Life on a Mumbai Local

Mumbai local trains can make a man out of you!!! Not that you will lose your precious cherry. That will be awkward, messy and invite the ridicule of many. It will make you a man by getting you a black eye and a few battle scars on your face. It gives you lessons on aggression, discipline, basic recklessness, advanced foul language, impeccable punctuality and an unhealthy disregard of stench.

This is how the story of my first ride on a Mumbai train goes. Two of my friends and me hop on a train first class. We had bought tickets which are worth 9 bucks each thinking those were first class tickets (FYI, First class tickets are worth 40 bucks each). As our luck would go, the ticket checker also got on the train and we were his first meal of the day. On our first ever ride we ended up paying a thousand bucks as fine.

After I got myself transferred to Mumbai I got the true experience of a Mumbai train. I generally take a train from Vikroli station to Dadar where I take another train to reach my destination. So one day I end up taking a train whose last stop was Dadar itself. When we were about to approach the station I head towards the exit and stand by it acting like a ‘true Mumbaikar’. I didn’t even bother to notice that the other people had suddenly huddled near the other end. I also didn’t bother to notice that the platform was unusually crowded with people waiting to dash into the train. What happened next will be easier for you to visualize if you have seen this common scene from every zombie movies possible. Here it is,

There are innumerable zombies (People getting on the train) trying to barge through a narrow door to grab the hero (me) and the exhausted and disgusted hero (still me) is trying get out of their clutches. While the heroine (other fellow passengers waiting to get down) just smile at the hero’s foolishness.

Trust me, it is that way. Not that I couldn’t have avoided it like other passengers of the train who safely huddled in the other end, made their way out after the carnage has subsided. But then it is a part of the learning process.

It is definitely a funny sight when you see these people getting on a train. Of course you have to be anywhere but not on the train to enjoy the sight. Sometimes it gets so crowded that while a man is somehow standing by the door holding a pole, another man will stand behind him holding his waist with toes barely on the door’s edge. After sometime hanging by the door becomes such a habit that even if the train is empty with places to sit all around the only man on the train will stand by the door.

Now days, even I get off from a moving train just before the mob barges in. It does save me a whole lot of time and I also have an actual first class ticket now.

Mad Drums..

Amazing bass and drums solo by Godsmack..

Check it out...

Another City Passes By..

My last few days in Bangalore went by too swiftly to let me realize how I much I was about to miss that city. At that time I was way too distracted by the lure of the glitzy big city I was heading to. Bangalore came during a time when I just left the aegis of home and jumped into the fire of the “real world”. Well the real world turned to be overrated but Bangalore I fell in love with.

The city was magnificent. It had great weather, trees all around, a college which was ready to take me in and the smell of a new city ready to take the mantle of greatness from other metros. Over the last seven years it did waver a lot from it initial promise. But, lot of things got their sheen back after a small hiatus.

Bangalore was place where I learnt the ways of life. I turned from a pampered gullible child too scared of seniors on the first day of college to a guy who fought hard to get his way in the workplace. It certainly gets the credit of changing almost everything about me. I got my taste of rock and beer from the evenings I spent head banging in haze or listening classic rock and jazz sipping ice tea in Java City. It lets me boast of the great concerts of Satriani and Maiden I went to. It has to be blamed for the black rock band tees I wear all the time and all the kannada curses I spew out when I am disgusted.

It was my friends in Bangalore who taught me how to tuck in a shirt properly, made me understand the tricks of a good bottoms-up and the difference between classic milds and kings. It was my friends in Bangalore who encouraged me when I had another crush and lightened me up when I realized she too was committed. The list just goes on and on. Seven years is long time and with all such memories it’s hard not to miss the city.

It’s true, in time the glamour of Mumbai will replace some of the fond memories fade away. Until that time comes up every time I lazily sit in my balcony staring at the vast sea, it will be the memories of Bangalore which I will be cherishing.

Pic courtesy: http://www.shunya.net/Pictures/South%20India/Bangalore/BangaloreSunset1.jpg

I AM BACK!!!!!

(Heh!! I always wanted to say that)

It’s not like my last trip to Goa was so traumatic that I decided to stop writing. That has been put away long back and another trip is already on the cards. The last few months have been a bit crazy for my laid back standards.

After spending a whole 7 years living like a hippie and making my kidneys go through all sort of gastronomic experimentations I decided to call it a day and head back Mumbai where a very cheap and therapeutic spa called home was warmly inviting me to experience its goodliness. But then how could the supreme forces have let me just have what I wanted. Being generous is really not their forte, is it!! So I ended up facing the apathy of the guardians of my “9 to 6” universe. All sort of alibis failed to persuade those cold hearted devils. Taking cue from others I started to earn myself some leverage against them and after 3 months of struggle I finally got it and predictably was transfer to Mumbai immediately.

