Mumbai Chronicles

It’s been so long that I visited here, No Mumbai Chronicles for long now. Yeah, but what to do, Laziness rocks. Hahahaha... Lately, I have been procrastinating and I am still not feeling guilty about it. But I was not totally wasting my time and have been following Indian Media very closely. Have you ever noticed that it is really fun to watch Indian news channel. Well let me tell you from what I have understood, there is no news on the news channel anymore, but it’s all speculations. Yeah, you are reading it right, first I said fun and now I said it’s no news but only speculations. If you go by definition, NEWS is the communication of selected information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet or word of mouth to mass audience.

When I was growing up, I used to run away whenever someone used to switch to a news channel. It used to be so boring with some people telling you about what is happening, . But now for past couple of weeks, I was following news (to be true, not by consent) and I noticed it was funny. To sum up there were only one news that was being shown in different ways that was –

WHO WILL BE THE NEXT INDIAN PRESIDENT?

It all started with the speculation that who will be our next president. This is where our news guys start their work. Initially they suggested names of probable candidates.

Our parties will be giving out the names. Please wait but no, they can’t. And they propose their best candidates. I ask who cares what you suggest.

Anyways to our bad luck or good luck of News people, our own DIDI from Bengal Mamta Banerjee comes to Delhi. And again they all began with news - Mamta meets Sonia, 6 PM meeting with PM to discuss about the candidates. After so much of noise, Mamta comes out and says she will discuss with Mr. Mulayam Singh and then announce.

Another round of speculation, what would have Sonia and Mamta discussed? Why the meeting with PM was cancelled? Is Mamta going to support Pranab Mukherjee, most probable nomination by Congress (as per their sources) being a Bengali? And this was going to happen whole day when Mamta di and Mulayalam met and then came out with googly. They proposed our PM’s name for presidential candidate.

And now our channels got worried, they wanted to know who will be the PM if our PM becomes President? LOL, they just proposed a name, they have not declared him as President. Moreover you people are only saying, UPA will discuss and give their final nominations. Similarly, NDA the opposition party will also have to announce their proposal. Anyways they kept on going discussing who will be our next prime minister? LOL

Next day when UPA went for meeting, our media kept on discussing, what will be the outcome? Guys please wait, its matter of an hour or so, they will come out and tell you whose name they are proposing.

Finally a name came up was Pranab Mukherjee, our Finance minister was nominated for president by UPA, the ruling party of our country. Well I thought that will be the end, but then Pranab Puran began, it’s Pranab all over. His constituency, his house, his wife, his daughter, his school and what all they can show about him. On the same time, DIDI and mulayalm also agreed to support Pranab. Another round of speculation starts, if UPA promised DIDI and Mulayam something. Hats off to our Indian Media, who is working hard to keep us updated with the NEWS today. Well I have now gone back to basics and immediately switch to an entertainment channel. :-P 

Mumbai Chronicle 5 June 2012

Finally our thikana (a place to stay) is now confirmed because this Tuesday, we got it registered. Our house owner came down from Pune and both of us signed up a contract for next 11 months. SO from 15^th June 2012 till 14^th May 2013, anyone can come to Mumbai without worrying about accommodation. We will adjust you on the floor or with Ramlal during your visit. ;-)

Mumbai Chronicles 4 June 2012

I do not know how some people can stay in home whole day and not feel suffocated. This Monday, I had nothing much to do, because the appointments I had planned didn’t work out which lead me to stay indoors whole day. In the evening, when I had consumed all the oxygen inside the house, I decided to take a walk.

Well walk generally means that you take a stroll around in a garden nearby or just a simple walk. But that is for general people, the normal humans, the mango people, but there are always some special humans, who start walking in some direction and then they suddenly realise that they have reached the nearest railway station. Then instead of turning around and walking back they get into the next train going anywhere and then get down at the last station. Now at last station, they think, Ok the joy ride is over and now they should go back. But how can they do that, because that is what the normal people do. As per them, if you came up to this place, you should at least check if there is something interesting to go around this place. And they find something which is like 2.7 Kms away, and because they are on walk, they think lets walk up to that place.

