Saturday, September 01, 2007

Mumbai - part 1

Mumbai bestseller, who crushed my vada-pav?

Inspirations are found in times of adversity, this piece of narration is strictly for people who like to be a part of those circumstances and savor moments. Any instances of people fighting adversity and heroics are end results of unhindered imagination at deep slumber arising out of fatigue. The name arises after profound thoughts “anything and everything sells in this city”. That’s the existence formula for this city, as much as one can see, it accepts everyone who comes here to make a living, any race, any status, any work, its anything and everything that sells here. Such is the city, where the gap between the rich and the poor is too big; any real estate developers reading this would make a marvel structure out of it. This is one city that captures everything from 36 storey penthouses to 10 floor slums, from the cheapest eateries to the costliest ambience, the roadside shops to the international designer showrooms etc. So much is its treasure, that it cannot afford to sleep and at 1A.M, there is a traffic jam. Every instance of entrepreneurship is risk free and does not need a huge capital investment. The best of them being the famed “vada – pav”. The prophecies of this mysterious material can be best described as Indian version of a filling burger that is instant, cheap and offers multiple toppings at a price that robs the beggars of their revenue. Marketing concepts take a toss and brand image is just another piece of filling in a pav. “The great world dream “of eradicating poverty can be accomplished when people in the world are lured into eating a nutritious food that is far more practical than “yet another Indian dream” which happens to be the best seller of the century loved by B school grads all over the world. The recipe is “MOTM”- made on the move with flavor and toppings changing day by day depending upon what the crow and pigeons ate from your terrace. The flavor is therefore unique unlike many of DA-Vinci’s master piece. As an author, you might be licking your lips after an experience of a lifetime in a metro. Few people call it, “you live to die daily”. At those times, you are desperate to sue some mobile operators who urge you to live every moment, when you clearly know “where the **** can u live”. Curiosity arouses in others (not you. Coz your scared) when you pass through the city… I love to call it “the present continuous”, a form of present tense where the action happens while you are speaking about it. The most prominent few amongst them are fast walking, crushing, hanging, vada-paaving, and polishing etc. no matter who you are, you might be forced to indulge in any one of these interesting activities as a part of your fitness regime to keep away those extra fat of your belly or might end up 10 minutes late to the office. Once it so happened that a poor soul had to report to duty for the first time and a branded company came forward to sponsor his apparels. And the poor soul boards the train, “the rest is history”. Advice: wrinkle free clothing might be the wonder solution. No wonder, when my boss said, his appetite for wearing branded apparels and ornaments are fulfilled if he travels in the second deck “ the roof top”- unhindered natural beauty of slums by the side with winds blowing at 70 kmph and you feel like wind-training.( ref: wind biking by Bajaj). You get to experience the best of journey before you reach your office and your fresh amongst all your colleagues who are sapped after a crucial royal rumble encounter (ref: WWE showdown with 30 people entering with a span of 1 minute between each of them.) Conclusion: he is the centre manager whereas people who travel inside are still stuck up and work under him. The city’s transportation is unique and follows physical laws of Archimedes’s displacement (when people get inside through one door, an equal number fall out from the other side), Relative annoyance (tall and short are relative, when short; you dwell in the fragrance of arm-pits, if tall, then mercy of hair oil), and the “Q”( a line that starts from the exit of the railway station and ends inside a bus or vice versa) and my favorite amongst all these is principles of momentum and inertia (any person at a proximity to the train will get sucked into it despite his unwillingness, he will get carried inside by the entering crowd and pushed inside deeper by the inertia of the exit crowd) To give a clearer picture, it resembles transportation of live cargos between places like in a can of worms. The Best busses in the city are a part of fitness regime of Transport Corporation aimed at transporting more thin people than few fat ones adding more revenue to the (3-day) strike force of the city, despite all these, the worms are happily feeding themselves with calories in one hand and music flowing into their ears. No wonder the new range of mp3 phones made it big in the Indian market. Every tom, Dick, and their hairy cousins have this luxury of following music so passionately that they sometimes give you an impression of born in clan with brother fry badams playing to the crowd amidst huge applause. Not to forget the taxi’s, they are also a part of the folklore of every Bollywood hero, taking trips for free and helping pregnant women to give birth to prodigies. At times, they resemble an era of Flintstone where cars didn’t have engines and people pedaled through them. Here it is no aberrations except that they have a astronomical unit called meter which uses extinct conversion scales to exactly translate an amount rupees 30 to rupees 50 which rue all your years of education spent on learning mathematical conversions. The dynamics of the scale went above my head once that I had to budget my taxiing not to exceed rupees 50, on such a word to the taxiwala, there was an abrupt end to the journey leaving me stranded after paying rupees 50. Thankfully, a group of jobless men around the corner picked up a debate upon my condition each one suggesting different routes to reach a nearby station. The irony was that each landmark they suggested was in the same route but at different junctures. The author’s reason for arrival in Mumbai is a matter of serious discussion that will be briefed about in the future editions of the best seller. A normal working day for me generally involves less or no work, some orkutting to improve his networking skills, daily news and Gtalk etc to communicate with his near and dear ones in other cities who are advocating a similar lifestyle. Sometimes the use of desk phone to enquire about plans for the evening is also a part of my daily work life. A simple plan usually was to go to the marine drive and relax after a hectic day. The crashing of waves, honking from the traffic, smooch sounds from the nearby couple, and the persuasion techniques of the hawker were amongst my favorite observations apart from women jogging and dogs chasing. It so happened once that when I was poetically moved and started writing one. It started like ” never before, have I felt loneliness inside me, deep enough like a dew drop in the sea….” My intentions were to replicate history where poetic greats shot to fame writing by the sea. Days are passing by now, I re-ignite the experiences after a long time. Too much happening and too little time to think. There is a big hole in my pocket right now and my wait for the stipend seems to be unending. Baskin & Robbins appeal no longer and my work worse than that. My day of descending is arriving shortly and I could visualize my far and dear ones greeting me and some extinct friends re-igniting memories of brutal fights. Dad, can no longer work more than 24 hours a day and neither his department is willing to pay extra… from where can I get those extra bucks???? Mumbai has a solution for every problem and a problem for every new solution, if I can call it fate exactly. The company paid me allowances sizeable enough to live 2 Mumbai days and ......


to be continued..

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