two very different eating cultures.
• Mumbai is a major seafood and non-vegetarian city, so on several stretches around here you should read the board before you sit down — look for an explicit "pure vegetarian" sign rather than assuming.
• Head east and the odds improve sharply: the Matunga lanes around Bhandarkar Road and King's Circle, roughly two kilometres away, hold a well-known cluster of long-running Udupi-style South Indian canteens where filter coffee, idli, ghee roast dosa and unlimited rice thalis are the entire business.
• Closer to hand, Dadar West's Maharashtrian snack counters do misal, batata vada and sabudana khichdi, and small Gujarati and Marwari kitchens cover the thali hour.
• Confirm at each counter that the kitchen is entirely vegetarian before you order, and you will eat very well indeed.