Emptiness....

the grand ol' piano in 'my'living room...one of the things i'll miss the most!



Some pains are personal in nature, goddamn personal! No one else is supposed to understand what you are going through. This is one of them. As I sit here in MY room of my house…writing this damned post, I know it will be my last one here. No, if it were really mine, I would never have to leave it. Never. But that’s the catch…it is all mine right from the walls to the curtains, the balcony and the bed. The kitchen where technically, I did some of my first culinary experiments. Even the toilet seat, sitting on which I have smiled, wept, sung and come up with amazing ideas about everything and nothing!

This is the place where one fine morning, I had landed with my entire luggage clueless about this city and life. So clueless…that I didn’t even know that to the right of my house where I saw emptiness, there was actually the sea. It took me days to discover that. I didn’t know that when one walked right and took a left, one would actually reach the Gateway of India! It took me weeks to find that out. Ohh….I’m going berserk with the thought. I love the air in this house and the typical Goan food smell that fills that air, which I once hated. Most importantly, I love the people I have shared this house with and I owe them so much! The memories of our good and bad times lived together are neatly stacked in one corner of my heart.


It so hurts to leave a place which has so many memories tied to it. Here I have learnt my first lessons of life and independence along with so many other things. It has always been a comforting thought to return to this place after a long day. Why do I forget that it was never meant to be mine whatsoever? I was a ‘paying guest’ and a guest cannot be forever. But why did this day have to come so soon? I’m moving into a friend’s flat nearby and they say it would be more fun! Who cares? This is ‘my’ first house and will always be…
PS: This is one of those emotional posts which you write hoping it would lessen your pain.

Reality is Janam kii !!

Reality shows….reality shows….! To hell with reality shows. No one wants to talk about them anymore. But at times, one just can’t help. I wonder if my fellow National Television viewers have run out of ways to use their time more constructively than watching Rakhi Sawant select a groom or look after a baby. No, I have no problems with that woman or whatever she chooses to do on television. But c’mon, don’t we viewers have better things to choose from? I don’t give a damn about such reality shows, but being a media student it’s interesting to catch up on their promos once in a while.

Okay, so in the latest episode of ‘Pati, Patni aur Wo’, Rakhi makes out with her supposed fiancé Elesh in front of the baby while the baby’s parents watch in disgust. Next thing-they ask Rakhi and Elesh to have some restraint as their baby is used to being brought up in a joint family. High -end drama. Whatever. What made me write this post is the new reality show that’s gonna come up on NDTV Imagine. Guess what it is about this time? This show doesn’t look like it has been copied. Well, our people have suddenly gotten creative and as a result have come up with a show ‘Raaz Pichle Janam Ka’ (Secret of your previous birth!). In this so called reality show, host Ravi Kishan will help people unravel the mysteries of their previous births. What was I in my previous birth? Umm... great, let me give them a call. You can perhaps see me on Imagine then.

Rather than watching such highly innovative shows, I would rather get drunk. No, no...I’m taking about non-alcoholic drunkenness. Oh, did I tell you this? A few days back, I got drunk on coffee. I happened to drink this ultra strong coffee in Piccadilly. Minutes later, I was dizzy and unable to talk sense. I had never experienced such state before. It actually felt good, a non alcoholic caffeine generated high! Try it once. Gulp 2 mugs of caffeine and then watch ‘Raaz Pichle Janam ka’. It would perhaps start making sense then.

Bollywood wakes up!

Exams kept me from blogging for a while. The first thing I did after the exams is watch Wake up Sid! and this is what I have to share:
At the risk of sounding clichéd, Wake Up Sid! is a whiff of fresh air. Something that your lungs so used to the carbon monoxide of Bollywood will immediately recognize. Not a great film or something, but indeed a refreshingly unconventional one! Which was the last film you remember in which the guy moved into the woman’s flat and the woman propelled him to cook his own food through questions like-‘Tumhe khana banana nahi aata naa? Kuch bhi nahi?’

Wake up Sid! breaks into a few more Bollywood stereotypes. Not that it does complete justice to them yet it’s a commendable start at least. For once, you see an obese girl as a part of the hip college gang of Siddharth( Ranbir Kapoor). Thankfully, she is an important character in her own right and not merely brought in for some cheap humour. Aisha’s ( Konkana Sen) character is fiercely independent and clear in her head about things. When Aisha and Siddharth first meet at a party and she goes for a walk with him; she makes it clear that he shouldn’t think that she wants to sleep with him. Sid snaps back saying that he doesn’t want that either. But he admits that the idea crossed his mind when Aisha questions-‘Ek baar toh socha hoga naa?’

