I feel the same today, I felt a few years back in memory… when I had to give away my dear Nokia 3315 after religiously using it for 4 years. Its keypad looked like a blank slate, its screen could be read only at its will, I had to bang it on the floor a few times to open it and often re-insert the simcard when it hanged. While its battery died as soon as I plugged out the charger, I had to announce that we now had a new landline at home. As a result my electricity bills soared high as to that of the whole of Uganda. But I still loved it. I didn’t want to give it up. It was like what a grandmom-gifted new bicycle meant to a kid, like what the first love letter response would mean to a guy and like what silicon means to Rakhi Sawant. In short… so very dear, precious and indispensable. But then on one ominous day when I returned home, and the sky was filled with dark clouds and the sun couldn’t shine, I saw my dad standing at the door with sharpened new screw drivers pointing towards me and my mom with Baygon spray in one hand and the electricity bill in the other. The only way I could enter the house was to swear on my beloved cellphone that I would never use it again. So I had to say a final goodbye to it. I know it’s tragic. My life has been full of tragedies. If I had to make all of them public, I am sure the government would have announced a 3 day mourn. But sooner than I thought a new cell replaced its special place in my heart. Now I could view and store good pics, nice pics, sweet pics, cute pics, dirty pics(and hide them also). So I loved this one even more.

But with people… I believe it’s a different thing. You simply can’t replace them as easily. Especially when they have been what oxygen is to human beings, a shahid-kareena lip lock video tape is to the news channels, and what a good script is to today’s bollywood movies. But what you need to understand and accept is that they have a life beyond yours. And as you have always wanted them to be happy and cheerful, let them choose to do what they wish to. While you can only hope that it’s not a final goodbye.

At the end of this post my heartfelt thanks to… the people who have been the inspiration behind this post, my boss for allowing me to blog at work when I should have had another round of coffee and to the Strings band… as I stole the title of this post from one of their songs. Sweet people and I love their songs! So I hope they won’t mind…

Its better to regret why you did it, than why you didn’t…So just do it!

On reaching Pune my Mom launched a full fledged ballistic missile attack of 2-3 Prithvi missiles and a few more of the Agni range. How the hell could a 22 year old mature adult forget to carry footwear for a wedding and walk in with only sports shoes? While his travel bag stinked like one those tabelas in bihar he needs to be readmitted in atleast Class I or even worse in Kindergarten if he wiped his running nose on his t-shirt ever again. So without being entitled for a much awaited sleep I was sent to shop… I felt frustrated like an innocent guy who is jailed for 14yrs and on release is sent to prison again, just because he didn’t salute the jailor. That’s how life treats you sometimes…

Moving onto the wedding… It was the first one I had attended in all its phases. Busy guys like me don’t find time for weddings right? They can only watch hours together of NDTV (For Smriti Rao ofcourse!) and bikini babes on Fashion TV. A heartfelt thanks to my cousin who gave me this wonderful opportunity to realise that weddings for real are institutions offering crash courses in Saree Design, Art of Ornament Exhibition, and Gossipology. For the ladies though it sounds like an equivalent to Kitty parties but for the men it’s a place to realise their long suppressed regrets. Poor men, if they even happened to prolong a natural glance over a pretty woman, their wives gave them the typical emphasized “Tumhara uske saath kya rishta hai???” kinda stare mastered from any one of those Ekta Kapoor serials. There were quite a few sweet kids also playing catching-cook and running race, girls went “cho chweeeeet” at. But mind you these same sweet kids, if you refuse to play with them could come from behind and kick your ass… So all in all for bachelors like me it’s a place of boredom where you do find pretty girls around but sitting amidst big brothers who have been visiting the akhada since the time I used to soil my diapers. And then you have your own mom along and you don’t want to be caught by her while dreaming of family planning with the girl who just served you laddus. So not so handsome guys like me have to get involved in talks with other elderly people around to pass time. But as I said, wedding is an institution or maybe a university too for the kinda knowledge that it imparts! Now I know, that the elderly fella who was sitting beside me has a son who has his office just 10 mins away from home. And how his son once had to walk up the 7 floors of his office building when he was suffering from loose motions only to find the toilet closed for maintenance. So weddings are also centers of social display of empathy to the problems faced by today’s junta. How would you ever know how difficult it gets for people working in offices with just one toilet? Well but I don’t blame that guy. Infact out of boredom I too got tempted to tell him that my neighbour’s relative’s friend’s dog was in love with a neighbouring bitch who had already given birth to seven pups. Maybe we could exchange more of some worthwhile information on this too…

