Home Coming II – The Mumbai Salsa –

Yeh hai Mumbai meri jaan (should be changed to) Yeh Mumbai mai jaan hai …..

After meeting rachit at airport somewhere in the afternoon, and going to his place for a very short time, I hardly spent an hour in the same place till 2:00 in the night, not that we were barred or something, but there was so many other things to do than to sit at home (we also did that for an hour, and played CS on each other’s PC). The first motive was to pacify rats in my stomach, as I had very little since the morning, so we went to near by restaurant, Shiv-Sagar, an average looking restaurant from outside, but it was more than average, atleast in terms of looks and the crowd dining there, but the crowd is like the same story all over in mumbai, in short, fundoo, foki, stylish, even the attitude and style of an 11 year old can give you shivers. I felt as if we are like oldies from 70s. From spaghetti tops, skirts, deep neck tops, shoulder off minis, coloured hair to full make-up on girls to spikes, sleeve less t-shirts on boys, seems as if the junta there defines what are the hot and happening things in fashion ramp. If someone says the dresses in fashion show never make to the road side walks, I will say him to visit Mumbai, and his perception would take no time to change.

Leave apart all these, its show time now, so we decided we can watch the movie WELCOME in a near by theatre, so on the way to PVR we were trying not to miss many things, as we had an look on the Big-B’s abode, pratiksha, and along side to many other such places like the one where Bombay bomb blast took place at ’93 and few more sports complex and 5 star hotels we at last reached PVR, but, but, a holiday is like the worst day to make plans for movie, as all shows were already booked, so we decided to go some site seeing now:

First Stop: Juhu Chaupati, the classic hindi movie setting of hero and heroine walking by the beach on the sunset was on my mind until I reached the place, also I always had these fantasies about a beach, most of them from the serials like BayWatch etc, that a beach is a place where you find sun bathers in minimal clothing, little to anyone’s liking those beaches are non-existing in India, but to my disliking the Juhu Chaupati isn’t any good, with algae all over the sand coast, its very slippery out there, imagine if BayWatch was shot in India, and Pamela Anderson running (in lustful slow motion) across the coast and suddenly she is out of the frame, reason, she slipped on the algae and was lying there flat on the sand, and moreover, with chances of skin infections after 2 weeks the producers should have been forced to replaced her with more rough and tough Indian version of her, with Rakhee Sawant.
But still the best part of the beach are the vendors and their items, where you can spoil yourself with barf ka gola, sev poori, paani poori, and other chats. There it is, first experience with barf ka gola (kala khatta flavour), I learned a new thing I can suck at, it’s so much fun at 15 ruppees. After that, we decided to stroll on the beach, which by the way was also stinking from the garbage, which was dumped there and it was thrown back by the waves. Seriously, there must be something the municipality do to take care of the chaupati.

Second Stop: Bandra Band Stand, strolling across the chaupati we reached rachit’s accommodation where after a short CS stint, we decided to leave for the other type of beach, the one at bandra band stand, this one is different from the chaupati, here there are constant waves hitting the rocks, it’s a lot cleaner, plus one more speciality (which will be revealed later). So to reach bandra we decided to try our luck with the all infamous local train, so the first local train arrives, here we are at the station holding our position like the warriors who wish that they can make in-roads in the never ending human-force of the local train, unfortunately the force was so much that for entire time for which the train halted we were continuously thrown away from the doors. So first attempt was futile and exhaustive, so to regain some strength we stopped by the vendor to have some samosas and lemonade (nimbuu paani), to our bad luck by the time a vacant, less crowded, local came out of no where. Missing this one was evident. 6 minutes later, the third one was scheduled, we have to get in this one, it’s been long that we have acted gentlemen in this game, now its time to be rude and show other what we are made of. Luckily, this one was even more spacious than the previous two, so we had no struggle boarding this time. For someone who wishes to visit band stand, here is a piece of info for you, best bus - 211 goes there, and this will save your 30 minutes which we wasted there for the same info. After reaching the band stand, which by the way is a beautiful rocky beach. Previously I mentioned about some speciality about this place, well have you ever visited Victoria Memorial @ Kolkata, or Ekaant Park @ Bhopal, then you can portrait my feelings easily. It was the same, only enlarged in proportions, and so is the frustration level, when you see 100s of couples in a romantic location in intimate positions, and me with a guy to boost the frustration, leaving aside that the place is beautiful with a view of Mumbai skyline. To end the visit, we decided to visit SRK’s Mannat, well I don’t need to praise it, as it speaks for itself.