For once, the lead female character refuses to let ‘love’ drive her life. When the twenty year old Sid suggests his twenty-seven year old friend that there could be something more than friendship between them, she rejects the idea outright saying he is too ‘bachcha’ for her. When the inevitable love eventually happens, it is presented in a fresh way. Love is Aisha’s first article in Mumbai Beats about how a friend she met on her first day in Mumbai (read Sid) made her fall in love with the city. Love for Sid is wearing Aisha’s white kurta that he had mistakenly carried with his clothes, and drenching it in rain. And believe me, the characters in the film are so real that you can relate with them in an instant. Also, attempts have been made to make the film as unsentimental as possible. Long sequences like the one where the spoilt brat Sid is asked to leave home by his father after rendering all those emotional dialogues are without any background music or song. Ranbir and Konkana’s acting seems effortless.

On the whole, a great attempt by a young brigade of filmmakers ! Worth a watch or maybe a two. :)

Sweet Sound

baklawa

As I began writing this post, I heard an azaan coming through the window of my room. This is quite a rare phenomenon in Mumbai and I immediately realized what I wanted to write about. For the last year and a half that I have been here, I haven’t heard the sound of an azaan in my room. Chances are few that it was always there and I failed to notice it because as far as I know, there is no mosque in our vicinity. Given the vast expanse of this city, it is inane to wish to hear the soothing melodies of the places of worship. The fact of the matter is that this at once makes me nostalgic. I would wake up to an azaan, a gurbani and the loud chants of the temple together in my home town. I had a mosque, a gurudwara and a temple at a stone’s throw from my house. The religious sounds and symphonies would mark the start and end of our day. How we take for granted the once ubiquitous things that would be missed later!

I got a taste of the Israeli sweetmeat Baklawa, thanks to a friend who recently visited Israel. I am not too sure of my ability to describe delicacies. So, dictionary.com came to my rescue and as per their definition, Baklawa is ‘a Near Eastern pastry made of many layers of paper-thin dough with a filling of ground nuts, baked and then drenched in a syrup of honey and sometimes rosewater.’ Mouth watering, huh? Well…it certainly is. As I dug into one, my thoughts wandered to the Druze village they had come from. The Druze are a minority community in Israel who follow the Arab culture. Their faith is a mix of the tenets of the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. How interesting! I held and ate something that was prepared by them. I know it sounds naïve but then it is not always the greatest of things that touches and awes us. It can something as simple as a baklawa or an azaan!

Random...

Complete randomness and madness is all I can think of and that will be reflected in my blog too. But then, random thoughts are quite something and consequently better than the absolute nothingness that my blog has been subjected to of late. Blame the unexpected vacation that came with the madness that swine flu unleashed. Life has been twice as hectic as before. Though I love the documentary film making workshop I am doing, it keeps me on my wits end. I have felt triumphant after shooting each one of my home assignment videos. The very next day, she has sat in class, watching my videos on the big screen and tearing them apart. It feels like someone stripping your soul bare in front of everyone and you can do nothing but look her in her eyes like a harmless puppy and admit that you have done a bad job.All those camera positions and angles! But then thanks to the strict instructor, I am learning so much rapidly. The other day she asked us to shoot an interview and this hilarious thing happened. One of my friends caught hold of a foreigner on the road and said-“ Can I take you to a corner and shoot you?” And he agreed!

Well…Malhar is on sans all the madness. Too bad but swine flu did this awful thing to Malhar, St. Xavier’s annual cultural fest. Not that my heart goes out to them (my heart is strictly Sophia’s), it was a disappointing sight to see an uncrowded campus with a larger workforce than people attending the festival. It was equally disgusting to see girls in shorts shorter than their tees. Someone tell them it doesn’t make them look attractive in any way, that too in a vacant campus.

Dominos has come out with pasta in two flavours. I gave it a try a fortnight before. Eeeew! It’s seriously not worth the 100 bucks that you end up paying for a modest amount of pasta in an oversized box. Sorry for making it look oh-so-tempting in the picture above.

My house has become a mini bar of sorts with all kinds of liquor available here. Right here behind my laptop that I’m writing on are lined up bottles of scotch and beer. Holy mother! I didn’t know a bottle of scotch could be priced so exorbitantly. Thanks to my landlady’s eighty five years young brother who has flown down from Portugal and cannot breathe without alcohol. He might survive longer without air than beer. He is a tall and good looking old man who loves to pour out his heart as well as liqour and has been inviting me to have a drink with him since morning. But I have been escaping the state of bitterness in my mouth and dizziness in my head. I wouldn’t be writing this post even today otherwise.

First Information...

My cell phone was flicked in the bus last week. Thanks to my habit of checking my pockets every ten minutes, I realized it soon enough to let everyone in the bus know about it. Some noise followed by a bout of sadness when I missed the tiny gizmo which was followed by a lingering sadness that I would stop missing it too soon. Those who foster a strong detachment from such worldly possessions will understand the last sentence well. Anyway, the responsible citizen in me yanked me to the police station the following day.

