A very Happy New Year to you all. Another year gone by...rather whooshed past. Looking back, professionally 2007 was a good year. I got promoted in December, and about time too :) Personally...well, all I'll say it wasn't much to talk about. I ended the year with a much needed break. A trip to Mumbai and Goa. The main reason of this holiday was to attend the wedding of my good ol’ college buddy- Ivan. It was my first Christian Wedding and I was asked to be one of the bridesmaids plus this was my first trip to Goa. So a lot of firsts and I guess it goes without saying, I was really excited and looking forward to lots of fun and long lasting memories.
Inspite of being down with a nagging body and headache, running nose and high fever, I pushed myself as much as I could to somehow get through the shift on the 20th of December, finding solace in the fact that after this nite was over, I'd finally be on this long awaited and God knows desperately needed two week vacation! I was due to leave on the 24th for Mumbai and had three days to get prepared .. last minute shopping, packing and now to top it off get well before I boarded the train. I wasn't going to let anything spoil this holiday for me.
I spent all of Friday and Saturday popping pills and sleeping off the fever. By Sunday I felt good as new and about time too!
Monday 24 December:
CHAOS is defined as “a state of extreme confusion and disorder” No matter how hard we try to avoid it, we can’t. Specially when you have do something important like in this case –Travel! We had been planning this holiday for months…it was also planned that we would have three days before we left and so would finish all the last minute shopping and packing then. But No! Plans don’t always work out the way you want them to. So there we were running about the house, shouting out to each other from different rooms trying to finish our packing. To add to it, all of a sudden Mum realises that my poor ol lil bro was prolly starving and all malnutritioned coz the poor baby hadn't eaten a home cooked meal in over a year.. so off she went into the kitchen to make some dry meat masala and some Chicken pickle for him. Noticing mum in the kitchen, Dad decided what the heck , why not? and he gave his not so little list of food items he wanted mum to prepare for him while we were away.. something he could clearly have done a day or two earlier!! A good 3 hours later mum emerged from the kitchen, swearing that she couldn’t wait to get started with the holiday!
At 02:30 we were finally all set .. luggage loaded in the car, we finally set off for the station. Thankfully we reached well in time inspite of the traffic in Connaught place, confident that we got off near the right platform (all thanks to my masi who insisted that the Mumbai Rajdhani always leaves from platform 12!) Unfortunately for us, we had to go to platform 4... which was way across on the other side. So we made our way over the bridge to platform 4 from 12. No biggie.. we still had lots of time and the train had not arrived at the station yet. Now the thing is our train tickets were not confirmed until the last minute and ours was an extra bogie. We had absolutely no idea where the bogie would stop. When the train finally pulled into the station at 04:20 PM (the train was scheduled to leave at 04:30 PM), we realised to our horror that we were standing near the engine and our bogie was the absolute last one on the other side. With only under 10 minutes to go, we grabbed our bags and dodging our way through the oncoming crowd... pushing people aside..and I mean literally....I gotta admit, it is times like these when the evil side of me comes out... people were actually strolling leisurely about on the platform as if they were at the Rail museum! Also a polite "excuse me" never works..so I dint even bother with that. Making the way for my mum, I literally pushed and shoved people outta my way and finally reached the last bogie and got in with 3 minutes to spare before the train left the station.Phew!! The rest of the journey was uneventful...nothing or nobody interesting enough on the train to talk about. I always get pesky little wailing kids ..ALWAYS!!
Tuesday 25 December:
The train arrived at Mumbai Central on time - 08:30 AM. AGAIN just our luck, since ours was an extra bogie, it dint even make it to the platform!! We had to unload our luggage on the tracks! Thankfully Rishub got into our bogie and helped mum and the luggage get off. Just as we left the station and had driven about 10 minutes or less, we stopped at a signal. There across the road I noticed a traffic cop who had stopped a car for speeding. The guy in the car, without being discreet and not even looking the least bit worked up about being stopped by a cop, took out his wallet and offered the cop a bribe. Just there ..blatantly out in the open! The cop, prolly bitten by the bollywood bug, did his best to act as though he was offended and that he was an honest cop and refused the money. The man in the car tried again and it dint take much insistance on his part for the cop to give in. The cop took the money and here's the best part....after that reached out to grab the guy's wallet cuz he wanted more!!! Sheesh!!!!What an ass!! Now Im kicking myself as to why I dint take a photograph of this exchange when I had the chance!!! Ah well!!
An hour and a half long exhausting mumbai darshan later, we reached "The Privilige Inn" in Malad where we had room reservations for two nights. After a good breakfast and warm bath we decided to crash for a bit. Around 5 pm we decided to head out to Lokhandwala Market in Andheri West. No matter how hard you try to resist and stick to window shopping ,you can’t. So we ended up buying some stuff. We had been invited over for dinner by Priyanka's family (Rishub's friend) where he had been staying. Around 9 we went back to Malad to Priyanka's house. We spent the rest of the evening chatting with Uncle and Aunty, Priyanka, her brother Pratik, Rishub and Ratin (Another friend of Rishub and Priyanka's fiance). It was a very relaxed and interesting evening.. with some fun filled conversation followed by some very delicious home cooked food. The next day was Priyanka's mom's birthday...so at sharp 12 we got out the cake (and a real yummy chocolate-coffee & Ferrero Rocher cake it was!) By 1 AM we were sleepy and bid our farewells and headed back to the hotel room.
