A Long Holiday – And A Sinking Feeling

It is not often that one gets to take off on a long holiday.

Especially if that one happens to be yours truly.

The last few breaks I took were hardly breaks. More hairline cracks than breaks really.

My propensity to holidays, leave alone long holidays, is as low as encountering a smooth stretch of road on the Western Expressway.

Incidentally, after facing much criticism on the ubiquity of potholes, the BMC made a wild announcement that there would soon be NO POTHOLES and that if anyone did manage to spot potholes they would reward that person Rs.1000/-, for each find

Stupid to say the least, but if I did something like that, and offered Rs.1000/- to anyone who caught me having a long holiday, you’d be richer by a grand this month.

Hold your breath, for I was away for an incredibly long break of 10 days.

You may breathe now.

Two unrelated events occurred in the recent past that worked together to make this holiday happen.

Both events happened in Mumbai. Both events occurred in a gap of less than a month. There was a charming girl in each of the events. And both events had such a strong influence, that I had little say in the whole holiday idea.

The first was a call from the Falldown girl, whom you are by now familiar with. She had called late one evening on a July Sunday and I promptly put her on the speaker to include mum, making it a sort of a conference call. After about Rs.120, while we were exchanging the usual bye-byes and take-cares, she declared, as a matter-of-factly, that her days amidst the Trees of Dehra were going to end soon.

Her closing line was, “Try to make a trip before I leave from here”

Silence fell on the Santa Cruz side of the conversation. We looked at each other, mom and I. We froze.

I got up and switched the AC off. Damn, I must find time to fix that thermostat.

The significance of the Falldown girls’ utterances will be lost on you if I did not update you on what happened a few weeks before this call.

It had to do with the other charming girl.

An incredibly pretty, Native American woman did something to me that was to become a landmark of sorts in my rather boring life.

 “Where will you be going?” She had asked somewhere in the middle of our conversation, sounding sweet as honey.

“Shelton, Connecticut”

“Shelton?!! Are you carrying enough warm clothes?” Her voice flowed like honey. She was getting sweeter than the Mysorepak from Sri Krishna Sweets.

 “So, will you be travelling alone to the States?” Sweetness was by now overflowing and the Mysorepak and the honey were collecting around my feet.

I stared at her blankly. “Err…yeah” said I. Are you thinking what I am thinking sweetie?

“All alone! Well, it might get a lil lonely!” The honey ran between my toes and now was rising fast to my ankles.

She then looked right into my eyes as if she was searching my soul. She moved her right hand towards me. I was hardly breathing.

Her hand stopped midway, picked something, and rose delicately about a foot off the table.

I searched her face, looking for a sign of some kind. Almost instantly, a smile broke out, bringing cheerful dimples out of nowhere.

And her right hand slammed the object on my Passport while she said “Welcome to the United States of America!”

My eyes fluttered. Lips quivered. Eyebrows danced. My heart eased back into position from the throat and I skipped out of her office leaving shoe prints of honey and Mysorepak all the way out.

After Citibank and ICICI bank, it was now the turn of the American Consulate in India to confer on me some Visa Power.

My hungry employer (get it? No? Ask a Tam near you!!) sprung into action and did nothing. But warned me to be ready to pack up and “fly any moment”.

Given this warning from Hunger, the last line from the Falldown girl had deep implications.

“Sundar! We must go!” said mom after the tele-conference. She was the third charming woman in the situation, and she was still shivering.

The thought was compelling, I admit. After all, a chance to stay in a most picturesque setting in a most delightful city, at practically near-negligible boarding cost, was not one to say ‘pass’ to. Besides, the Falldown girls days at Dehra were numbered, and it seemed, so were mine in India.

That just about did it. And that’s when the meticulous planner in me swung into action and did some meticulous planning.

The broad plan was to visit Dehra, go around a bit, and come back. However, I was clear on my purpose behind the trip. Just the elimination of the need to drive mindlessly back and forth to Airoli, losing 4 hours of life every day, was a good enough carrot for me.

I went online before you could say dial-up and booked tickets before you could say VisaCard. In less than 20 minutes, the meticulous plan was sealed and served in the form of irctc e-tickets (or is it i-tickets? Sigh!).

Although the stage was set, the probability of me actually making that trip was a big suspect until 30th August when I actually boarded the train, which, very appropriately, I must add, happened to be the August Kranti Rajdhani Express.

When the sniffer dogs got off and the train finally pulled out of Bombay Central, the long holiday had indeed begun.

Unfortunately, that fact took 10 days to sink in.

Sigh.

Its Not What You Think…

Been a little scarce here and you noticed.

To be fair, it has nothing to do with any OS. I won’t go down that road now, so ease up.

It has to do with work. With distances. Dented buses. With Bombay. With time. With Phtooey.

But first lets rewind about 8 years so we get a better perspective of things.

When I landed in Mumbai 8 years ago from S7 of Gujarat Mail with big overawed eyes, gaping mouth, two small bags and an empty wallet, it took me two days to conclude why this city was very different from other cities I had visited.

The enormous distances and therefore the time taken to cover them, the cost of renting a place – regardless of whether it’s a hotel or a flat. 