Lodging an FIR is no child’s play as many of you might know. You are reduced to a hopeless wretch if you are not taken seriously and if they do, it’s still a hopeless case spending four good hours of your life in a police station. Fortunately or otherwise, I fell in the latter category. I looked around for some signs of familiarity owing to my knowledge of Bollywood movies. Alas! There was none to be found in the spic and span police station with sincere faced officials who were all ears to my complaint. But trust me, I had no clue that writing an FIR was something akin to writing fiction. The drab part was when the officer started taking down my family background. I never thought I could write a page long essay on my family. What followed gave me a sense of sitting in a Creative Writing class. The inspector crafted a story about how I lost my phone. After listening to my version, he added his own bits to it apparently to make the case simple and more convincing. After writing a few sentences in his impeccable handwriting, he would read them out to me and look at me in the same way as I look at my proff after dishing out a piece of ‘creative writing’: seeking a go-ahead that gives one’s artistic morale a boost. How imaginative these police officers are! Why don’t they do workshops for us?

This exercise stretched for hours as someone or the other would disturb the flow of his story or he would have the urge to go to the other side of the room and shove some tobacco into his mouth. I was visibly yawning by the end of an hour when he offered me the special police station tea. Cutting chai with masala and an aroma that fills one’s senses! It gave me the drive to carry on for the next 3 hours. When I finally looked at my watch to leave, the kind hearted cop offered me his dabba sensing that I would collapse any minute. I smilingly said a Thank you and left, before barging into the bakery nearby. Too bad I can’t give u a glimpse of my first FIR as along with my phone, my camera too has gone for a toss 

Salaam Bombay!

A flyover near Peddar Road at peak hour due to a strike that disrupted the traffic


My journal would be the best place to translate these thoughts into words but I choose to do it here for many of my friends are curious to know what my first day in Teach India was like. I will describe it bit by bit. After a hectic day in college, I took a bus to my destination which was a municipal school in CP Tank. Which age group I was going to choose, what would be my days and what subjects I would teach were playing on my mind all along. As I was looking out of the window, I saw these highly decked up women in low cut blouses standing across the road. One woman outside almost every house, staring at the traffic. I had seen a red light area only in movies before and it dawned on me where I was. I shook myself out of daze and focused on my prospective students again.

In no time I was climbing the stairs to the third floor of an obscure municipal school building. What I saw there was a far cry from what I had anticipated. Children of age groups 5-12 were to be seen on the floor, some scribbling in their notebooks, some running around and others simply yawning away their time. Kids as young as a few months old crawled beside their elder brothers and sisters. I was greeted by an enthusiastic ‘namaste didi’ as soon as I entered the room. The coordinator informed me that teaching in that centre was considered the toughest challenge as the kids there were literally from the streets. Children of the commercial sex workers and single parents and the ones who had fled from their homes formed the bulk of the crowd.

I tried to break the ice with most of them. I largely succeeded barring a few of them who stared at me as if I were a Martian creature. This five year old bundle of audacity was keen on knowing me inside out in the very first few minutes of our meeting. I couldn’t stifle a grin when he asked me in his broken Hindi if I would come to his place with him. Not so politely though, in an almost intimidating tone. In the adjacent room, the older lot was preparing a dance for an upcoming Rakhi programme. Most of them slept on the pavements and the market areas as I found out in course of their introduction. They wanted us to view their performance and even told us what they would want to learn. The two hours I spent with them seemed so less. They all wanted to know when I would next come. I returned with a promise of seeing them the following week. I can’t wait to go back to them. After all, I have so much to learn. Life’s way beyond what I have lived so far.

Mind your Rs !!

The Taj on Day1 of Clinton's visit

Whoever has managed to impress someone with an accent? All the same, when has that stopped people from making comical displays of bizarre accents! The last straw are the people who choose to do so in public. Huh, imagine what an ordeal it is to hear such people indulging in public speaking! I had to go through one this morning and the fact that our woman was speaking for an NGO she works for made matters all the more hilarious. More than her speech, I was concentrating on the rolling of her tongue at all the odd places that gave her that aao-so-aao-weird-accent!

I looked around to see if others were as annoyed as me but people have a knack for masking their emotions, it seems. It was no way I could believe that the brown woman in a semi-Indian attire had foreign roots. Gaining such a heavy accent in a few years of studies abroad was out of question. Even Katrina Kaif who grew up in 18 countries doesn’t have such an incredible accent, for God’s sake! Maybe I am focusing too much on this lady.

Okay, the other important news is that Hillary Clinton stayed in the Taj for two days. When I was on my usual weekend visit to the Gateway, I was appalled at the security arrangements there. This was before I had read about her visit in the papers. I thought it was one of those terror threats or hoax calls that keep happening in this city. Thank God, it was none of them.

The other thing that happened was an interactive session with Milind Deora (the sitting MP from Mumbai South) in college. I love this young and electric brigade of Gen- Y politicians. Politics seems so much more accessible and cleaner business now. Here was this young man wearing a full sleeves white shirt, black pants and a disarming smile discussing the flaws of the system and his aspirations with the students. So candid and easy going! He seemed one of us even as the girls oohed and aahed at the end of the session. And the most interesting part was that he proposed to organize a trip to the Parliament for us. Ohh…how sweet! I hope we have more politicos like him in the time to come.

