Mum-Bye! What I’ll miss most about Bombay

Even before I started living in Bombay, I had always heard very good things about the city from the people. Sure, the same people never mentioned the over-priced and under-maintained housing situation in the city, but then again no one is perfect. Point is, Bombay was always the place I was excited about coming to, eager about exploring and kicked about making a home in (albeit for only one and a half year). And now that it’s finally time for me to get my ass out of here, I can’t help but reminisce about the things I’ve grown to love about her. Call it whatever you want: the musings of a jilted lover who must leave now for foreign shores (the rural stint now, but that’s the subject of a completely different blog post) or just plain old nostalgia us “emoshonal” Bongs are famous for. But though my stint here in the city of lights is at an end, the love affair isn’t.



1. Cart wheeling in Carter:

For some of us coming out of more northern terrains the fact that we could walk around undisturbed at 3 am in the morning with no one to bother us except the cool sea breeze was a pleasant shock the first time it came. After that, it became kind of a ritual. Every escapade that resulted in a well fed and well watered Preyoshi Ganguly has invariably ended at Carter Road promenade for, errm, the well-airing bit.



2. "The world was hers for the reading."

After uselessly spending two years at hostel all hope had been lost that Ms. Ganguly would ever be able to get her voracious reading habits back. Miracles never cease to exist and this time it was called JustBooks. It was a chance encounter with this Bangalore based library chain which rehabilitated our distressed damsel. Soon she was devouring a book a weekend and coming back for seconds. And there are some new acquaintances who have now become lifelong friends. I believe their names are Eco and Vonnegut.





3. “Who buys plain vanilla ice cream from Ben & Jerry's, anyway? Is there a greater waste?”



Substitute Natural’s for Ben & Jerry’s in the above quote and you know exactly what I mean. To be slightly corny and unoriginal, it was love at first bite (or first slurp in my case). Regardless of your preferred mode of consumption, this Ice Cream of Juhu Scheme has become as much a part of my Bombay experience as momo’s were for my IIFT days. Finding a parlour near Nerul was a bit of an adventure (I think we walked about 8 kms that day). But once that was covered, it was Tender Coconut and Watermelon ice-cream time!



4. “And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”



Be it celebrating the World Cup win at Marine Drive with a hundred random people or gate crashing some distant college senior’s birthday party, size does matter when you’re out to have fun. I was always a little doubtful of the six degrees of separation concept, that is, till I came to Bombay. Maybe it’s the sheer number of people sardine into this tiny island, maybe its just dumb luck. But sometimes you can bump into the darndest people in Bombay while out socializing. Beware of the ones who know how you looked like in pig tails ten years ago. But having said that, even small parties have their endearing qualities. The ability to fight over who’s cheating in a game of Cranium (usually yourself) being chief amongst them.







5. Mashima, maachh khaabo!:

The best Bhetki Paturi I’ve ever had wasn’t in Kolkata. It was at a tiny little place called Bong-Adda at Belapur. Tucked away in the middle of a dozen “Restaurant aani Bar”s, you just might miss it if you aren’t looking carefully. Discovered it very late in the day, when my stay here was almost at an end, but you can always make up for lost time thanks to a brilliant invention they call “Home Delivery”. After that even the fishophobiac (sounds better than ichthyphobiac anyday) non-Bong husband couldn’t hold me back. If you are ever down the Palm Beach Road near the Chroma Building, the Kobiraji Cutlet and Shorshe Ilish (Mustard Hilsa) is a must try.



6. “Singing in the rain. I'm singing in the rain. And it's such a fucking glorious feeling.”

Day one of the monsoon season and in Nerul all the greys turn to blue and the brown to green. Good luck with finding a dry patch on the pavement to walk- just one shower is all it takes for the grass to grow up to your ankle. All of a sudden the hills seem closer than ever and waterfalls just pop out of anywhere, as if on cue for a Yash Chopra movie. Commuting to work was never easy during the rains, but every time I looked at the Taloja hills peeking from behind the smoky (or was it smoggy) clouds, it made me forget about the lunar surface of a road we call the MIDC highway. True, after 3 months of water pouring out from everywhere except the taps, it gets increasingly difficult to wax eloquence about the monsoon, but for every closet poet in Bombay, this is the time to come out of hiding (present self not included).



7. To say nothing of the Dog:

My walk back home from work involved playing with a number of furry friends who would be out for their evening exercise during that time. Chief amongst them is Bubbles, the hyperactive Labrador whose brown paws have been imprinted on my favourite blue shirt for posterity. Cutting a more dignified figure was Bozo the Saint Bernard who seems to be the one taking his owner on a walk rather than the other way around. But my favourite by far was the oldie but a goldie Alsatian who can put me to shame with his reed-thin figure. You know what his name is? Bheem.

Honest!



8. "Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch."



There have been a variety of food experiences in Bombay which do deserve special mention if not an entire paragraph. Most good, some bad - thankfully none ugly. The quirkiest of all was having chaas from Kingfisher beer bottles at Bhagat Tarachand (their Gujju thali is awesome as well). When we wanted food on the run, it was the Butter Chicken rolls at Bade Miyan which came to our rescue. And if hunger called at the end of a long night of partying, it was Mughal Sarai at Bandra which came to our rescue.