I hadn’t seen so much gold and glitter around me those beauty-parlour-prettied-ladies were clad with. Their necklaces were so heavy that one day a sitting Rajpal Yadav might be taller than the stooping them. Talk about their heavy weight bangles… one could use them for weight lifting. And the amount of makeup they had… no wonder the cosmetic industry is blooming in India. As far as my opinion goes (if anybody would care for) at such occasions, I would like women wear delicate jewellery and sarees with simple elegant designs to go with. Not the gold laden women having the gaudiest choice in their supposedly designer wear sarees. Neways giving a little of my busy time at the wedding to such imperative observations, I wasn’t far from a PhD in the Art of Ornament Exhibition course offered by the prestigious University of Weddings. But I don’t think I would ever be able to master the art of just glancing at the ornaments and making a precise guess at the store they belonged to and also the accurate price, which those ladies were doing all so very well! Probably I need to be reborn as a girl in my next janam to be bestowed upon with such stunning brains having Pentium 6 kinda processing power.

For the little marital status inquiries attracted by this not-so-handsome-but-earning-guy, my mom had an answer ready. Instead of responding as Single, Married or even Committed she announced that I was an “Infant”. And not just that I was an infant who needed his diapers changed every 3 hours if not more often but also needed to be spoon-fed every meal with motivations like… this one is for Daddy… this one for Mummy… so that I don’t spit out the food. So for her, considering me for a marriage was like choosing Gulshan Grover for the role of Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. If my mom had the authority to I am sure the marriageable age for guys in India would be increased to atleast 35 years. And then one day when I am a successful person like Atal Behari Vajpayee, APJ Abdul Kalam or Ratan Tata, I can proudly tell my adopted grand children… “Har kamyab aadmi ke peeche ek aurat ka haath hota hai… mere liye woh meri Ma hai!”.

Well so to conclude my experience… guys… if you ever have to go for a wedding make sure you have good company (and also that mommy isn’t along ;)). As an additional advice… in your own wedding don’t go around gaga spending too much money on people you would meet only once in your lifetime, instead save that and go for an extended honeymoon. But again don’t be a guy like me who won’t spend a buck on anything remotely signifying his own wedding and plans to do a court marriage and close the deal with a cheap Cello Gripper ball pen… unless you want to stay kunwara all your life…

Flashback: We had a nasty college gang. Remember Eagles from the movie Josh? Just like one of those… with cool thick leather jackets, fast bikes, supercool apparels like chains hanging all over our body… falana falana! You don’t have to believe me on all that! But yes we were atleast those few small-time brats in college who bunked lectures and sat all day in canteen drinking slice and maaza and never paid the canteen fella for whatever we picked up from his little store. The last thing that I heard about him was that he tried committing a suicide from the top of our college’s administrative building as he had landed up in huge debts because of the poor business he made in our college. No wonder! Yes so we were those troublesome guys who never informed at home and left with our bikes for niteouts to explore the ever so beautiful Goa, which we realised that it unfortunately lays inside 5 star resorts… where you also get to drink for free Tropicana juice from tetra packs left as leftovers at the beachside parties… You don’t need to be as shameful as Rakhi Sawant for doing it. Get in with a gang of as many as you can and order just one hundred buck coffee. You get to play carrom, watch movies on a plasma TV, use their bedroom-like-washrooms and ofcourse brag to the Bichchu gang that you stayed in a 5 star resort last night!