PS. I just heard Hillary Clinton on one of her interviews on the T.V and believe me; our woman from the NGO beats her hollow in rolling the tongue!! Tut-tut.

Project Fever

Last week went quite hectic with a mound of project reports to complete. I am still sitting on some of them while a few have seen the light of the day. Nevertheless, projects are a fun part of academic life (read media), one gets to meet interesting people all the time. What’s more, one learns to deal with sundry people, right from the ‘Hey dude, wassup?’ kinds to ‘Sorry, I don’t have much time’ types.

As a part of a Media studies project my friend and I had to visit a few radio stations and ask them some stupid and other not-so-stupid questions. The expedition began with Radio One’s office at Tardeo. We were sitting in the lounge when a tall and fair guy with curls opens the office door for us his chewing gum bubble going off on our face. ‘Yes?’ No… You gotta learn some manners dude! Anyway, this person turned out to be the Creative Head who was going to answer questions for us. For each question I would throw at him, he threw questioning looks back. As if wanting to ask-Is it a valid question? We wrapped it up fast and thanked him for his precious contribution. ‘No probs man…no probs.’ I don’t like people who aren’t Goans and yet address their sentences to ‘men’. They sound so damned sexist. I wouldn’t have liked him anyway.

We moved on to Fever’s studio at Andheri. They sat us in the Board room and after a while, a stout man with scanty hair walked in. My friend and I threw the how-is-he-gonna-treat-us looks at each other. He happened to be the ex. National Creative Director of Fever. We were still skeptical about things when he ordered coffee for us. And trust me, the man loved to talk! Over mugs of coffee, I had to take down endless pages of information he blessed us with. Such an unassuming and down-to-earth character, we were falling in love with Fever. We were also shown around the studio which was a splendid visual delight! Didn’t someone tell us not to judge a book by its cover?

The next studio we visited was of Meow which we had a hard time locating. Then this Creative Head guy sat us in an obscure place which looked more like a store room and turned out to be a bigger jerk than the first one. All our questions seemed to be lost in the rings of smoke he so stylishly and shamelessly blew on our faces. Neither of the two parties could quite stand each other. I suppose there is not much I want to write about him. I would rather talk about the last and a pleasant experience with Aakashwani, the government run radio station. True, they don’t have flamboyant offices and cool dudes but they have a lot to offer. Our visit there was worthwhile and the normal looking people there treated us well. All said and done, I am a little more experienced now !!

Raindom!

There are times when it is just inevitable to write a post, however reluctant or occupied one is! My wait is over finally…the rains are here! The skies have literally opened and it has been pouring since midnight. I love the sound of the rains through the window. And I love the feel of it against my body. I even love to get splashed by a speeding car and I love wading through knee deep water. How romantic I make it sound! More than anything, I love sitting in the college canteen on a rainy day like this, chewing the fat with friends for hours over piping hot coffee. Trust me, it’s lot of fun! Any crap under the sun starts making sense on such a day.

We all had been longing for the rains. The situation was getting from bad to worse. Imaging having no water supply in a bathroom in south Bombay! I had to go without a bath for a few days. Okay, this sounds snobbish but then it’s the way it is. The town had never seen a crisis as far as water is concerned. This also reminds me of the bizarre poster I saw the other day. This was put up near Pizzeria in Churchgate. ‘Let’s Blame the Politicians for the Failed Monsoons’. Come on, now what have the poor politicians got to do with the rains huh? Yeah, they are definitely responsible for a lot of things but….rains? Anyways, now that they are here, let’s all rejoice to our heart’s content.

BEST way of life !

BEST television or no BEST television, life in the buses can be so intriguing and funny! You must be wondering about my new love affair with the buses…..it’s just that I have started taking my day to day life seriously and I’m observing a lot more. God lives in details, they say. So the other day I was travelling in a bus, I saw this man clicking his pictures on his cell phone. This was the peak of narcissist behavior. He would click his picture, stare at it for some time and then click another one. I tried explaining this with an assumption that he had just bought a new phone with a camera but that didn’t seem to be the case. I and my friend were laughing our way through the bus journey when another thing happened. A gentleman tripped on my friend’s foot and went rolling all the way to the door. I kept laughing and didn’t realize what had happened till he gave me that fierce look. And to top it all, I see this female walking up with too bold a message on her tee all capitalized –MAKE LOVE NOT WAR. I wonder ma’am if you knew what you were wearing! An interesting journey draws to end.