So now I am in basking in the glory of the persistent rain, humidity and the stinking trains of Mumbai. It’s been a bit difficult fitting into the city’s vibes, but then this is what I asked for.

But on a brighter sarcastic side the world has hardly changed in the last few months. The TV still sucks, may be a tad bit more. Batman is still my hero and source of entertainment. Good book stores are still hard to come by. People are too snooty and honk a lot. I am still single much to the dismay of my mother and suspicion of my father. Parents don’t realize, the world is a boring place for the really really smart.

Goa gone wrong...

My second Goa trip turned out to be quite an experience. It was a peculiar mixture of high hopes, “on your face” reality, small instances of relaxation and a disappointing but relieved return.

I guess Goa is all about excesses. It’s so full of it that at the end of the third day you just want to run away from the very reasons you are here for. Today I hate lazing around, beer and that god-forsaken psychedelic trance. Oh!! And skimpy Russians too. The place got vacation written all over it. Forget the tourists even the locals are laid back and seem to be having the time of their life. It’s so easy to find a bike on rent even without a license but it’s just impossible to find a decent doc in the middle of the night. Now if that’s doesn’t make a place a vacation spot then I don’t know what would!

Coming to the trip, it’s quite easy and depressing to summarize. We reach there Friday morning and started scouting for a shack where one of our friends got bitten by a dog twice. Needless to say we enjoyed that a lot! Afternoon was spent in one of the innumerable shacks where surprisingly the food is actually good and gulping down King’s, The sunset took us to Curlies which is an isolated shack playing psychedelic trance. The place was filled with the new age hippies mostly from Israel and Russia. I guess they were looking for spiritual upliftment in the Goan trance (The DJ seemed to be playing tracks from pirated CDs but then most were too high to care). A while later, I find my dog bitten friend hopping around with a sprained leg begging to be taken to a hospital. With that my vacation ended. After getting him checked out by a Doc in the middle of the night, my entire trip was like taking an elder to Tirupati. He always needed a shoulder to hold while limping around and sadly he couldn’t walk on the sand. Next two days found me wishing for a quick exit to the beautiful normalcy of my office.

The last morning before we left seemed to be pretty uplifting and the fact that I was finally leaving in the afternoon actually let me have a good time. Goa in the mornings seem to amazingly charming. Especially, the interior country-side which I never find anyone ever talking about. Riding through winding roads going up and down and seeing the Portuguese houses tucked in every corner what as relaxing as sitting by the sea.

But undoubtedly that trip was the saddest trips I had. What hurts more is that it was to Goa. A better trip is certainly on the cards. This trip certainly made me sit up (while waiting for the doc to wake up) and think up some must dos and don’ts about trips. More on that in a later post.

Who deed this tiepo??

We all make typos. People write dude as dudo or please as peas. But we only laugh at the guy who writes droop as drool. The delicate art of good typos require a healthy disregard for proof reading, a sloppy attitude, a sense of humor showing up at the inappropriate times and also pinch of bad karma. Everyone does it but only the clumsiest masters it.

My first embarrassing encounter with this concept was in one of my English classes where the teacher was reading out a report of mine to the class, aloud. Somewhere in between the passage the line went like this, “Under the scorching summer heat, the farmer’s buttocks (read as bullock) were put through unimaginable hardships to satisfy the landlord’s greed.” Needless to say, it was well accepted by my friends. Since then there was no turning back. Nearly every line in my chat conversations has a typo. Every blog of mine are proof read by people from as far as New York. Yet the lesson is yet to be learnt.

Corporate typos are in a different league all together. Here one wrong move and you lose all the respect you have earned through the years. But quite of then can out a smile on the receivers face. I was once describing a error in an IM conversation to a guy in Denver and then said,“Can you help me with this tissue (read as issue)?” The guy aptly replies, “Isn’t the problem potty-trained?” But people can be ruthless too. Once a not so liked entity mailed colleague of mine saying “where are the rest of the packages? Find me the hole (read as whole) thing.” The barrage of jokes which sprouted out of that was pretty nasty.

Then there are the ones which you see on the road, which are due to complete ignorance. But the funny is the wrong spelling is write spelling for something completely different. Check out the snap of this cobbler's stall. That guy got some explanation to do.

Lucky are those who just get to laugh at someone else’s typos. But of all those awkward situations we get into, they do make a not so great article worth reading.

