Chp 70. Welcome to Mumbai

Bye bye Bangalore. Hello Mumbai.

This is exactly the 5th time in my entire life my feet touched the sidewalks of Mumbai. But unlike the previous times, this time my ass is going to be glued here for a pretty long time.

• 1st time: Mom and my two aunties took me to Mumbai for a vacation. That was a very long time ago. Hardly remembered anything except for the fact that I pee’d in the train from Pune to Mumbai, and also Smita Patil passed away due to cancer during our stay there.
  
• 2nd time: T’was during my Hyderabad days. My sis was doing her HR course at TISS so me and my tiny little cousin Saidingpuii went to pay her a visit. Stayed there for just 2 days. Since she’s busy with her studies, we partied with her friends at some pub in Chembur near her campus, and during the day, went to Colaba for shopping.
  
• 3rd time: bp Summer Internship Orientation. Picked up by chauffeur from Airport and dropped to Hotel. 2 days Orientation Program along with other summer Interns from various other campuses. Project briefing and query clearance session. Flew back to Cal.
  
• 4th time: End of my summer project. Presentation infront of the biggies of bp. Later on, went to stay with my sis for 2 days. Warmed up at “Toto’s”, dance-appetizers at “Shooters” and finally main-course-boogie at “Avalon”.

Arrived at Mumbai for the 5th time last week. My flight which was supposed to depart at 9pm, got delayed by an hour, another hour, another hour, yet another hour, and I finally left Bangalore at 1 freaking 40 am!!! No prizes for guessing which airlines I was flying.

My homies Amol, Momo and Monu were planning to pick me up from the airport and later go for a mid-night buffet, but with the change in my arrival timing, we decided to meet up some other time. My sis was there at the airport that night. Took me to her place.

Her place, my new home, wasn’t as bad as she described it over the phone. It was much bigger than I expected, about 4 times the size of my Bangalore pad. Fully furnished. It even had a shower! The kitchen had a four segment gas stove! One morning I got up and cooked rice on one, heated milk on the second, warmed up the previous day’s gravy on the third and oil to fry eggs on the fourth, all at the same time! Boy that felt great! Back in Bangalore, I had just one tiny electric stove. And that takes like forever just to heat up a freaking cup of coffee. Believe me, it was really frustrating especially on days when I decided to cook a meal for my roomies (soup followed by Maggie followed by fried eggs to go with the Maggie followed by pork luncheon can heated on oil). By the time I got to the canned meat, the soup and the Maggie were already cold. Aaargh. But now, no more of that lifestyle. Woohoo!

Her fridge too had a breathtaking view It was all stuffed up with goodies ranging from Tify’s Olives with Jalapeños to White Mischief Vodka. It was so unlike our fridge back home in Bangalore. There, most of the time, the only thing you’ll find in the fridge are water bottles The first thing she told me when I opened the fridge was that she’s gonna keep it locked every time I get drunk! Aaargh. I had enough of this. Alright, faith_no_more, Jupiter, BlackWhite, Teii, Diki, my sisters and anybody else taking my trip on my blog about the “fridge incident”, its time to stop ok? There’s a limit to making fun of someone. Fine fine I did something really stupid. But it was the first time such a thing happened while I was drunk. For many of my visitors here who wondered what all those “fridge” messages in my ShoutBox and comments were about, well, I’ll tell you. Only because these people will stop teasing me about it coz it’s in the open now and so there won’t be any more fun slyly hinting about that incident anymore.

A couple of days ago just before I left Bangalore, I was on a wild drinking spree, getting sloshed every night because… I just got dumped. So “Jupiter” would stay over at our place with me and “faith_no_more”, and sometimes some other friends come over, all to give me company and get drunk so that I’d forget about her. One particular night, I was extremely drunk and merry. I got more sloshed than I usually do. During our drunken chit-chat I had to pee suddenly so I swaggered towards the loo. Our small loo had a white door. I opened the white door, and with all my glory, I relieved my bladder. Ahhhhhhh… boy that felt ghooood. Suddenly, Jupiter screamed out followed by faith_no_more. That made me a bit conscious and I looked down only to find out that… I was peeing inside the freaking fridge!!! The “white bathroom door” that I opened was actually the fridge Gawddddd!!! It was so embarrassing. But there was nothing I could do. I just continued peeing and the guys continued screaming behind me. After I was done, I went straight to bed because I was too damn embarrassed to face them. Passed out within a couple of seconds. My dear Jupiter and faith_no_more cleaned up everything, really sweet of them. So that was it. My big embarrassing drunken folly. Happy now? So you are now officially not allowed to make fun of me anymore. Chapter closed. Bleh.

By the way, I was having lunch a couple of days ago with my friends Amrapali, Amol and Anita at “Pizzeria” next to “Mocha” in Powai, and my sister who was at Haiko (the adjoining building) invited me and my friends over to “Far East” for a beer coz she wanted to meet my friends. A very great big thanks to her for telling my IIMB friends about the little fridge incident. They took my trip the rest of the night, telling about it to Monu and Vijay who later joined us at IMAX. And very soon, this is going to spread even further and further. I think I made the right decision to confess about it right here on my blog so that people who hear about it later won’t have so much fun teasing me about it.

Moral of the Story: Never place your fridge next to your bathroom. Or, Never paint your bathroom door with the same colour as that of the Fridge.

Enough of fridge talk now. Let’s talk about parties . On my sister’s birthday, we went to this resto-bar at Rodas called “Aura”. Ambience was great. There were 13 of us, and my sister introduced me to all her friends. Amazing bunch of people, just like her. What I love about this place is that, wherever you look, people just love to drink, dance and laugh. I really am going to have a great time here in Mumbai. The crowd at Aura was mainly in their late 20’s and early 30’s. The ladies were all hot, and it was a very well behaved but at the same time wild party-animal crowd. One main difference between this and Bangalore was that, it was a very heavy hindi speaking crowd. The babes all spoke in hindi and the music was also mainly Punjabi pop. After all, this is Bollywood, the centre of hindi speaking funk so what else can I expect. But most of the people spoke to me in English when they realized I don’t speak much of hindi (sentences I learnt in hindi, courtesy my summer internship at Castrol, like “kis engine oil istamal karta hain” and “Castrol se koi parishani hai, mujhko batayiye” aren’t gonna help me at all that night). But towards the end, once the 3rd pitcher of draught beer cloud your senses, it’s all the same.

So that’s what I experienced so far. And oh, there was that dinner party at Marami’s place. A close friend of mine Pari from Bangalore was also there that night, and I really had a good time debating with Marami’s uncle about Inter-racial relationships after two quarters of rum. My roomie Rita literally carried me home that night Other than that, guess I’ve been just spending my time here in Mumbai doing nothing and watching movies I’ve downloaded while I was in IIMB. JV said I should get a job, and am really thinking about it now. Mumbai has definitely more opportunities than Bangalore, so who knows, I might soon start celebrating my first pay-slip.

Other than that, everything is just wonderful out here. When I wake up early in the morning and realized I’ve run out of cigarettes, there are always ciggies to whack from my sister or Rita. 24/7 electricity, water supply stops for only a few hours everyday which is nothing, amazing apartment and surroundings, and if there is anything we need like ciggies, booze, bread, milk, tandoori, vegetables, movie tickets etc, they are all just a phone call away, delivered right at your door-step.
Mumbai raacks!