And then there are certain things one can’t account for. Last night when I was just hanging around with a guy friend, this man tried handing us a free couple pass for a DJ Akhtar night at a club in Colaba. We knew what would follow and so we went ahead without even lending him ears. After a while we see him approach us again and say-“Boss, meri girlfriend nahi aayi isiliye ye pass aapko de raha hoon.Lo aur aish karo.” I grew even more apprehensive about what hefty sum he would demand when I see my friend merrily accepting the pass and the man walking away. We ran our eyes through it and found it to be a genuine one. And both of us went like-“Oh, we are not 21”. As though we would have gone in if we were! But such things happen too…

Yippie !

Back to Mumbai and back with some updates as promised. I notice some pleasant changes around. Firstly, yesterday I got a chance to travel in a new local. The brand new silver-blue locals have been around for quite some time now but it was only yesterday that the train I was to travel in happened to be one of them. The fun of travelling in locals has doubled with the arrival of the new trains. Their stylish interiors remind you of the metro rail in Delhi. The compartments are well-lit and airy. Thanks to the dazzling new steel, the ‘sick-sweet’ (too much of Roy, huh!) metal smell doesn’t linger in the air anymore. There are continual announcements of the ‘agla station’ or ‘pudheel sthanak’ or ‘next station’ in all three languages. The info also keeps flashing on a digital screen making it all the more convenient. We are getting ahead of other cities and it is such a proud feeling !

Another pleasant realization dawned on me when I sat in a BEST bus this morning. Most of the buses had two mini flat screen televisions on which some silly local ads used to be telecast. But of late they have come up with something called as BEST TV where they air their own programmes and ads. Today I watched a combo of some of the latest and old movie songs on my way to college. They have much more interesting stuff in their kitty, I guess. And I have to travel more frequently by BEST buses to catch up on them and give you the updates. At the moment, I am basking in the Mumbai sun and waiting for the quite infamous Mumbai showers. So, that’s all from the newsroom for now. Keep watching!

Bingo Bongo !!

Well….this is one day I look forward to! There are days when it is fun being a bong and this is one of them. Today Bengalis celebrate a feast known as ‘Jamai Shashti’ which if literally translated would read something like a ‘son-in-law day’. This is an occasion dedicated to the son-in-law/s of the family and hence the name Jamai shashti.

But why should ‘boys’ have all the fun? For as many years as I can remember, we have celebrated this occasion at our home with all fervor and without any son-in-law (you see, I am the eldest). My granny says that it is an occasion of blessings and so she been organizing this event to bless the younger ones in the family ever since. All of us are made to sit in an order on the floor which is followed by a series of rituals. I especially like the one in which we are fanned with a palm leaf, a traditional ‘fan’ if u will. We are served an assortment of seasonal fruits and a yellow thread is tied on our wrists.

Can any Bengali celebration be complete without food, and loads of it! Then we indulge in elaborate feasting including mouth watering delicacies and sweetmeat drawn to a close with our very favorite roshogullas! And the ones available back home, they are mmm….finger licking good! Well, the son-in-laws and especially the new ones are pampered with new outfits and other gifts on this day. Though we don’t get any, we still eagerly wait for this day! It’s fun yeah….

Updates from the Maximum city within a week or two. I am waiting…

Brainy talk...

IITB main building

It is becoming increasingly difficult to generate posts sitting here because all I can think of is the scorching heat and the snail like crawling days. But I don’t think it fair to bore you with loads of crap, it’s not fair to the name Mumbai salsa either. So, I thought of writing about a hip place in Mumbai that I know of. Haha…really hip! Believe me; I am going to change your perceptions about this institution.

You have read about them in Five Point Someone…I had read it too. But it’s only recently that I have got an insight into the lives of the ‘ten point someone’ s too and I don’t think there’s much of a difference. You thought they are all zombies with glasses and intellectual looks who live in the world of computers and books…! (phew, note the accidental rhyming here ). You gotta give it a second thought. They are the lucky lot who have earned a life much more fascinating and exciting than most of us and they live it to the fullest! Don’t get the impression that it’s a cake walk…it’s not. Making it to IIT Bombay up till passing out from there is a journey marked with hardships at every step. That is why, only tough guys survive in this fray.

Okay…firstly it’s important to let you know how I have come to form an opinion about them. Thanks to a number of friends I have made there! And thanks to all our night outs together. Night outs because the rules of the hostels there don’t let me sleep. Incidentally, most of the people I know there are guys and I am thrown out (not quite literally) of their rooms as soon as the clock strikes ten. All we can do is chat our way through the nights loitering in the campus or lazing by the lake-side. There have been nights when I have slept in the hostel mess and painfully watched movies non-stop till the next morning. Oh, yes…you must have heard about the fair sex crunch in the IITs. It’s too much in your face there. There are a total of thirteen hostels out of which only two are occupied by girls. Ohh….what a pity! The skewed ratio is to blame if I don’t have a single girlfriend there.