70’s Longing

For the last few weeks I was on one big “70’s movies” binge. The list included Midnight Express, Chinatown, Saturday night fever, sudden impact, Dirty Harry, Grease and many others. Was time spent worth it? Well let’s just say it was badly required after watching scores of zombie, vampire, and doomsday movies. How much of that can a simple mind take? But let’s leave that for a more depressing night. Let me get into bit more of my sudden interest in these movies.
One thing about most of these movies is that they are comparatively uncomplicated and clean. The plot is hardly ever like a walk in a maze, yet it doesn’t make me yawn either. The characters are easy to recognize and the villain is as complicated and sinister as some of the college going kids of our time. They just come and shoot you instead of getting into all the disgusting, blood splurging ways of today’s slayers. They had this accepted cheesiness in then which is so loathed today. I mean they could approach a girl and say “can we be friends?” and not get stoned for saying it. They didn’t have the prop up of today’s computer generated graphics yet they had the brilliance to still be enjoyed by us after 40 long years. They have this uncanny characteristic of make me feel nostalgic about them even though I wasn’t even born when these movies came out. Somehow they make me remember the days when life was all about coming back from school and going out to play with my friends.

Call me stuck up but I do wish we still lived in times where they played Bee Gees in the discos.

Yet Another Vacation

My vacations in Mumbai are full of comfort generally afforded only by the hip-hop junkies. Sorry, dear critics I cant be my usual humble self here. Something to do with the city air I guess. My mornings usually start at noon when my mom asks (sarcastically) “Son, Do you want breakfast or lunch?” Days are generally spent surfing web or reading a book in my balcony over looking the sea until the next meal magically arrives. Never realized Wi-Fi could be such an amazing tool to use at home too. Evenings are spent mindlessly roaming around a nearby park or gorging on vada pavs at some road side stalls, while dinners go by arguing with Dad regarding which channel to watch over a glass of wine.

This is what a perfect vacation could be like, something which will put life to a complete halt but just a while. You don’t have to introspect or do as some people say “find yourself”. It could be about sitting and doing things just because you like doing them. Something which is completely useless and crass like sitting in the park and waiting for two excessively chatting fat ladies trip over a tree’s exposed roots. Well that’s just an example. You can find something which suits your taste, but you do get the point, right?

I certainly don’t argue with the belief that faster the life, the more you get to see of it, but heck if you don’t stop once in a while who’s going to pick up the bits that were dropped behind. After all its these bits which add the glitter in the otherwise grey and competitive life.

My own disposition..

After working on the blog for a lot more than a year, it’s hard not to romanticize it as a comrade backing me through existence. Its uncomplaining demeanor while listening to my pseudo idealism is hardly appreciated while I rant out one sad joke after another. When writing out any of my opinion of the world around, it made me realize how little I know about what I write about. It argues with me over my views yet never has a smug smile when it wins. Sometimes it teams up with readers, thrashing out at me for any mistake or lack of standard. In this stage of being stuck in the work place for around twelve hours the blog is the only think keeping me in touch of my creative self and humbly lets me boast about it.

Yet the true example of its individual nature shows up when I stop writing for a while. Upon my return the initial awkwardness is always there. It’s like wondering “Should I ask him about his gal, wasn’t he the one who got dumped last time? Damn!!” There’s the whole process of getting to know it all over again and filling in the lost gaps. It requires spending time talking about the old days and what they were like. There always this irritating nag in the back of the head that’s keeps on saying “Am I saying the right thing?”, “am I confirming to the benchmark?”, “Is this the ‘me’ I want to project to the world?”. But some how it certainly does help in figuring out a new style and fetch better ideas on writing. There is always some new facet that we didn’t even realize existed last time. It always takes a few posts to get back the old flair and get reminded embarrassingly that last time there wasn’t any break up. Turns out his gold fish had died!!

Back in the city..

It’s been a month since I came back from a two weeks break from Mumbai. Yet the urge of moving back which generally lasts till I board the flight still remains.

Of the few cities I have lived in this is the only city with a sense of humor which can get quite audacious sometimes. A friend of mine goes to a restaurant and orders a take-away. The shop guy says it will take 10 mins. After 15 mins the friend enquires about the order to which the shopkeeper replies, “Sir!! I said 10 mins just for the sake of giving you a answer. I didn’t actually mean it. Please have a little patience. Your parcel will arrive any time.” What do you reply to that?

Here’s another incident I encountered in my last month’s visit. I was busy snapping pictures at a train station when a train on the opposite track came to a halt. It was quite crowded with people hanging by the doors. Suddenly the folks by the door realized I was taking pictures of the train and screamed at me to take their pictures too. That was the first time I saw an entire compartment of people posing for a picture.

The point is that the city seems to be alive as it never ceases to surprise me. There is a careless sense of grandeur in its people. It’s like everyone is saying “Seth! Been there done that, now please come to the point and go on with your life.” It’s the sort of attitude every outsider resents but wish to possess.