Hanuman

As no other more serious movies were released in the near-by halls, we decided to watch ‘Hanuman’ this weekend. It is an animation movie depicting the life of Hanuman from his birth to the conquest of Lanka. The animation quality was pretty good. I liked the music too. As goes the story, it is all that you already know. There isn’t any scope for an innovative story line when you are making a film based on the oldest epic tale of the world.

The director did a good job in selecting the portions relevant to the life of Hanuman and didn’t make an attempt to portray the whole of the Ramayana. However even after his judicious assortment, the volume of stories was rather heavy for the two and a half hour span of the movie. After all it was more or less the same story that Ramanand Sagar stretched for over four years!

I must admit that the animation quality, though good, wasn’t at par with the Hollywood releases. However, it was overall a good experience to watch such a film. It is a must watch for kids; but the adults will enjoy it too.

Cell Phone Missing

The regular life experienced a jerk the day before yesterday. Mukund, who shares the room with me, lost his mobile phone. Well, he didn’t lose it; it was stolen. That too not in a bus or a train, it was stolen right in our room from the plastic shelf placed between our beds. He had switched off the mobile at night before going to sleep. So we could not just make a call and locate it using its ringtone, if it was still in the room hidden somewhere. An energetic pursuit for the cell followed. All beds were turned around, all bags and shelves checked and re-check but when nothing was of any luck, the theft was confirmed. Mukund was looking in such a mess that if one of us was playing a prank, he would have returned it by the time the search was over and no hope was left.

After quite a good amount of brainstorming, all the suspicion fell over the maidservant. It was unlikely for a normal thief to take a cell phone from one of the bedrooms when watches and cell phones were lying unattended in the drawing room. Moreover it was guaranteed that the theft was made in the morning (when the maid generally comes) since two guys were up till 5am watching soccer matches. So as the situation and Mukund’s wrath demanded, the maid was fired.

However that doesn’t get us any closer to get the cell phone back. If anyone has got any idea regarding what can be done in this regard, please give your comments. It is a CDMA (Reliacne Infocomm) cell phone. It has been reported as stolen and so it is almost useless, as you can’t change the SIM card unlike GSM phones.

Bad Days

It has been quite a while since my last post. Well, you should blame the changing weather for that. Mumbai, after months of tremendous downpours is suddenly hot and sticky. I got ill and what a time to get sick! I was down with cold and fever on the eve of Saptami. What a mess! Man, puja this time was the worst ever. At the time of hanging around in pandals, I was taking medicines from a physician just in front of my house. There was a pandal near my house. I must say it was rather good and I had planned to visit it at least once during the puja days. But the ailment held me indoor. I am yet to get out of the sickness both physical and mental.

When Hell Broke Loose (Mumbai Rain)

One’s experience in Mumbai is counted as the number of monsoons one has endured in the city – I didn’t understood when I first read it somewhere. I had to wait only a couple of weeks as the realization came the hard way.

It was in the afternoon of 25th July. One of my friends called and informed that the office was called off early because of rain and we must leave for home. In the comfort of my cubicle, cut off from the world outside, I was rather amazed at such a decision. After all, it wasn’t a school. What sort of a company can declare rainy day for grown-up professionals like school kids! Rubbish! So we decided to indulge ourselves into emailing and orkuting for some more time.

It took us getting out of our comfy shelter to perceive that the company, in fact, wasn’t that dumb. It was ridiculous to use our umbrellas in such a deluge. There wasn’t any auto on the street, at least as far we could see. The vision was heavily blurred in the thick downpour. Waddling around the potholes and avoiding splashes of muddy water from occasional bikes on the road, we made our way home.

There was no electricity. As we groped around in our rooms, the watchman came and announced that the water supply had given in and there would be no water for at least two days. So there we were, four people drenched to our bones without light and water.

In the next two days the matter got only worse. We had no drinking water in stock, neither had the shops near by. We used to get up in the morning, took our brushes, soaps, and shaving equipments and went to the office, our ultimate refuge. The autos were charging more. On the other hand, the banks were closed and the ATM network down. We were awfully running out of money.

I am not quite sure what we would have done if the situation continued to be like that. Thankfully it improved and normalcy was restored in steps. Our humble place of dwelling served us quite well, as the area wasn’t waterlogged like other more happening places in Mumbai. At least, we could resort to the office. The office was such a nice place to be -:)

The Evolution of Pastime

Once the trouble of getting a residence was settled, the inevitable problem of pastime arose. We had a house – fine! But what to do inside those four walls? Thankfully we had to spend most of the daytime in the office. Still you can’t be in the office forever and you can’t sleep whenever at home.

In those early days, we used to come back from office and make a meticulous attempt to decide how much money we owed to one another. We had to share equally the price of a washing soap or the fare of the auto. It wasn’t as easy as it seems. Added to the complexity was the urge to pass as much time as possible to avoid sitting idle in the rooms. Don’t think that there was a lot of money involved. It was more about the time than the money. We called the piece of paper, on which we put the final calculated result, the ‘log file’. The ‘log file’ is still alive but with much less time attached to it.

No matter how scrupulous we were regarding the ‘log file’ it wasn’t enough. So next came the newspaper. If you don’t understand what ‘reading between the lines’ means, you should have watched me then. No piece of news, however insignificant, could escape my studious vigor.