I suddenly feel I have too much to write about them. I just can’t go on like that. So, let me bring out the striking points first…( that struck me as interesting obviously):
1. The walls of the boys’ hostels are white or yellow whereas the rooms of their scarce counterparts are painted in a girlie shade of pink! hehehe…that’s really so girlie ! I like pink walls too but unfortunately, I have a boring yellow.
2. They are served four interesting meals a day. The menu seems inviting more often than not though the guys can’t stop cribbing about it. Paneer parathas, butter chicken, pani-puri and what not! Not to mention, the extra servings of tea and maggi at midnight during their exams.
3. These guys love to celebrate! Be it any trivial reason, they are always game for parties. Sometimes, even without a reason or for all wrong reasons like screwing their exams! None of them ever needs an excuse for a ‘daaru party’, as they call it. Get drunk and forget your woes..!
4. Last but not the least, they drink, they dope, they fag (a staggering number of them, if not all). And whatever time is left with them, they use it for studying. Thanks to their amazing brains…..they still rock the world!!

Swinging mood

kempty falls at Mussoorie


I guess I have been conspicuous by my absence of late after my short presence in the blogosphere. I am very much alive and kicking, to inform my well-wishers. But being alive has not been a cake walk all these days. Soaring mercury, bouts of sickness and constant mood- swings have been dominating my life lately. It’s too arid and hot back home and I am missing aamchi mumbai terribly. Same with all my friends as shown by their status messages on social networking sites. No doubt, it’s humid there and one keeps sweating endlessly but one is spared of the hot winds at least that keep one grounded at home. It’s really unbearable.

On top of that, the boredom that grips one at home after a certain period of time makes matters worse. Being lukhkha is not the most pleasant state to be in. What an irony life is! You crave for a few moments of solitude in the hustle-bustle of life and when you have all the time in the world to yourself, you actually hate it! Everyone seems to be missing campus life and home -made food seems to be the only attractive prospect to keep us at our homes.

And to top it all, my mood swings….! They just come out of nowhere and make my life hell. I am a different person altogether who is so much a stranger to me. I become extremely irritable and sulk all day long. Thankfully, I can blame the virus that my body played host to this time. Maybe the viral fever did it all, maybe the hot climate. Everyone thought that the trip to Dehradun-Mussoorie would be a respite but I played a spoilsport even there. Ask me what I enjoyed and I will have to rack my grey cells. But I can give you a list of things and people who got on my nerves throughout the trip. Gawd… I am scared of myself! Whatever, I am trying hard to keep my blues at bay and looking forward to getting back to the Maximum City.

ODE !

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World losers and world- forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

Arthur O’Shaughnessy (1844-81)

These are a few beautiful verses from a poem ‘Ode’ I read recently and have been reading it time and again. Look at the spirit in the poem, it’s marvelous!

Well…really so much has been happening in life of late that it was hard to find time to write about anything in particular. Sometimes, you feel like you cannot catch up with your own life. And this is one of those phases. It is going to pass soon as I will be home shortly and back home, there is not much that happens. I am afraid there is even lesser to think and write about. But it’s gonna be fun, being with family and friends after such a long time…!

Oops ! I just realized what a terrible mistake I made. This phrase ‘home’ can be misleading at times. I used it so casually without even giving it a second thought. Mumbai is so much a home to me. In fact, as days are passing by, I am getting all the more close to it. You feel so much at home when the shopkeepers around start smiling at you and do not hesitate to lend you things when you are broke. Oh, that has happened to me quite often. They all know me now and know what I need. And exactly how much. For instance, the breadwalla round the corner packs a pack of brown bread and half a dozen eggs on mere sight of me. Regardless of whether I have that much of money in my wallet. “You won’t run away without paying me”, is his usual answer.

It’s not just about the amicable vibes you can sense around. It’s also about asserting your own identity. You are what you are. No one here is interested in what you were or where you come from. You decide how you want to be known. You feel like you have grown up all of a sudden. I realized how much I resembled the women in my family when I was haggling with the vegetable vendor for a rupee or two. I would flinch when I saw my mother doing the same…but now it seems such a practical thing to do. After all, every penny counts when one is as broke as me in the latter half of the month.

Sunny 'n' Seamy

race course of Mumbai


This is one profession where you are made to feel at the top of the earth and in the deepest abyss. Yeah, in one moment of journalism you feel like the king of the city (queen, in my case) and you are reduced to dirt on the road in the other. I have been through both of them in the past few days.

The former and the pleasant one came when I attended a press conference in a posh restaurant at the Mahalaksmi race course the other day. A place thronging with the big-wigs of the racing world and some of the reputed journos of the city. I was the only kiddo there, both in terms of age and status. And most people seemed inquisitive to know about the new kid on-the-block. Ha-ha! There were loads of chilled German beer and a variety of other drinks. Not to mention the sumptuous lunch which was a bizarre blend of Indian, Italian, Chinese, Thai etc. cuisines. Imagine having kulchas with croissants! Or matka kulfi with chocolate mousse! But it was great fun…and with all the attention we journos were getting, the event seemed even better.

