Upvas Fasting-Food Counters

On dozens of days across the year, a large part of Mumbai eats by a different rulebook. Ekadashi falls twice a month; every Monday of Shravan, the nine nights of Navratri, Mahashivratri and each Sankashti Chaturthi bring their own observance.

• Upvas — the Marathi and Hindi word for a religious fast — seldom means going without food in western India.
• It means switching to a separate, grain-free repertoire known as faral or phalahar, and Mumbai's response is wholly practical: on those mornings the farsan shops, Maharashtrian snack counters and dairy kiosks of Dadar, Prabhadevi, Girgaum and Matunga put out a hand-lettered UPVAS board, and a working city fasts without missing a meal.
• The pantry is defined by what it leaves out — no wheat, no rice, no cereals or pulses, no onion and no garlic, and ordinary salt replaced by sendha namak, or rock salt.
• What remains is a surprisingly deep larder: sabudana (tapioca pearls), varai or bhagar (barnyard millet), rajgira (amaranth) and singhada (water-chestnut) flours, potato and sweet potato, groundnuts, curd, coconut, ghee, cumin and green chilli. From it come the classics.
• Sabudana khichdi, its pearls glossy and separate rather than sticky, tossed with crushed peanuts, cumin and a squeeze of lime.
• Sabudana vada, crisp-shelled, eaten with sweet curd or peanut chutney. Rajgira thalipeeth and rajgira puri.
• Varai bhaat with a peanut-thickened danyachi amti, or a sweet, ghee-rich rataalyacha kees of grated sweet potato.
• Farali misal, and rajgira or sabudana ladoo for the sweet end.
• A plate is cheap, filling and, by construction, entirely vegetarian.
• There is no single hall to visit: this is a calendar-driven, moving market rather than a building.
• The densest concentration sits in Dadar West, along Gokhale Road, Ranade Road and the lanes behind the Dadar market, with a second cluster in Prabhadevi and Girgaum, where morning queues thicken near Siddhivinayak on Tuesdays and right through Navratri.
• Go between 8 and 11 in the morning, when the khichdi is freshest and the vadas come straight out of the kadhai; by evening the better counters have sold out.
• Prices are modest, most items running well under a hundred rupees, and portions are generous.
• If you are keeping a strict fast, ask whether the cook has used sendha namak, and expect groundnuts and ghee in almost everything.
• Eating vegetarian around these counters is easy, but still worth a glance at the board.
• Mumbai is a mixed-food city and the shop next door on the same street may not be vegetarian, so look for a clearly displayed "pure veg" or "shuddha shakahari" sign and confirm at the counter before you order.
• Dadar West has long-running Maharashtrian vegetarian snack houses — Prakash Shakahari Upahaar Kendra for sabudana khichdi, sabudana vada and piyush, and Aaswad near Shivaji Park for misal, thalipeeth and farali specials on fasting days — while farsan shops along Ranade Road sell upvas chivda and rajgira ladoo by weight, useful to carry.
• A short train hop north, the South Indian tiffin rooms around Matunga serve idli, dosa and filter coffee; those are everyday dishes rather than fasting food, so save them for a non-upvas day.