Mumbai 30th Aug Day 4: Deja Vu

My first day at office. I got up sooooo early, thanks to repetitive reminders from my bro and my roommate that it would take around 90 minutes to reach Goregaon from Powai. So I was out on the streets at 7:20, goal - reach Goregaon in one piece by 9. I got an auto and it took me only 10 minutes to reach there, and I had to stand outside in the rain for 90 minutes. Oracle financial services has an awesome building.. a dome spat right in the middle of the building. This is supposed to be quite good to visit and unwind , words of the HR. It has aquariums and trees and parakeets. Dont know, did not actually go there, would probably go in some time and confirm.

Once inside(finally) I had to wait for another 90 minutes. Apparently some other people were joining and the inductions would begin right after that. It finally began and 11. It was the same like in any other company. This document, that document, this pf that pf, blah blah blah yada yada yada. The HR presiding over was a certain Priyanka. Now deja vu #1. She looked just like an younger, shorter version of Aparajitadi. Aparajitadi was my team lead in the previous project. And she even had the same voice and genial nature. Joining with me were aruna, ankush, abhishek and ravindra. Aruna was the talkative one, ravindra was the jovial one, ankush was the quite silent type and abhishek was the team lead type. The guys were fun and I did not actually have a boring day. The bad thing about the day was that I got a project :( I have to join from Monday onwards. When we went to meet the project manager, she was like you can come after 5:30 and work. 5:30 is the official closing time, so you know she was the typical PM. Oh the project was on the 8th floor - deja vu#2. joining with me were aruna and ankush. deja vu#3, last project joining with me was sudhadi and debashisda. Debashisda was the silent quite type, atleast intially.Sudhadi wasnt actually the talktaive type, however I could see some traits in aruna that reminded me of sudhadi. SHe too is very particular about asking numerous questions about the project,and particular about documents and stuff.

My only hope is that this project doesnt turn out to be like my previous one, I literally have to kill myself if it did.

Returning home wasnt actually easy. I was determined I would return by bus. SO i asked a bit around which buses go to powai. Then got on this ac bus, the number of which no one mentioned. By the way I really need to learn hindi numerics. All the buses have hindi numbers on them and i found it incredibly tough to decipher them.

Gotta go learn struts, the new project uses it.

Mumbai 29th Aug Day 3: Umbrella

Everything in life seems to be synched together. Sometimes, not often, all the occurences in a day has a common thread running through them. Like a theme for the day. Well if so is the case , my theme for today is Umbrella.

Its being raining incessantly since last night. And not little drops, big heavy scary drops. I guess i got a taste of Mumbai rains. Today too the entire day it rained non stop. I was mostly home, sitting and cribbing. My brother left in the morning today. My room mate all through the day and then left soon after. I was at home, sitting by the window trying to see through the rain. The place where I am at, it seems to be quite higher than ground level. And if you look on a clear day, you would be able to see some ranges afar. Western Ghats maybe. Today the ranges were hidden under wisps of cloud cover. The torrential rain also made it diffcult to see.

The second reason why I named this Umbrella would be because of Rihanna. I dont know why I suddenly recalled a time when I used to like the song by the same name. Today I rediscovered it, downloaded it and listened to it a thousand times. I love the starting part of it when JayZ raps. Little Miss Sunshine Rihanna where you at..

Late in the afternoon our maid arrived, Pinky. I have never met a more talkative person in my life. Within minutes I found out almost everything it normally takes months to find out about another person. She stopped studying in class X, then she started working in buildings. She has been working in the same building for 15 years, so much so that all the guards trust her implicitly(something she emphasized on). She got married and has three kids, two girls and a boy. She enlightened me with the knowledge that no one thinks she is a mother of three kids. This time i do agree, she does look quite young to be having 3 kids. Anyways there were further about a million things she had to share with me, but i stopped responding as I thought that would be the only way to stop the verbal rain. It matched the outside rains in its ferocity, may be even won!

Ohh I also saw Black Hawk down, wonderful movie. Dont know why I didnt see it before.

You can stand under my umbrella.. ella.. ella .. ellaa .. eh.. eh.. eh
You can stand under my umbrella.. ella.. ella .. ellaa .. eh.. eh.. eh

Au revoir!!