The sun doesn’t shine everyday in journalism. What I mean to say literally is that we can’t afford to sit in air conditioned rooms at all days. The reality dawns on you only when you face the scorching heat on Mumbai streets. For the sake of attending some politician’s rally, to make matters worse. But that made me realize how detached the youth (myself included) is from the entire political system. How least bothered we are about what makes the utmost difference in our lives! Anyway, I encountered it for a day at least. The cheering supporters ready to smash others under their feet and the poor reporters struggling to get a glimpse of the star of the day! As if it were not bad enough, the cops trying their best to keep the ‘press’ at bay by pushing and brandishing their batons at what seemed the most abhorred section of the society. It is a part of the job, for whatever it’s worth. Ohh…I am already getting a hang of it!!

The Rising Sun !

My bum has been getting lazy of late. This is what happens when your body switches to the vacation mode for a good long three months. Nothing seems convincing enough to get them off your cozy bed on a summer morning when you have the whole day to yourself. Especially when you are living on your own without anyone around to pull you up. But once in a while, if you give up the joys of sleeping till midday, you can be generously rewarded by Mother Nature! This is a picture of sunrise that I captured on a stroll to Gateway. I don’t want to give you the impression that it happened accidentally. It was very much pre planned. All the same, this wouldn’t have been possible had I not left my bed at six this morning. All of this in a bid to prove my roomie wrong who commented last night- “Oh, sunrise! Then, you gotta call the sun to your bedside.”

It being Good Friday today, I went to a church after my photography session got over. They screened a movie on the life of Jesus. The ultimate saga of brutality and suffering! After all, there is only so much that flesh and blood can take in. By the time Jesus was being nailed to the cross, almost everyone in the church was in tears. I sat there tightly shutting my eyes waiting for the horror to pass. The tension that had built up in the atmosphere could be felt.

That apart, this is another thing that I like about Mumbai. You are not tied to any specific identity here. All religions and cultures melt seamlessly in the melting pot of Mumbai. One is free to experience and experiment. One can queue up to get a glimpse of Lord Ganesha at the Siddhivinayak temple, feel the ultimate bliss at the shrine of Haji Ali and pray to the Christ at any church down the street. Unfortunately, Parsi and Jew temples do not allow anyone but people of their own community. And I have failed to notice a single Gurudwara so far. Then for the non-believers, there are the pagan gods like the mighty sun in the picture above.This truly, is a city of worships !!

Colaba Blues !

Do you see the flashy car in blue in the picture above? Oh…of course, you see it but it’s not about just ‘seeing’. Does it catch your eye and make you exclaim? Or you just write it off as any other car parked in what looks like some part of the city? Well, if you are one of my types, you will probably give the latter reaction. And God forbid, if you are someone like my friend, you will instantly recognize this car as Mazda RX-8. Then I would say, welcome to Colaba because this is where you catch glimpses of such cars very often.

But the sad part of it is that you need to have an eye for cars. Going by my friend’s view, a person like me who cannot tell the difference between the simplest of four-wheelers cannot make the most of staying in such a posh locality. And he who visits me once in a while, keeps a hawk’s eye on the roads looking for cars. Hummer H-2, Nisaan GTR…you name it and he has spotted them all on Colaba streets. The automobile enthusiast doesn’t stop at this. After knowing the name of the car, you got to know that Mazda RX-8 is a sports car with 1.3 litre turbo charged petrol engine with maximum output of 170 PS. And you are left nodding all the while, though it sounds all Greek to your ears! Nevertheless, such friends sometimes make significant additions to your general knowledge. And if you manage to remember a thing or two, you can always flaunt your knowledge in front of your less informed friends.

Car or no car, Colaba anyway rocks!! But not everything in one’s life is rocking at all times. At the job front, my confidence is being hammered constantly and my diffidence is assuming new proportions. With each day, I am realizing the toughness of the choice I have made. The cute guys too are just good to look at, and not of much help. I am struggling to fulfill the achievement motive in me. May be, it will take some time.But whatever it is, This Too Shall Pass!

'Free' Press

When I wrote in my last post that the FIRSTs of my life don’t give me a break, I was serious. Every day is a First something. Yep, today is the first of April but you brainy; I am not referring to that. Today again was something special and that is giving me the impetus to write my second post of this day. Operating out of the assumption that you don’t find the tales of my happening life too boring!

I started off with my summer internship today with a newspaper. With peoples’ growing appetite for news, the decline of the newspaper industry comes to me as a shock! Possibly, the hunger for sensationalism is giving the news channels an edge. Not that I am particularly concerned about it, but the sad state of affairs in newspaper offices looms over my head as potential threat to my career. The simple reason being that I see myself as the sweaty journalist (in Mumbai’s heat) slogging her ass off and not sitting debating in air conditioned studios. There must be some serious problem with my vision that seems to be incorrigible. Anyway, the situation was so bad that I had to swing from one computer to the other before I could find one which would not throw its tantrums at me. As I sighed with relief, one of my colleagues said- “Welcome to the paper. This is the way we work EVERYDAY.” Her words turned in my head as I politely replied-“ And I better get used to it.”