Seems like I can go on and on with this…flashback! And you won’t even know when the movie has reached its climax. So we were talking about this guy I had my best night with… Ashish (A Ferrari freako trying to turn into a professional head banger, just needs longer hair) a very core part of our whatever-you-name-it-who-cares gang. So what we did shamelessly in all those places is simply had fun! Just too good fun! It wasn’t one of those guys-only-night-outs that I believe guys need often to stay away from those beautiful but unreasonably complicated species which can only talk gossips at 3 am. So we had to choose safer places as policemen drove us out of ‘potential’ places like Marine drive late night. I start to sweat when I see a policeman. I swear. So much so that I soon start dehydrating and need voluminous amounts of Gatorade and ORS combined. Since I as many other friends being official ambassadors of CCD are caffeine addicts and need a cup of coffee every hour if not more often, we decided that we find a 24hour coffee shop. A JustDial guy told us about some Vista coffee shop that would be open and the directions drove us to a resort… Taj Lands End at Bandstand, Bandra

Before we could even react someone escorted us out from our cramped taxi and we were soon freshening up in palatial washrooms. They even kept chocolates there. Wdf! The washrooms were so big… My seven generations of joint families could stay all their life in that much space. Soon we were at the much sought after Vista Coffee shop… I opened the menu. Coffee… even if you choose to use a little less of coffee beans, less milk, and even less sugar if you would like… It would still cost you a total 250 bucks without including the taxes. So we ordered a few items. By few I mean really few…may be in number equal to the hair strands on Anupan Kher’s bald head. We ate them as if we were cannibals hungry for whatever we found edible. At the end of it, what we all had in front of us were perfect Vim bar washed dishes! She would have been a proud mom if she had to see my clean plate and nothing dropped out of it or off the table. Plates were super duper clean… nothing left to even quarter fill a new born ant’s stomach. But while we did all this, we had two guys in super natural form. Something like Tendulkar playing against Pakistan in a world cup match. They joked and made us laugh all through, that we forgot that we were all so hungry. Kudos to you Amit and Rajat! Though at the end of it they did demand an entertainment tax from me as I was the only one to not even attempt to crack a joke and instead only enjoyed theirs.

Basically I am just too bad at making people laugh. You know those guys who have a bad timing cracking jokes? Or just don’t have the tone to go with it? I am one of those. Even a huge clumsy fat ass guy who has eaten over a hundred boiled eggs won’t fart on my jokes if I did manage to crack one (How gross… see I told you I was bad at cracking jokes! Even if they were silly stupid PJs these guys cracked all night and could make girls laugh. It still is some super natural art for a guy like me!). I even considered carrying a small hand pump spray filled with laughing gas and use it when girls are around to protect my izzat if I happened to crack a joke. But that too wouldn’t have helped. I am really one of those guys who would go to bat (if at all I got a chance to!) and tell the bowler to bowl slower deliveries to me as I had lost one of my kidneys… All that I would get in response were disgusted faces of friends with an expression as if I was the most displeasing guy left in the country and need to be jailed asap with a priority rating just after India’s most wanted man Dawood Ibrahim. So friends you will have to bear me around only until he is caught. See I can’t even pray now that he is in soon…

The dish of the day award was awarded to “Meethi Khoj” where we were left searching for Gulab Jamuns and Ras Gullas the menu card claimed to have in the dish. There were some sparrow egg sized marble balls in there though which were gulped down into our hungry stomachs before we could even taste the taste. This engendered within us a genuine urge to ask the chef that why he had killed the gulab jamuns even before they could reach adolescence. After gulping them down we tried really hard to produce a burp… atleast for a psychological satisfaction that we had a full out dinner! The rest of the time we were busy discovering new dish names that we Sandeep Chacha Café regulars would never have even heard of… Few names got the prestige of being included in our big fat dictionary of swear words. So the next time a guy punches my nose because I made a clown face at him I am gonna call him a Fffffffffffffuuuusiiiilinii! The ‘F’ letter just doesn’t go away right?!

It was 5:30 am and I had to catch a train to Pune for my cousin sister’s wedding. And the only one thing on earth that I thought that I was good at was packing my bag… was pending. So I had to rush home and catch my train while these Fffffffffffffuuuusiiiiliniis slept like paralysed logs back home!