This is why I love Bombay and all her flavours. For every corporate slave coming back home after a long day at work, there is someone waiting for you with a big packet of Chicken Berry Pulav from Brittania & Company. For every late night craving, there is the neighborhood Biriyani Paradise which will serve up chicken kebab in schezwan sauce (it wasn’t as bad it sounds ). And yeah, this is the same city where I started taking timid steps in the journey of learning how to cook. Too bad the same didn’t pass the Quality Control Tests.





9. “Here's to the crazy ones.”



Of course, none of this would have been possible without the wonderful people I share these memories with. If you’re tagged on this post, I’m sure you’ll find at least one of these blabberings familiar. There’s still a lot more we need to add to the conversation, including “who finds you cute”, “How are you?” and “Pondicherry!” (You all know who you are, respectively).

But here’s to all of us making some new memories with more crazy ones, both old and new. And to quote a great saint: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

Warning Sign

I haven’t written in a while. Haven’t put pen to paper, in fact, this is the first time in months that I’m working on something other than excel sheets. If truth be told, it’s been a long time since I typed out actual words, at least those which weren’t part of an e-mail. Which is quite strange indeed. Whether it was in the midst of the hundreds of people during hostel life or the silent rainy afternoons, I’ve always been able to etch out words on paper and keep my hyperactive imagination occupied. Those days, when the words started flowing, they never seemed to stop. A drop became a trickle, and then the trickle a torrent; bringing with it the landslide of all pent up emotions¸thoughts and fantasies. All too precious, too cherished and too ugly to be shared with the rest of the world. And yet, I seem to have wandered into a barren land now. The blue collared slave in me seems to wait only for the promise of the weekend. Every Friday I make a plan to find meaning once again in a life I had always wanted for myself. The ghost of this weekly resolution returns to her grave as soon as the distraction of the week arrives. Girly pink shoes one weekend, the fleeting crush the next. Friends to meet, places to visit, things to buy. It’s kinda weird. One part of me wants to seek out multitude of new experiences, people and sensations. The other wants to stop and smell the daisies, or at least begin looking for them. But neither of them is the villain of this piece. Time is. Rather the lack of it.

But to say that one doesn’t have time for something has always seemed to me to be the heights of indulgence. And hence in this case I have to hold myself responsible for my own predicament. When you really want something, you make time for it. Time, no matter what they say, is relative. That is why I guess we can still “make” time for things that are important to us. It’s as if we are creating time for the things that we hold dear. I guess at the end of the day, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. With or without the pink peep-toed heels and Mr. Christian Bale’s company.

An Ode for Dolly

D ay has just dawned yet already weary are we
O ver but are the times we have spent down on one knee
L ets laugh at life, at love, at failures and at fate
L ets not waste today waiting always with bated breathe
Y esterday is gone and tomorrow isn't here as yet

On Why I Stopped Writing Poems

A Poem is born in silence
The silence that breeds when one alone in the midst of a crowd