But things weren’t so bad either. My sweet colleagues made up for all the technical inconveniences. Not to mention, the really cute guys who I share my working space with! Trust me, it’s fun working with so many cute and warm (mind you, I am restraining from saying HOT) people around, all sailing in the same boat and sharing laughter as well as grievances. I didn’t find one person in the office who wasn’t lovable, right from the editor to the computer guy.

Well, on the job front, I have started learning right from Day 1. I learnt what it is like when someone bangs the phone in your face saying “No Comments” when I had to call some big shots for a story on the very first day. I learnt many more things that are too journalistic to describe here. And I re-learnt that journalism, for God’s sake is not a cakewalk! Don’t think I am grumbling. I am just trying to assert that When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going!

Mission Accomplished

Well…It’s just my third post and I am afraid I’m unable to resist it. The temptation to lead you into my life. My kitchen, to be more precise. NO. This one is not about Mumbai per se. And YES. It is about Mumbai. I don’t know how much sense I am making but at such moments of ‘high’, it doesn’t matter. Some joys cannot be contained and ought to be shared in order to avoid indigestion.

It happened last night. Since I have come to Mumbai, the FIRSTs of my life haven’t taken a break. First crush, first love, first heartbreak…naah, I am way past these things .At my age, it has got to be something more special. A sense of winning a bastion you never thought you could enter into. When something that was not your ‘cup of tea’ suddenly seems inviting! A sheer feeling of ecstasy and achievement !

It happened when my Goan roomie who usually looks after the kitchen didn’t want to cook anymore. Eating out would have been the most viable alternative had it not been for my internet. It happened when my net connection suddenly stopped working leaving me jobless for the entire evening. As they say, everything happens for a reason. I took refuge in the kitchen and had to comply with my roomie’s request of making her the Mumbai special – Puri bhaji. I am not so compliant usually but thought it would be a good way to kill time. Never mind the fact that in my history of cooking, I had never succeeded in making the simple chapattis, leave alone something like puri. But experimenting and trying my culinary skills in the kitchen was not going to be so bad, or so I thought.

And the very next hour, we were on the dining table having a sumptuous dinner. That was not the best puri-bhaji I have had. All the same, it was not bad and was much more than what I could ever expect of myself !I ended up calling my family and close friends.And yay ! My net is in order too.Happy ending of a rather boring day. I can’t say who was more happy….I or my parents. Finally, their not-so-useful ( I mind calling myself useless ) daughter is learning something. After all, it’s the Mumbai Magic !

Local Hues

“Ae door ke musafir, humko bhi saath le le…
Hum reh gaye akele “

Mumbai Magic

As I complete my first year in Mumbai shortly, I feel I have grown with this city. I have learnt that our lives are intertwined. That for as long as I live here, we shall share a common life. I can say this with some authority as I have spent quite a few sleepless nights in the city that never sleeps. And the city of dreams has instilled dreams in my eyes too. In fact, it will be more appropriate to say that I stepped into city with dreams. A small town girl in search of a city that would accept her, nurture her and give her the space to spread her wings and soar high. Delhi was my first choice. But somehow, it won’t accept me in spite of all my efforts. My life changed for the better and I landed here. Mumbai took me in her arms like an unconditional mother and since then I have clung to her bosom like a child. I can feel a sense of belonging as I hear the highs and lows of her breath.

My first tryst with the city is etched in my memory for good. As I walked out of the over-crowded but magnificent Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, I had been thinking about what the city had in store for me. Will I be able to carve out a niche for myself or be lost in the crowd of millions who keep thronging the busy lanes with hundreds of dreams in their weary eyes ? Many have made it big in this city but all the same, the packed foothpaths tell the other side of the story. One who walks into this city knows not which category Mumbai will place him/her in. Yet,this city has a charm that you cannot deny. It casts its spell on you before you know and then you are its captive forever. As my cab drove past the well known Marine Drive, I was so overwhelmed by my thoughts and the city that two drops of tears rolled down my cheeks. And I realized that this was ‘the’ place for me to be. It was raining hard, the infamous rains of Mumbai; and the untamed waves were striking against the tetra -pods ferociously. Some sights have the power to evoke emotions naturally and rains have always been the harbingers of good luck to me. That lovely grey morning is something I can never forget.

Nevertheless, there is an unsafe edge to this city as well. However secure it makes me feel, there is always a strange fear. The fear that usually keeps looming over the big cities. The fear that anything can happen to anyone. Whatever happened on the 26th of November was a manifestation of that fear. I realized that it’s only an extra amount of luck that makes the difference, that prevents you from being at the wrong place at the wrong time. But then it brings you back to the basics of life-the fact that life is not forever. It teaches you to live each day as if it were the last day of your life. Not just this, Mumbai has taught me much more. I love Mumbai for all that it has bestowed on me.