Third Stop: If you are thinking, the day isn’t over yet, well it has, now it’s the night time, the time for which Mumbai is specially know for, the night life.
Sudeep: Ab kaha chale ?
Rachit: ToTo’s garage pub chalte hai ?
Sudeep: Kya? yeh kaisi jagah hai ?
Rachit: Tu chal naa…..AUTOooooo….
From outside, it’s just a door, with a WELCOME board in neon flash. Inside, its music, smoke, drinks, and offcourse partying junta, here you can easily order a drink of your choice and ogle at choice of your girl, which are abundant here. And if you are tall and handsome like Rachit you can get few to come with you, just that today he was not in mood (sorry ladies not tonight :D). About the bar, it’s a theme bar with various car parts, number plates and accessories hanging at places. The best, was the volkswagen beetle hanging from the roof at the centre, another innovative item was a wall clock embedded inside a mrf tyre. These things are hard to locate and remember when you have distractions of so many drunk girls :P. About the ogling part, the eye tonic was never short in Mumbai, at the point of landing to the moment I took off; I had lot of eye tonic to keep my ophthalmologists away for whole year. On a mathematical comparison basis,
If, G = number of ogle(able) girls I met in Bangalore in 6 months,
Then number of ogle(able) girls I met in Bombay in a day = 10 G;

Suddenly, we recalled that Anshul (nostrum) was also coming tonight. So we went to airport to pick him, had dinner there in a near by restaurant and reached back home by 12:00 (uhoh 00:00). In no time it was 00:30, and it all started
Rachit: Toh kaha chale abhi ?
Sudeep and Anshul: Abhi ??(aankhen phati ki phati)
Rachit: Disc chalte hai.
Sudeep: Is time Bangalore mai gudnite, sweet dreams, take care, ho jaataa hai.But I was too excited to resist, and we were out again, meandering, enjoying a hell of last 14 hours or so.

Overall, I am too excited by this visit which appeals me to visit again and again and sooner and sooner.
PS: There are other reasons also. [:P]

Home Coming I – The Journey Begins

<11:00>
At 34000 feet and 800 kph (couldn’t feel the speed of the flight at all, except from few jerks at times, its like spending time in a chair and getting bored), what would one like to do, well there are kids who are enjoying after they took the elves christmas caps from the air hostesses. There is this guy 2 seats away who I guess has some breathing problem and doing ramdev baba category exercises to regain in breath in a pressurized capsule to save everyone from the outside 10° C and really low pressure, to make it suitable for the travellers, but seriously isn’t there any solution to the air pressures felt at the ears, those are really frequent and freaky. There is this other guy listening songs on his i-pod, well if it would have been a girl I would have been cursing Steve Jobs the same way rachit did in his blog. So 1.5 hours I will try to write something, and watch few more episodes of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

Anyways, to start the trip, well it wasn’t planned at first, I was supposed to be enjoying a marriage at Calcutta, but some things don’t go as planned, but once that event was postponed, it was more of necessary to break to visit home, and a way I can use that to enjoy at Bhopal. So, from Bangalore to Mumbai, and then to Bhopal, that summarises the trip in terms of journey, not in terms of fun, which we all will know in coming days, and I don’t have any idea of that. Oh oh the plane is starting to tilt, we are about to reach Mumbai, time to switch off the fun, will resume later……
<11:44>

Resuming with the story, 21^st December was the date when I had to leave Bangalore on a 10:15 Deccan Flight DN-606, as suggested by other I had to leave 8:00 for the airport, so I woke at 7:30 AM, got a bathe, dressed neatly and applied the adidas deo to impress girls and air hostesses. Reached airport well before time and I may be the first one to check my baggage at the counter, the attendant gave me an option of a window seat, which I accepted without any retaliation. Going through several security scans through different sections at the terminal, wasn’t any exciting though. But the fruits of getting up early did reap so early, so many well make-up(ed) faces greeting you from time to time. In short, a early morning visit to lounges should be made compulsory for especially people with poor vision, there is a lot of eye tonic to serve the purpose of the senses, which in a way is refreshing, so much that I didn’t sleep at all in the flight, plus there were these beautiful ladies, called air hostess, in red mini-skirts and white tops wearing Christmas caps was another reason, I wasn’t able to sleep.

On my seventh experience with what “wright brothers” once flew in early nineteen hundreds, I have nothing to do, listening to songs from my collection, adhering to the captain’s directions and highly excited to visit Mumbai, listening to the constant humming of the engine, initially I had this feel that the seats near to the wings will give me an opportunity to look on how the controls work while taking off and landing of the plane, as the captain was checking the controls at start, I knew, I was gonna enjoy this, and infact I did, while taking off, the shape of the wings reminded me of the terrifying fluid mechanics classes (though I got my best grades ever in those subjects, 3 A+ in 3 courses, but I never had an idea HOW). Shifting from Bangalore to Mumbai, in terms of place, or Pruthi to Rachit, in terms of person, the loving part never fell short.

So here after a delay of some 30 minutes I landed on the beautifully built Mumbai Chahtrapati Shivaji airport, where after collecting my baggage, I had a clear instruction to head left where rachit was waiting for me. And there we are @ mumbai, where a great Mumbai bash awaits, so we have the whole day to see places and many many more things awaits us in this Mumbai nagariya.