A Poem, she sets free
The heavy thoughts by turning them into mere words

Puts in front of your eyes
On the white page, what you couldn’t quite describe

But knew the Feeling
That was always there, weighing you down

Pulling you down
Into the depths, while you pretended to hide behind your pillow

Underneath your blanket
And wish that you were indistinguishable from the bed

The bed
With the green flowers on a blue field

A Poem
She lets you ramble on and on

About everything
She doesn’t expect courage, neither guarantees salvation

Yet the truth
Comes out every time the pen tattoos the page

Maybe
That’s why I stopped writing poems

Makes me feel naked
Yes, by exposing my thoughts for the world to see

The silence
That once I called my own

Melts away
And I find myself once again, in the same crowd

In the same room
Hiding behind the same pillow, In the same bed

The one
With the green flowers on a blue field

Hugs for Delivery

I am reminded of this French film I once saw, in which the protagonist asks his bed-ridden mother if she feels lonely because of staying alone at home all the time. She questions him back whether he feels less lonely because he is able to sit in the garden, whether he feels less lonely in a crowded departmental store. I guess what she tried to say is that it doesn’t matter who or how many people are around us, loneliness is essentially a self-defined and self-created phenomena.
Now the reason why I was wondering all this was that I spent this entire weekend in bed, half asleep most of the time, trying to fight the bug which I wasn’t sure whether I had or not. Don’t worry, I wasn’t exactly lonely. With my roomy bringing me food and my friends room-delivering hugs (you rock girls!) whenever I needed them, I was one pampered girl. If you are wondering why every time you logged onto FB or gtalk these two days I was there, it’s not because I was stalking someone. It’s just that I didn’t want to get out of bed.
Looking back on a certain time when I really truly had fallen sick and had to spend more than 2 months in bed, I can’t really recall any days when I had been lonely. I definitely wasn’t my usual cheerful (read: hyperactive) self but loneliness wasn’t really a word in my lexicon even back then. And mind you, people had far fewer distractions in those days. No TV (I remember congratulating myself the day I could actually get up and sit in the living room sofa to watch a movie) and definitely no internet.
Well the good thing about being perpetually online these couple of days was that I got to catch up with some old friends I had not spoken to in quite a while. One friend had shifted to Jaipur, another had taken admission in a rival college (grr!) in Gurgaon. One had shifted base to Muscat and had no intentions of coming back any time soon. Better still, two of my friends had decided to tie the knot (yay!) and that had me wishing really badly for an early placement season.
Of the many people I’ve had the privilege of knowing and talking to in this campus, at least a few have complained of loneliness, of feeling alone in this tiny campus that’s bursting at the seams to accommodate 300 odd people. I guess at the end of the day its not about the people you talk to, rather its about the people who are willing to hear you out. And sometimes it need not be a person at all. For some of us, a cup of chai from Bablu is all we need to perk us up after a long day. For others, it used to be a sweet little friend whose pug marks are still there in front of NH. Some people are connected to friends all around the globe with their ability to handle 8 chat windows simultaneously. Some others can regale you with the most esoteric film-noir that even John Huston would have no idea about.
The point I am trying to make is, that we all create our own support systems. And as long as I have my hugs on delivery and my DMB playing loud and sweet, I think I’ll do just fine.

Dr. Strangelove: Or How My Summers Has Been So Far

Written sometime in the month of May. Posted now.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the time for leaving the NCR behind and shifting base to the city of gold. It was the time for attending induction programs in full formals not because the occasion demanded it, but because the AC was too cold. It was the time for hunting around for a PG and then settling in with a kind friend who I had never met before. It was the time for home-made dosas and the cream of vegetable soup from the coffee machine at the office. It was the time for weekend movie marathons at IMAX rather than the customary midnight show at Priya or Saket. It was the time for being blown away by How to Train Your Dragon. It was the time for watching the most number of Hindi movies I have ever seen in a span of 2 months. It was the time for waking up at 7 am, and sometimes at 4 am, instead of 5 minutes before the 10 o’clock class. It was the time for Bombay… sorry Mumbai. It was the time for Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi. It was the time for the peak hour local trains and the early morning flights. It was the time for living out of a suitcase because unpacking would have taken more time than packing for the next trip. It was the time for buttermilk at Mahim and the Chicken Mayo sandwich at the airport CCD. It was the first time for a barbeque brunch and the last time I’ve messed with Chennai autowallahs out of my own volition. It was the time for dragging an unsuspecting friend to all the women’s wear stores and then filling up on juice rather than food. It was the time for the overfriendly, overhelpful concierge. It was the time for coming back to Bombay, the city with the twinkling street lights. It was the time for taking the midnight taxi back home, without worrying about making it in one piece. It was the time for getting high on alcohol for the first time. It was the time to realize that one man’s RHCP is another man’s Red Hot Chilli Peppers. It was the time for realizing that there is such a thing like “too clean shoes” and that it can be promptly rectified by people jumping on them. It was the time for starting with dinner at 5 Spices and ending it with some dancing at café Mondy’s. It was the time for discovering Natural’s tender coconut ice-cream, the chocolate brownies at Theobroma, the biriyani at Paradise in Hyderabad and the English breakfast at Good Man’s. It was the time for standing in line with the other interns for lunch at the HO. It was the time for realizing (painfully, at that) that just because something is branded, doesn’t mean it’s the best. It was the time to learn how not to shout back. It was the time to learn that there is still a lot to learn.

Guadalupe

Whenever I would embark on one of my wanderings through my fantasyland (which are quite frequent, believe you me), I would always imagine myself as being 23 years old. I don’t have any particular fascination with prime numbers, it’s just that I always thought that at 23 I would have finally passed out of college with a job and would be an independent woman with a space of her own.
Well some 36 hours ago the clock finally turned 23. I was much too excited about the birthday part to notice about the age part anyway. And then again I still haven’t reached that phase when I’ll start concealing my birth year from my Facebook profile. However, sometime between a fab party at 3 am and the IBL lecture at 9.15 am, it just crept up on me, the fact that I had reached that age I always wanted to be.
Well, getting a job will have to wait, at least a few months more. In all probability I’ll be closer to 24 than 23 when I finally start working. As for my own space, its not that I don’t like room 24 here in the Old Hostel at IIFT, with the window next to my bed and my money plant in the balcony. It might not be the two bedroom apartment (with one bedroom converted into a library) of my fantasies, but for now its more of a home to me than Usha Bhavan.
It’s not just about the material acquisitions. The point is, I always thought that 23 was the perfect age for a girl (or is it woman now?) like me. Now that I actually am 23, it seems like everything is still the same. Probably because I have been changing very subtly, very slowly, yet very very surely from that Gal from Cal into someone else (I am still not sure who).
But be not thou dismayed fare reader. The adventures of this vagabond in la-la-land will continue, even though they are now somewhat constrained by her erratic sleep and work patterns. She only has to find a new milestone to look forward to. 26 is a much better age than 23, wouldn’t you agree?