Before I conclude the post… my insincere apologies to all the staff and waiters who heard even the slightest of our thunderous laughter and had mistaken it to a lightening on a summer night. I know you guys looked sick and irritated with our PJs. Almost like how a hand tied Maneka Gandhi would feel when a stray dog is shot down in front of her. But the next time we decide to disrupt your peace, please give us a pleasant welcome and more importantly do smile when we crack a joke. We feel like losers otherwise. And the food…We just loved it. If you had served a little less than what you did, Hanumanji ki kasam I would have even tongue licked the plates, spoons, forks…

P.S.: Ashish you made my night… you made my weekend… thanks a lot for coming over to Mumbai all the way from Bangalore for whatever reason you came for… we had a great time with you! Only that statistically I just slept for 9 and a half hours out of the 3 and a half days (Owl! Owl! Owl!) and I need to sleep for the next 3 days to reassure myself that I hvnt turned into an insomniac. I still hope from the bottom of my heart that you could again be here this weekend! And the 4 hour long laughter dose we had in Taj… 4 pack abs have already popped out on my belly… How many have you got? :)

Yesterday night went for a late night show of One Two Three (pathetic movie!). Paid 200 bucks for a seat at Cinemax, Andheri. And that’s why the frustration! :p Or was it that April Fool prank that I got fooled by and I couldn’t take it? Haha. Or maybe it was something else! For whatever it was, I didn’t know how to control the angry me. Angry with something, angry with someone. So I did what I felt was right to do at that moment. At 2:00 am when I reached back home, I emptied my wallet (credit card, debit cards, too much cash, etc :p) while kept a few bucks and an ID proof with me and left home. Left to go where? Don’t know. As I walked away, something inside told me that I could go on and on. And there was nothing that could stop me. I didn’t want to. Even if I could.

Walking speedily and talking to myself in a way that I never did, I was in a hurry to go somewhere. Again Where? Again I didnt know. My thick red jacket made me realise that the night wasn’t cold enough. I wished I could have gone back to leave it home. But then would I come back here again to continue doing what I chose to do? Was I done with the frustration of the crappy movie? Or the April Fool prank that fooled me? Was I done with whatever it was? :p. No. So I continued to walk out of the residential area which had countless garbage bins and dogs… yea a lot of dogs. Some would only chase wagons. Some followed pedestrians like me. And some had specifically caught fancy for my red jacket which i wanted to leave back home. So I had to hurry before they got mad at me. Luckily no dog did.

Slowly I realized that it was going to be good fun. Fun to see Mumbai at this hour at night. Still pretty much awake and hustling. The highways were busy. As good as the ones at peak hours in Goa. This is the only time that you could drive or ride on Mumbai roads as though it wasn’t Mumbai ever. So all those vehicle owners who drove by made sure that they zoomed with full throttle. And you had to be more than cautious walking at the sides of the road, trying to figure out your own narrow pedestrian path. Alongside there were rickshaws parked with rick riders sleeping in. Some who were awake even offered to take me to my destination. If at all I knew where I wanted to go!

I crossed a couple of flyovers… walking in my own stride. Hoping that I don’t get looted or something. I won’t say that it would have been ok, just because I chose to do so. But the risk was worth the experience I was having. Yea damn, I never walked out of home at 2:00 AM! It was already 30 minutes passed 3 and I had come quite far away from the place I live, Goregaon East. Its then that I remembered that I had been a couple of times to a nice church at Bandstand, Bandra. I knew the way and I knew that I could get there all alone by walking the distance up. I felt some sudden energy in me that could take me all the way there. May be it would take all night of walking. I was ready. So I continued the journey. But now with a destination in mind.

Living on the edge…

This is one place I always found scary in the light of the day. And at this hour it looked all the more. Living on the edge. Absolutely. Small little houses built on the edges of a drained and cut off cliff, how do people manage to live there? What if you just slipped? There is anyway not much space to walk once you step out of your door. Right down the cliff was a marshy area filled with garbage and big healthy rats. Yea in Mumbai, only people starve not rats. My Nokia N73 isn’t great at taking night snaps. So that’s why you see the photo the way it is. I don’t need to tell that I am bad at photography too.

Well not too far away…

Soon I realized I wasn’t far from my destination. The green neon board hanging above my head did tell me that Bandra was just 9kms away. Good. Though I really had no clue of how much the whole distance anyway was. But 9kms looked like within reach. Though I did feel a little tired and dehydrated by now. So I took my first small rest break. I sat on the sidewalls of a flyover listening to songs… Clicking some snaps of the moon, buildings with glowing sign boards, people who had set out early morning… and also of those who didn’t have a place of their own.

Moon and Mumbai

From one of the flyovers

Rehne ko ghar nahi… Saara jahan humara!

