Bombay Dreams & Mumbai Screams - Part II

Mumbaikars in the making

“Come to Bombay, you ass! How much more time will you waste away from here?” This is what my gang of langotia yaars always kept telling me. And now when I had finally reached there, this is what happened: My day 1 at room no. 1-420 got me into a police van! After a little bit of booze and disco, we were dancing with loud music on at 3 in the night at my friend’s place. His neighbours raised an alarm to the police and we were ‘arrested’ and escorted to the police station for ‘hooliganism at night’ or whatever the charge was called (we never dared to ask the policeman). Thanks to the fact that most of us are in the media and are accustomed to PR activities, we used all our maska-polish skills to get away by bribing the cops. (for more details, go to the I-420 blog :)

After that, due to hectic schedules and hopeless travelling problems, I hardly met my gang twice or thrice more in two months. On a Sunday, I decided to visit my friend Kedar who stayed at Thane. Considering that it was a holiday, I thought the traffic in local train would be less lethal. So, here I was with a walkman hung on my waist and waiting for a train that headed to Thane. But little did I know that in Bombay, local trains are even more crowded on holidays, because if it was the man of the house who traveled on weekdays to work, it was the entire family that traveled on Sunday for enjoying a holiday! Finally, my fourth attempt to enter train was successful and I spent the most perspiring 30 minutes of my life trying my best to save my walky from getting sandwiched between sweaty bums!

Most of the time was spent in the office. I had both lunch and dinner at the office canteen. Work was good. Real good! There was a hell lot of difference in the way work happened at Ahmedabad and the way it did in Bombay. The bosses there were exceptionally good with their work. I was the youngest in the team and there was a lot to learn. But there was one problem. We were here till the paper got launched in Ahmedabad and this launch was getting more and more uncertain. So what happened was that both of us were left in the middle of nowhere – we weren’t employees of DNA Mumbai and though we were employees of DNA Money Ahmedabad, the paper’s launch was uncertain. We couldn’t get back home and nor could we start settling there. Both of us were extremely tensed. And when one from a dry state is under tension in a wet land, there is just one recourse - BEER! Yes, beer, every night. It is obvious, especially when your room partner is an expert boozer. The day Mitul got his story published in the newspaper, he’ll say ‘let’s drink to celebrate’. And the day he could find no story, he said ‘let’s drink to relieve mental pain’. Heads or tails, both pointed at the bottle.

(to be continued…)