Mumbai 28 Aug'10 Day 2: Hokey Pokey

The second day for Mumbai felt more like home. I was sleeping late till 10 o clock. Got up and felt the Mumbai sunshine on my face. It was warm and comforting. I realized I was sleeping next to my brother after a long time. Apparently he has learnt to sleep in a new position. He had the habit of sleeping curled up, knees as close to face as possible. I used to call him half circle when he slept , my mother used to say that he slept as if he was still in mother's womb. Now he sleeps straight on his stomach. Thank god! As i recall so many mornings I used to get up all angry at him cause his half circle position used to push me right up against the wall. No longer so.

Today morning was fun. I went to R City. My brother had to pick up his suit and I tagged along. Well since it was a mall, the same old the same old. Reminded me of mani square mall as even here rajdhani express was right by some thai spa. You know it hit me, in a city that is obviously lacking in living space there sure is lots of retail space.

Evening again was shopping mall, some Galleria. But this time my brother and our roommate Amit, had some real shopping to do. So boring shopping of vegetables and household utilities. Had dinner at Subway where I spilled Pepsi on poor Amit, oops! Then came icecream turn. Hokey Pokey!Hokey Pokey!Hokey Pokey! I liked the name so much I could say it a few more times. I had chocoffe mocha something something there. Good ice-cream. Good evening.

Ohh I also got drenched in Mumbai rain tonight. Did u know the Mumbai rains have a way of sneaking up on you. With no clue, no announcement it started raining. Torrential downpour. Had to wait underneath a stupid plastic canopy outside an ATM , where the security chatted me up. Well he was also urging all the nearby storekeepers to close down, much to the irritation of the owners. Reaching home my brother gave me an all knowing glare and shared some words of wisdom - Mumbai is not a place where you can go out every five minutes.

Well hope he is wrong, cause I got soo much more to explore.