Could this guy really afford to care if a speeding car ran over him tonight? So would it be his fault if that had happened? Did he have an option anyway? And well, did he as many others sleeping on the roadside barely being able to cover themselves from the wind and cold breeze suddenly get me all more upset? I said it to myself a few times to feel better… Yeh hai Mumbai meri jaan! Indifference! I moved ahead wondering if I would have thought of all this on any other day if it wasn’t for tonight that I had decided not to sleep in my cozy house…

There were police patrolling the area… giving me the “What the heck are you doing here at this hour?” look. But didn’t bother to stop by and ask me. While I simply kept walking ahead. I assumed that they see many like me everyday. Reached Santa Cruz by around 5.00 am I guess. And the entire sweet walk that I was having until now started to turn sour. There you go…threatening violent dogs who weren’t ready at all to leave me in peace. They were all ready exhibiting their knife sharp long canines ready to bite off my flesh. With a number of them surrounding me… for a moment I thought this was the end of my little journey. At this time, I believe I missed my bike much more than anything else ever… Also my legs had started hurting and I knew I couldn’t run faster than these super athletic dogs. Soon many more joined the dog party! I started walking briskly. But the dogs didn’t give up. One stood there clenching his teeth, staring right into my eyes… as though suggesting that he would get me any moment now. Well how can he allow any stranger (or should I say a Non-Mumbaikar?) to walk on his Mumbai streets???!!! Just probably half a furlong ahead was a hoarding with Raj Thackeray’s mammoth sized photo. I just wondered if there was some connection. I couldn’t afford to wonder for long. Nor could I admire the flights flying right above my head which I used to as a kid. The only thing that I had on my mind was how the hell do I deal with these dogs?! Not to forget to also deal with the speeding cars that wouldn’t allow me to cross the lanes. But I am glad that I somehow managed to. And the dogs I believe could not do the Speed-Distance-Time calculations to get them to the other side of the road. They could only stare and bark at me while I did that. Wohoo! Well I was just keeping my fingers crossed that I don’t encounter more of such sinister SantaCruzian dogs this side I was walking on. Luckily I didn’t.

The rest of the journey was pretty smooth. Specially the dogs that I found. Most of them sweet, innocent, sleepy, sane dogs :-p. Oh I love them! Soon there were guys jogging beside me, people standing in long queues for water, buses plying by… and the darkness was all out and over. I had lost the count of the flyovers I had crossed till now. It was feeling all so good. Except for the obvious fact that my legs had almost given up. So I walked upto a general store and bought a bottle of Gatorade to replenish the lost fluids… :). I hadn’t been much to Bandstand. So it took a little time figuring out the way. But when I reached there it was pretty refreshing. It was 7:00 am now. With everything coming my way, I was simply feeling even better. Had to walk up a little road to finally get to my destination… Mount Mary Church. Needless to say of how beautiful it was from the outside and so very peaceful and serene when you walked in.

Mission Accomplished!

Mount Mary Church, Bandstand, Bandra

Prayed there for a while and then left back with a rick. Didn’t have the patience (if at all the energy) to walk back the 20kms distance I had traveled all night. Haha. But it felt like achieving some Olympic feat. Got back home, bought milk, eggs and brown bread for breakfast, as if was just another day. And it very much was. Maybe even better…

To love is to not expect.

To love is to not expect.

To love is to not expect.

To love is to not expect.

Yes I always believed in it. And it feels all so guilty to catch yourself red-handed expecting what you arnt supposed to (Or maybe you can?). Nevermind. Period.

Had forgotten this little line I always preached to others. Just needed a self drill.

I hvnt been to hospitals for long ever. Probably after my birth this is my longest visit :p. Though altogether its been a good learning curve. Things I have seen around and those I have felt within, also a few much needed realisations… maybe some which I can jot down here.