The Sand Art

Gola Wala Shops

My MilkShake Ready :)

This is how I ended up at Juhu Chaupati on a Monday and believe me, it never looked like a working day with so much of crowd. You can see only 3 things on Chaupati, lots and lots of people, sand arts and N number of shops serving paav bhai and Ice gola. So I had a milk shake from one of those shops at chaupati (see ice golas and paav bhaji are for general people again) and finally decided to end my walk and returned back home

Mumbai Chronicle A.K.A Pune Bhraman 2/3 June 2012

The 2 days at Pune can be summarized by like this, Good times with cousins, a wrong choice, Gaming on X-Box and a ride which squeezed out every ounce of energy from us.

To begin with, the best thing that happened was to meet my kid sister after long long time. And it was good time pass to watch the cat and mouse game, the relationship which Sujith Bhai and she shares. The love is so much that they just keep on calling names to each other and pulling each other’s leg. And your job is to just add some fuel to the game and then you can have a full on entertainment packed hour ahead.

Well my elder brother (cousin whom we actually visited and stayed with) and me love to click and were planning for a drive to some caves, a couple of hours away from Pune. Well on Saturday we thought we will rest till lunch, and then we can drive out. But then a devilish idea struck our brains. We read review about one Hindi movie released on Friday and thought to watch it in the night. We checked online and booked the tickets for 9.30 PM. By the time we finished our lunch, it was almost 3.30, so my cousin suggested that we leave tomorrow early morning for the caves, because if we leave now we can’t be back by movie and we postponed our drive and decided to roam in mall, have dinner and go for the movie. That was one bad decision because the movie sucked and we cursed every actor who worked and promoted that movie. The worst part is that the movie has been declared a hit and has earned 48.5 Crore of Indian Rupees in first 3 days of screening. Well I would like to forget it as a nightmare.

Next day began with me waking up early and preparing tea for everyone. I was looking forward for the drive when my sister cutely came to me and said “Bhaiya my ankles are paining with all the walking we did yesterday in mall. We will go but I will stay in car while you trek up to the caves.” And there went our plan to drive up to the caves. So what should we do whole day? And then we had ourselves entertained with Xbox and it was fun. And we never realized that it was time for our train.

Train journey was something which I say, can only happen in our country. 

We had our seats reserved and when me and Sujith Bhai identified our train and neared our compartment, we got confused. It looked like an unreserved compartment with no space even to step in. Well we fought our way into the cabin, and then had argument with the guys sitting on our seats before finally sitting. It looked as if there is a chair with you sitting on it and there is wall around you with no space. You cannot move your feet, because the space between the seats, people have stuffed bags or themselves sitting on floor. Those 3 hours were the worst part of our visit and I was thinking about God, that how he maintains the Balance sheets. He flew us to Pune like Kings and squeezed us on our way back. Hehehe...

All in all, it was fun to visit Pune and there goes one more city to my list of places I visited. 

The caves we couldn't visit

Mumbai Chronicle 1st June 2012

There is an old saying in hindi, that Uparwala jab bhi deta hai, chappar phaad k deta hai. It means, when God gives, there is no limit to it. Well 1^st of June was a day when something like that happened for me and Sujith Bhai. We had plans to visit our cousin in Pune (yeah it again sounds as if I am on vacation) for the weekend.

Pune is 3 hours away from Mumbai and generally you can reach there by road or train. But that day God had some other plans for us to travel. Isn’t it cool if you have a private chopper flying you down to Pune in 30 minutes, while you enjoy looking Mumbai from air. Well thanks to my jeeju (brother in law) who manages the Mumbai operations for a Private Company who rents out choppers, we flew to Pune. How that happened? The story goes like this –

 Well when we decided to visit Pune, we called our brother in law, requesting to book train tickets online for us “Hello eten, We are thinking to go Pune this evening. So can you please book our tickets online for evening train?”