The newspaper session couldn’t last long. After all, how long can you force engineering students to read like that? (The answer, I suppose, will be, “three days preceding the exam”) So to aid the ‘log file’ and the newspaper came the FM radio. Now, this one was a real good source of entertainment. We liked the programs especially those on ‘Radio City’, stuff like ‘Dr Love’ or ‘Love Guru’.

At the end of the first month, we got our first salaries. I received my credit card too. Using that we added the final object to our pastime collection, a 21’’ flat screen colour television. Today the TV is the most used of the lot. But all other forms of our previous pastimes still exist.

In Search of an Abode

The desperate search for a house marked the first two weeks of my stay in Mumbai. I had secured a place in the guesthouse eventually, but that lodging was guaranteed only for 15 days. So outside the office hours it was always about brokers, rents, BHKs and RKs.

The first time someone said, “do BHK ka kiraya char hazar ke aspas hoga” (the rent of a two BHK flat will be around four thosand), I was rather confused with that new jargon. However, the casual tone definitely indicated that it was a very common term of usage. I didn’t want to look stupid. So I nodded in a way that wasn’t confident but good enough to let the other person assume that I had understood.

It wasn’t difficult to figure out BHK and RK as we, me & one of my friends, had to get a look on a number of those different-sized and different-priced flats all around where my office is located. The brokers played a vital role in the house hunt process. We used to travel by the bike of our broker. Thanks to the broker and my friend being too lean and thin, we managed to squeeze on the same bike. It must have been a treat for the passers-by to watch us on the vehicle.

After about a dozen of such perilous rides, we finally hit upon our choice. It was a two BHK flat with three rooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a large terrace for a monthly rent of Rs.4500/-. I share it now with three of my friends who work in the same company. We had settled for this flat in spite of it being a bit far from the more happening areas because it was cheap. But we would soon find out that this humble dwelling had added benefits other than its inexpensiveness.

The First Day in Mumbai (part III)

(It is a continuation of the previous two posts. This one will be more meaningful if you read those first.)

The staggering 29-storey-high structure of Naperol Tower was a great relief. It was a big residential complex. The guesthouse was on the first floor of ‘A’ wing. Inspiring my exhausted frame with the thought of impending rest, I dragged myself up with the luggage to the destination. But the destiny wasn’t that sweet and simple.

There was no booking for me. A bit more of persisting verbal exchanges and data mining in the computer made the picture clear. A booking was made in my name for 27th. Since I had joined on 6th (I had no idea that the joining date had been changed), the booking for 27th was cancelled and to my utmost anguish no substitute had been arranged.

I tried all kinds of tricks to secure a place in the guesthouse. I offered to pay. I requested first for a room and then for a sofa. I asked whether I could talk to anybody for a late booking. But nothing was of avail. Finally I called my HR in-charge. He took someone else in the telephonic conference. I was first adamant about traveling again in a taxi in the night. However it soon became clear that I had no other option.

With about 20 minutes of discussion, the situation was settled. A booking was made in a hotel in Turbhe. The clerk in the guesthouse, perhaps because of being a Bengali himself, took pity on me. He arranged for a taxi and I had to travel all the way back to Navi Mumbai.

As I sank in my deepest slumber in the hotel room at last, it was hard to feel that it was in fact my first day in Mumbai. It has been the longest day so far.

The First Day in Mumbai (part II)

(It is continuation of the previous post. So if you haven’t already read that, better do that first.)

I was carrying a pretty heavy suitcase and a bag of decent size. I availed one of the small vehicles plying on the roads inside the office campus and reached block D. The campus is pretty big. A wide road stretches straight from the main entrance to a large fountain. Behind the fountain are the buildings where people work. The buildings are arranged in two somewhat circular arrangements. One circle comprises of blocks ‘A’ to ‘E’ and the other one includes from ‘F’ to ‘J’. There are other buildings too but I wasn’t and still am not concerned with those much. However the aspect more conspicuous than the extent of the campus was its cleanliness. I felt good to be in such a campus and hoped that everything would turn out to be equally neat.

At 11 in the morning, we were around twelve people in a conference room. Waiting. When the silence was unbearable I started with my introduction. The cue was taken up by others and within some moments I realized what was most essential, that we all belonged to the same frequency, all fresh graduates from IITs. You know what I mean.

I don’t want to bore you with what happened next in the office. Exactly as expected, form filling and introduction and etc. Only important thing was a bit of miscommunication. The HR official told me that I was expected on 27th whereas I came on 6th. He assured however that there will be no problem and directed me to the guesthouse in Wadala.

At around 7pm I came out of the office premises. Remember my luggage. This time I wasn’t lucky to catch one of those vehicles and was blaming the company for having to carry the luggage around in such a large campus. I took an auto (will write about the ubiquitous autos in Mumbai in a later post, there is a lot to write about). I reached Vashi, the entrance of Navi Mumbai from the larger part of main Mumbai. I took a taxi for Wadala.

The ride was going nice until I suddenly realized that we were no longer in a city and it was getting dark. There were no buildings in sight except only a distant factory. The roads were pretty empty with occasional high-speed cars darting past us. I must admit I was quite shocked. If the taxi driver had any intension to rob me, it was the perfect time and place. I took out the piece of paper containing phone numbers from my purse and placed it in my book-pocket. If someone snatched my purse, I would still have the contacts – logic, you see. Much to my relief, the taxi got into a crowded area once more and I reached the guesthouse. But the ordeal was far from getting over.
(I later came to know that the deserted road was Chembur-Wadala highway.)

(To be Continued ....)