• Money is of such miniscule importance or just no importance against your family member’s wellbeing (I never disagreed to), but now feeling it all around me. You do not want to think of saving money for your future plans, you do not want to think of earning money for now… nothing… the first thing on your mind is to see your loved ones all doing good. And all those useless things you ever spent money on might just hit you back to leave you whishing that you never had done so.
• Maturity comes with experiences and not age. With such experiences you will certainly see yourself grow ahead of time. You see life more seriously than ever before. Just what I have been feeling within in the past two weeks.
• You can’t take care of the ones ill if you don’t take care of yourself first. You just don’t need to panic. If there are more family members around you for help, share the responsibilities. Take it cool. Speak to your closest friends… When you hear them say that everything is going to be fine, believe me it weighs much more than even what the doctors can assure you of. And if you can find an evening free for yourself, catch up with friends. Nothing else can make you feel better.
• Its only at such times that you realise of how much your family does for you, how much you owe to them, you were maybe unaware of or indifferent to all this while. But better late than never…

Leaving for Pune today, for Mom’s further treatment. Have a huge to do list to follow once everything is in place like it was a few days before… Hopefully I should be back to regular blogging too then.

I am not a great fan of rains… infact I hate them because everywhere I go on bike, I have to carry my rainwear… Today while I had over 30kms of travel to reach back to Panjim there was a sudden (nah! expected) downpour of rain which didn’t look like one that would stop soon. Nor was I in to wait for it to die out of water. Luckily I had a jacket… but my trouser was soon getting all soaked. Kinda giving a cooling effect everytime a little more of it got wet :p. Soon it was all heavy as though it had drank over 100 gallons of water. Wearing my jeans which were more water and less denim by now, I just couldn’t care for the roadside dingy water splashing all over me as wagons paved through puddles. What I was busy enjoying, was my ride in the rain…

The rainwater drops were hitting me like a swarm of honey bees would sting onto your body, over and over again. But I was in no mood of taking a halt. Luckily I had a bus in front, I was riding just a few inches close to, so that I could miss the hard hitting rains. Hoping that the buswala won’t brake all of a sudden, as I knew my bike’s brakes will not follow suit.

While I reached a bridge, I noticed many two wheelers parked aside and their riders wearing full length raincoats having stopped by… and before I could wonder why, my bike’s pace had already got me onto the bridge. And there I was on a toss by the violent wind blowing over the bridge… Shifting my bike along with me from the left lane to the right, ofcourse which wasn’t for me but for vehicles traveling back from where I had come. And boy… this time right in front of a truck, head-on! Thanks to the super sweet response time of my bike’s brakes, I couldn’t stop, even if now I wanted to. I was wishing so badly that the wind could blow from the otherside just for once (God Plz…Plz…). The truck flashed its lights… those headlights looking like angry eyes suggesting me “Boy… this is your last ride!”. Luckily the truck had decent enough brakes to slow it down, leaving just a little chance for me to get back on my track defying all the Newtons in the force of the wind which was pushing me back onto the right lane (I mean the wrong lane :p). My bike followed a zig-zag path for a while, and I was glad that the bridge was finally over. Kids in air-conditioned cars passing by looked like kinda mocking at me. But I couldn’t care more… I was back to busy enjoying my ride in the rain…

And after I made it back… at the same CCD with the same friend, the same hot Cappuccino I ordered yesterday, suddenly had a great taste today!

And now, I am on a never before like schedule… enjoying my last few days in Goa before I join TCS.

DEGREE was a dream… but ENGINEERING made it possible!

While in a few days my final engineering exams are scheduled and I am busy with photocopying class notes, buying reference books (yes now!), collecting question papers from the past…lol! Lots to do! Just the last 3 papers of my engineering now and then no more of it! No exams… no tests… nothing! But I will miss these times I am still holding on to. Yes I will miss exams and tests too. Times when I have been awake all night studying and then my brain a Kora Kagaz on the next day of the paper. Or those small internal tests I never cared to study for… but yet always somehow passed! Ok I have taken a couple of class photos and videos too during the tests, so you know how strict or serious tests can be :p. But for sem exams, there is no escape. Gotta start studying and give a break to all other work. Yes the last time I will be studying for an engineering paper (hopefully!!!)!

We also have our most talked about final year engineering project go doom. Have to make it presentable enough now to scape through. Yea, lots of stuff going in and around me. So my blog might remain in this inanimate state for a while until I have enough time to give it some life :).

And if ya still asking this question… “Where the hell is Aseem?” You can catch up with me at CCD( Café Coffee Day) Miramar. I have been somehow making it there almost regularly in the evening. Addictive coffee! Addictive Place!