“Oh! Is that so? Do one thing, reach here at Juhu Airport by 3 PM. There is a chopper flying back to Pune without passenger. You guys go in it.”

“What? Chopper? Really? That’s cool...”

“Yeah, No problem for that, as it is flying back without passenger. You come here and you can travel in it. Ok. See you at 3.”

“Ok eten. Thank you.”

I informed the same to Sujith bhai and we were pretty excited about it. But that was not the end to our excitement, because after an hour, we received another call from Jeeju, informing that there is a company car coming to Juhu Airport via our accommodation, so we can come along in it. What else you need, if you have someone picking you up, drive you directly inside the airport next to the Airport hangers and then you board your flight without lines and checking counters. Well it sounds awesome and we felt privileged. But there was still more to come. At Pune, the landing was supposed to be at a private hanger which was 1 hour away from residence of our cousin and public transport was not available from that location to city. However there is a vehicle which drops the Pilot home and luckily for us we had to go in same locality, so Pilot offered us a ride to our destination.

Sujith Bhai Capturing the view

So if I summarize my 1^st day of June, we had a awesome flight, believe me, Mumbai looks awesome from air (and when I say this, I mean the view is better than what we see through the small window in plane), then we went Pune without spending a single penny and got a chance to click lots of photographs. When I started my journey to Mumbai, I used to believe that Mumbai will show me a different phase of life and world. And yeah indeed I am loving it and looking forward to it. Thank you God for giving me the courage to take this step and being there along me.

Apna Juhu chaupati

Me and Bhai inside chopper

Mumbai from Chopper

Mumbai from chopper

Mumbai Chronicles 29/30/31-May 2012

To begin with, I would like to clarify that I am actually not on vacation, even though it seems like one. But last 3 days of May made me also feel if I am on vacation or what because what I did was to eat, sleep and watch movies. And the bug didn’t leave sujith bhai and my di too because they accompanied me wasting time. To summarize in 3 days we saw 10 movies, on an average 3 per day, many episodes of CID & Crime Patrol. Ab people can’t resist to get inspired from me, LOL.

Well the last 3 days were silent, so nothing much to share. Oh in between we went out and had Dhai Poori, my first snack in Mumbai gullies. Let me tease you with the pics, LOL... 

Sujith Bhai - Khush to bahut hain aaj

Bhelpuri Centre - Antop Hill

My Plate

Mumbai Chronicle - 28 May 2012

“Hello” I answered my cell.

“Hi, Am I speaking to Prashant?”

“Yes, Who’s this?”

“Hi, I am A (name not disclosed), calling from SSS (company name not disclosed) and we saw your CV on naukri.com. Are you looking for a job?”

“Hi Archana, Yes I am looking for job options.”

“Okay, we are looking for a Business Development person, and your profile seems to be perfect.”

“Okay. Can you give me details of your company?”

“We are an organization, dealing with Automobile giants. I will send you sms, you can check our site. Can you come tomorrow for an interview?”

“Well I need to understand, what will be my profile. Can you email me a JD?”

“I don’t know much about the JD. Better if you come tomorrow and you will be in management position.”

“Okay. Will 11.30 AM be fine? Please send me the address on text along the site name.”

I received a sms with the address, which was like an hour journey in local train from our station. The website was not so impressive and the info was totally not clear on the site. Even though I was negative about the company, I decided to give a visit to them.

Monday morning, my visit to the office was something more badly than I had expected. Well it was an office in a mall, which was still under construction. I located the office, and entered to find 6 people sitting in a small room, around the 3 cocktail tables. Yes, cocktail tables, not office tables. There were some stools to sit for people who visited them, well which I later understood that was borrowed from some neighbourhood shop, because they took back a couple of them in front of me.   Well the person, their so called Co-founder of the company was not present and was expected in 10 minutes, and they asked me to wait for him. Well after 10 minutes, door opened and a small girl of around 7 years walked in, followed by a lady in mid forties, followed by a Nepali boy who I think was the caretaker. Well everyone in office, started to pamper the kid. A stout man, round face, shot hair, clean shaved walked in and everyone greeted him Hi Sir. So finally the man came, who looked like the main guy and was supposed to take my interview.

