Bombay Dreams & Mumbai Screams - Part I

'Bombay' was a word that somehow had earlier got stuck in my mind like a week-old chewing gum that passes through piles of dust and garbage on the footpath before it finally meets your shoe... and kinda, sticks like glue (hey, it rhymed)!

Anyway, as a collegian, Bombay was like the ultimate destination where all my sane and insane paths wanted to lead me. Wanted to write and do creative stuff and what better place to do that than Bombay.

And finally, I even landed there. As a copy editor with DNA newspaper. However, it was supposedly for a short period (two months). Actually, I was working for DNA Money's Ahmedabad edition which was yet to kick and hence me and my reporter colleague Mitul were sent on an official trip to learn and well as help the Mumbai DNA team.

Just like any whimsical boss decides a national product launch in two weeks (for which the product is yet to be identified), this decision of our trip to Bombay came all of a sudden and in just two days, I was in Mumbai. Meanwhile, Rachana, my now-wife and then-girlfriend had already drowned half of Ahmedabad with her tears.

Day 1 was exciting. Finally in Mumbai! Our accommodation was not yet finalised. This bugger Mitul had assured that we'll find "asylum" in some hostel kinda place but it never worked out. Hence we reached DNA office with four suitcases and some bags between the two of us, only to find that we've reached a "factory" of human machines, almost 200 on a floor in some 20 rows X 10 columns, all staring at us - as if we were two fully-loaded astronauts!

We spent that night in a nice 7th floor apartment (DNA's guesthouse) somewhere near Mahim. But we had to leave it in 5 days and find a place on our own. And we did it. A small (actually, tiny is the right word) room in a small house in an untidy government colony in Antop Hill (the name made us think it’s the most posh area in Bombay and we soon discovered it was a place where all the taxi-drivers of Bombay landed at night to sleep in their homes)! There were two best things about this house – 1) A cat which jumped on my bed every night from a window that couldn’t be closed and 2) a crazy old deserted woman right next to my window who yelled gaalis all day and night (those which even a guy would hesitate to utter). With these two things, Mitul’s and my sleeps in Bombay were indeed, very sound! (pun intended)

End of part I (More to come)