Mumbai 27 Aug'10 Day 1: Ma Chudai

My flight was booked for 27th of august'2010. Like everything else concerning this job change, this one also was a first for me. This was the first time I was paying for a flight from my own pocket. "Yikess" was the original sentiment but then it faded to form some sort of pride at being able to afford to do so. It was an Indigo flight and had her fair share of fair maidens, some call them air hostesses. Everyone had a Rihanna haircut and wore a hat on top, I wanna say a beret? I recall there was only one hostess who had her hair longer than the rest. Maybe she was subtly defying Rihanna and with it, making her own sort of passive aggressive statement against airline policies. I remember having incredibly expensive sandwiches on board. But more than what happened during the flight what I was feeling during takeoff actually surprised me. Since I have never been out of home, at least not too far, whenever my friends would talk about how elated they would be on landing at kolkata airport or when the train from bnglore first crossed kharagpur, i would always roll my eyes and secretly judge them for being childish. While taxing for takeoff, I looked at the whitewash facade of the kolkata airport and heard myself say - it would be nice to return. I understood instantly how my friends would react, I could already hear "I told you so, I told you so" jeers. However I was happy, I felt warm within. When the plane finally took off I was looking out of the window and trying to figure out locations. From that height buildings and foliage seemed to merge in an unlikely harmony; the only geographically distinguishing features were the water bodies. Streets looked like veins pulsating within flesh and the vehicles on the streets looked like miniature versions of miniatures versions of original bodies. However tall buildings still stood out, and as a result I could figure out some familiar buildings. City centre2, I could also see the globsyn building, the omega towers, saltlake stadium, the vsnl towers at ultadanga. Landscape was lost later as i was greeted by a blinding cloud cover. Heavy wafts of milky white clouds would part to brush past my window, the plane's wings and then merge and take a very different shape altogether. Clouds always reminded me of pouring copious amounts of dettol in water and this time I felt I was swimming in that water. It turned darker slowly as dusk exited paving the way for evening to sweep in with all her luscious dark mysteries, an enchanting seductress as always. After that it was all boring, all blah blah blah. We had food, we had our seatbelts sign turned on and off multiples times, when it was time to land typical to almost all the flights I have ever been on everyone suddenly remembered that they have to be somewhere hence despite polite requests from hostesses everyone was out of their seats, grabbing their belongings heading towards the exits, irrespective of the fact that gates were yet to be opened. Unexpectedly, Mumbai wasn’t hot. It was a pleasant 30 degree Celsius; wet tarmacs indicated an earlier occurrence of rainfall. I collected my baggage and headed towards prepaid taxi stands. My last time in Mumbai I distinctly remember abundance of taxis, however that night there was none. I headed towards another taxi service called the Silver Cabs. Due to lack of prepaid taxis, this one counter was quite crowded and the sole lady guarding it had to turn away quite a few due to lack of cabs or drivers. However I guess she felt I was an outsider with no other possibilities and she asked me to wait. I told her I would like to go to Powai (pronouncing it with an O after P, just as in the spelling). She looked at me with a judgemental eye and corrected me saying Powai (pronouncing it with an A after P, just unlike the spelling). I felt a wee bit awkward but quickly corrected myself. I was then escorted out of the airport towards the taxi stand where I had to wait around 20 minutes for my cab to arrive. In the meantime keeping me company was an old lanky looking man who was in charge of loading my baggage and ensuring I got on the right cab. The whole 20 minutes the man kept complaining about his job. Complaining about the lady at the counter, stating quite matter of factly - woh ma chudai, kuch aata jata hain nehi usko. I was a bit embarrassed but just to indulge the poor guy nodded along. He also told me that he gets only 1500 per month and no one tips him any amount for services rendered. I think that was only a ruse to guilt me into paying him some money, which by the way worked. When I complained that it was taking far too long, he took out his cell (which was better than mine, but let’s not dwelve too deep into that) and called up the driver. His cell number was written in the slip handed over by the counter lady. To be honest her handwriting was awful and it was some work to decipher the number. The man showered another set of choicest cuss words on the lady. He then went on to complain about how he has to pay for the calls from his own pocket. Finally the cab arrived and paid the guy 20 bucks, which made him quite happy. Finally I was en route to Mumbai, life outside the sheltered walls of Chatrapati Shivaji Airport.
My taxi driver was Rajesh, he looked quite young and sort of nice. I asked him if he had locked the back after loading my suitcase and his reply was - once I have locked it no one else can open it. You dont worry sir. Something about the arrogance in that man reassured me. Rajesh turned out to be quite a chatty fellow and I indulged him. I had learned quite early on that befriending taxi drivers never causes any harm. I asked him about his job at Silver Cabs. The very first comment was about the counter lady. This time I found out that she was a "behenchodi" too and luckily also discovered her name was Archana. Why was Rajesh pissed at Archana? Apparently he had just returned from a long trip from Pune and was looking forward to returning to his wife and kids. However Archana threatened to nark him out to his boss if he refused. Rajesh had reluctantly agreed to take me as his next passenger. This time I too complained about the lady, just to gain the man's trust and keep the conversation going. I told him about how there was absolute chaos at the counter and how she was mismanaging everything. This egged on our little rajesh saab even more. He further complained about how they never pay him enough, about how they make him pay for the diesel and reimburse him too late, he complained about how they make him work long hours, etc etc. The entire taxi ride was a long letter to an agony aunt column in a daily. However our Rajesh was a kind guy and he never made me feel like an outsider. He told about the roads, explained to me which road led to where. He alerted me when we were about to reach Powai and explained to me how everything used to be a jungle earlier on. I was quite amazed at the Hiranandani gardens, the tall apartments which belonged to richest of the richest. As I was nearing my brother’s place I couldn't take my eyes off the very swanky shopping malls and eateries. I was very glad that my bro lived somewhere around here. Finally I reached my destination, Powai Vihar. I bid goodbye to our Rajesh saab and he drove away quickly.My brother lived on the 7th floor.his apartment is awesome, dirty indeed, mismanaged indeed but awesome. Three huge rooms, two bathrooms, one big kitchen and two verandahs. The neighbourhood was also great. As I was strolling around I noticed three restaurants, one car training academy, multiple grocery stores, one cigarrette kiosks and one cell recharge kiosk among many others.
All in all, my first night in Mumbai rocked. Couldn’t really get a feel about the real Mumbai or the real Mumbaikar but as much as I have seen I am glad. P.S. The sheer volume of "ma chudai", "behen chod", "bakchodi" etc etc flying all around me with great flair and a sense of belonging alerts me to update my vocabulary. So in the spirit of Mumbai, thanks for reading my blog all you ma chudais!

A new city.. a new job.. a new life?

You know when i was young i was always on the move. The fact that my father had a transfer job definitely ensured that. So after every three years we would all move to a new place, a new home, my father would join a new branch , my mother would have to make new neighborhood friends, my brother and I would have to go to a new school. I was born in kolkata, moved to kanchrapara, then moved to bihar, and then to rajasthan and then to kalyani, and then to uganda and then back to kalyani. I was in class 7 when i returned to india , to kalyani. Ever since 1997 i have been in the same place.so when this oppurtunity came to leave this place, leave west bengal and that too not because of my fathers transfer but my own, i was excited.