After 8 calendar years here, not much has changed. I have the same overawed eyes, gaping mouth. For, as I found, that’s more about defect than effect – manufacturing defect more than the city’s effect.

And my wallet is still empty.

But I can tell you without a smirk or a flinch , that it has taken me 15 years to live those 8 years in this city. 

And as the days go by, it’s taking a lot more to complete one year.

Longer, in time. Farther in distances. Higher in expenses. More in rent. Harder on comfort.

Yes. It takes more energy, money and time to live a year now than before.

Consider: Santa Cruz to Airoli is about 32 km and that is about 45 min to an hours’ distance in free flowing traffic. Today it takes nothing less than 1½ to about 2½  hours.

Consider: A mediocre 2bhk flat in Santa Cruz is today nothing short of 35k a month

Consider: The crowd on a Churchgate local from Santa Cruz station at anytime is at least two times more crowded today than about 8 years ago.

Consider: The Queue at the railway ticket counter winds out and over the years the last man in the queue is going farther and father away from the counter. In Bandra, the last man in the queue few years back stood in the building. Today he stands on the road. Near Khar Station.

Of course, I am exagerrating, but I’ve been there myself in the ‘Q’and I can tell you it is a very unsettling experience. The queue gets about 50 m long at times. One has to be awfully alert about line-cutters and smart asses who whistle their way into the queue ahead of you when no one is paying attention. You will hear annoyed ‘excuse me’ ‘excuse me’ ‘excuse me’ ‘excuse me’  from people with railway Season Tickets who have to cut through the line to get in the station. As they wind their way past you under your nose, you have to search their faces to see if they are genuine or are they about to pull a fast one on you and take your place. Its an awful emotionally draining experience not to mention physical torture and trauma.

But let me give you my analysis. Some basic math on our regular weekday.

30 min read Newspaper

30 min shower, get ready

1 hour travel to office

10 hours at work (9 am to 7 pm)

2 hour travel back home

30 min unwind and shower

30 min TV

7 hours sleep

Total:22 hours

And that leaves 2 hours for you to do other things. The things which define you. The very reason you need that job.

That still leaves the weekends – making them ever so sacrosanct. Making you cherish it and devise meaningful ways to spend it – even if it means deliberating on it the whole weekend!

Life is really not what it used to be before. We are making it more and more outlandish and disconnected from the things that we are really looking for, the things we really need.

And it really is not fair on mankind to be handed a life that is spent looking forward to the 6th and 7th day of every week. Ah. What Trauma.

Wish I was a well fed cat.

Sigh.

Life can really be more than what we are making out of it.  Wish we could wake up soon.

Stray Plane Hits Dog….

Vijay Mallya must have thought the Black Dog would help his whiskey business soar. But he certainly wouldn’t have thought that it could also stop a Kingfisher aircraft from taking off.

You surely have read the story about the KF airline hitting a dog on the Bangalore runway. If not, click here, here or here for the report.

After reading many googled news reports on this incident, I decided there must be one dedicated to the Dogs point of view. For, except this one by The Telegraph, not one report I’ve seen mentions what happened to the poor unsuspecting dog!

SPCA, where are you? Does your concern for animals only sputter on when you see someone treating an animal badly? Or do you show concern over animals even when there is no major incident? Why didn’t one of you worry about what might happen to the dog or birds or animals if they got on the runway? Have you never heard about stray dogs wandering into the airport? Do you know they use air guns to shoot stray birds (maybe even animals, I don’t know) in the runway? Oh you heard that? But you had a flight at 4pm to catch you say?

Imagine walking peacefully on a nice night, enjoying the cool breeze. You hear some rumbling and lazily turn to see the source of the sound. A massive, heavy piece of machinery is thundering directly at you at speeds you can’t comprehend. And you simply have no time to react. All you can do is gape at the juggernaut and allow it to come and pound you into pulp in less than half a second.

What a shock it would have been to the dog!

The headlines must read, Stray Airplane Kills dog. I sat down and drafted a sort of news article that might tell the dogs point of view. So here is a JustPathe version of how the news would be in a Doggie magazine, (for the doggie, by the doggie, to the doggy). Click to view full image.

We were perhaps better off as barbaric cavemen, because we had a sense of fear of Nature and other species and more importantly, we had this awareness that we are a merely one species among 1.6 million other species sharing this earth.

For all its alleged Silicon Valley of India status, Bangalore airport has only become more an more inept. More on that in a follow up post….

Four Days of Boiledbeans ….

Four days starting today, the Pathe ground-zero will shift about 1000km South-South-East of Mumbai and will be positioned over Benda Kaal city, the city of boiled beans (thats what Wikipedia says but it might actually be Okra, if I am not mistaken. Unga Bengaluru peeps, correct me if i am wrong).

I will take my position on Monday morning, and the squad will do their thing – the machine guns would go off everyday between 9 to 6.

I have been through enough training programs, but the ones that take you out of the city are always welcome. But also considering this will be in the city of boiled beans, I just hope it is less windy than one might expect. For breaking monotony is one thing, but if it is wind, it’s altogether a different mutter. . . Err matter, if you know what I bean ummm mean.

Ah. I wish I had a laptop!