“HI everyone. Good Morning”

Everyone greeted him back.

“Is there something to eat? Let’s order something?”

“Why? No Breakfast today?” someone enquired

He gave a look at wife and then replied “We had b’fast, but then also lets order something.”

“What you want us to order?”

“Order anything like jalebi.” That’s when he noticed me.

“HI, You are?” he enquired looking at me.

“Sir, He is Prasanth, who came for the interview.”

“Oh! Yes yes. Give me 5 minutes and we will start.”

There was a small one more room, partitioned in the same room. Well they went inside that room, and started cleaning the one cocktail table placed inside. Well the interview was kind of funny, because whole time the person was trying to prove that they are a big company and I should not look at this office set up. It was like they had already hired me, and it was salary negotiation meeting and they were showing me the big picture. Well to end my conversation, we reached the point where I demanded a salary and then he offered me an amount.  Now is the funny part –

“Okay Sir, I understand what is the Job profile. The salary is also okay for now so if you send me the offer letter, I will do my confirmation.”

“Offer letter? Yaar, yahan sab zabaan pe chalta hai (its all about word, i will keep my word.)”

“But sir, there should be something in writing.”

“Okay, if you want, when you join, make one document yourself, and I will sign for you.”

“Well, Ok Sir, I will give you a confirmation by evening.”

Well I haven’t turned around to look and think about joining that organization after that. The word still rings in my hand “Yaar, yahan sab zabaan pe chalta hai...” Hahahaa....

And you know what, whole 1.5 hours I sat there, the Jalebis he ordered never came. LOL...

 Looking forward to see what all Mumbai has instore for me and my chronicles.

Mumbai Chronicle 27 May 2012

“Di, tomorrow we are planning to visit Thakurli to ani di and family.” I informed

“Tomorrow? Sunday? Well if you are planning then I guess you need to leave by 9 to avoid Megablock.”

“Megablock?”

“Yes Mega block...”

“Aaargh!! After Megatron, now Megablock...? How did this Megablock came on earth. Where will I find Sam Witwiky and Optimus Prime now?” I mocked.

My sister unlike me is not so filmy so she didn’t get the joke. She plainly replied “Megablock means that Local train service will be disrupted for general maintenance on Sunday. It happens regularly and this time it will big in wake of coming monsoon.”

“Ok... Noted.” I was upset that joke didn’t work. Grrr..!!

So Sunday morning, me and Bhai woke up early, yeah unusual but true and that too on a Sunday, and by 9 am we were out on our way to Thakurli which is like 1 hours journey even in a local train. Well the journey was quite comfy as people avoided to leave home in wake of megablock. By 10.30, we were at our cousin’s place, where we were welcomed with refreshments, followed by tea, followed by lunch, followed by evening snack. If I had anything more to eat I would have jumped off the building but luckily that didn’t happen as I thought about my Mumbai chronicle readers.

Whole while, my sister ani di was worried about my nephew (her son) who for the first time in life went alone with his friends for movies, and she was like, I hope he is fine, I hope is not stuck at station because of megablock. While my nephew, a young lad who is 16 now, was enjoying good times with friends. 


How can I say that he was enjoying? Well generally a movie ends in 2 hours; well our chap went at 10 in morning and came back at 5 in evening. Well it was a long long movie and like a good uncle I didn’t ask him why he was late. Instead, I gave him advice that when you have plans like this, tell home that it is someone’s birthday and you will be out full day. What a good uncle am I? Hehehe...

Well we returned home by 7 and whole day, megablock was lucky to avoid me, because I would have been more worse that Sam Witwiky and Optimus Prime. :P