Wednesday 26 December:
Since we had just two more days in Mumbai before we headed for Goa, we decided to make the most of it. Our Volvo Bus tickets were booked for the 27th evening at 8 PM. We left the hotel room around 12ish and headed for the nearest Mall - the Inorbit Mall in Malad. It was decided earlier that we wanted to watch atleast two movies, so we bought tickets for "Welcome" for the 4PM show and "Taare Zameen par" for the 11:30 PM show in the same movie complex. Since we had time to kill before the movie started we decided to first roam around a bit in the mall and then get something to eat at Pizza Hut.
After a few hours of doing pretty much nothing, it was time for the movie, so we headed for the movie hall. If you are a frequent visitor or live in Mumbai you would have noticed that before any movie show begins they always play the national anthem..which Im told is by order of Shiv Sena. With all due respect to the National Anthem, I find this routine quite odd. Its quite obvious that the only real motive of playing the anthem before a movie is because that is one place where you have so many people already gathered..so why not force them to sing the anthem and instill some patriotic feeling in them, like we don’t already feel so! What is the Shiv Sena trying to prove? Well, lets not get into that. So Anyhow, that done, we settled down and waited for the credits to roll and the movie to start. I have only one thing to say to the makers of "Welcome" after watching it and that is "You are definitely NOT Welcome" The movie is such a waste of time, money and good talent. C’mon! Akshay Kumar and Paresh Rawal have done much much better in the past. Nana Patekar was just about OK and Anil Kapoor needs a trip to the parlor to shed off all that hair...where does he think he is.. in Antartica? All that fur aint gonna help him look and stay cool in Mumbai!!! Anyway, after what seemed like 4 hours of torture, the film was finally over. It was quite generous enough to leave us with a parting gift - A Headache!
We then headed off to Juhu Beach which was quite a disappointment after my last trip there. The beach was filthy , crowded and full of Hawkers around. We had some naariyal paani..mum's favourite and decided to head off for dinner as it was already 0845 PM and traffic was bad. We went to this place called "Fingers Crossed" for steaks. Had a delicious dinner and then set off to watch "Taare Zameen Par". I have just one word to describe this film - B-E-A-U-Tee-Full, Touching, Heart wrenching...okay thats three words... but mark my words, if you haven’t seen it you're missing out on some great cinema. Trust me on this coz I don’t normally waste my breath to promote a Non Shahrukh Khan film..so THiS is big!! We (and I mean everyone in the hall) were in tears at the end and People even applauded. I’m soooo glad we watched "Welcome" first.. coz then I’d have to prolly take a pill for the headache to get some sleep!!
Thursday 27 December:
We woke up a little late, finished packing as we had to check out by 12:00 PM.Settled the bill and headed for Ratin's House in Lokkhandwala. We were to drop off some of our luggage there as we dint want to take all of it to Goa. After dropping it off, we headed off to TGIF to get something to eat. After about a leisurely 2 hour lunch we went to Lokhandwala market and did some more shopping.. oh what the heck!! after all am on vacation and I just got promoted.. a lil spending never hurt.. yeah? By 6PM we were back at Ratin's place and left for the pick up point at 0630. The reporting time was 0730 PM.. and even though it wasnt very far we decided to leave an hour in advance as traffic is hell in Mumbai. On the way, at a signal we saw Jitendra in his swanky Mercedes sitting in the front seat. He looked as though all hell just broke loose in Balaji!!
We reached the pickup point by 0740 PM and the bus was stuck in traffic too and got there by 8 PM. It was a sleeper Volvo which was booked by Rishub on the net on Redbus.com. My advice, never travel on a sleeper volvo.. even if you decide to, never book it without checking out the seats. The bus had 18 seaters and the rest were beds. We had beds on top and there was just a side rod that was not easily accessible. I could have managed to climb, but my mum is 56 years old and she couldn’t climb up. For the initial part of the journey we settled down on the seaters , however after the last pickup point we had to vacate those seats as all passengers had boarded the bus. Now the problem was that you can have either a seater or a sleeper. We were literally standing for a while. Mum couldn’t climb up and I wouldn’t get up and leave her standing. The sleeper next to ours, also on the top (there were sleepers on the floor of the bus too) had a proper ladder. It was occupied by two men.. we asked one if he could exchange it with us and he agreed. However the other man blatantly refused. His reason: he couldn’t leave his wife and kid who were on the sleeper right opposite his!!! He was acting as though we were asking him to go to the other end of the bus. All the sleepers were right next to each other!! SHeesh!... Anyway.. I asked another guy who had the lower bed and he agreed to help out. But then after about an hour or so, he wanted the bed back, said that he couldn’t fit into the top sleeper they weren’t the same size!! Just Great!! So now were were back to square one. What really pissed me off was that after that no one wanted to help us. We had no choice and it looked like we would have to travel all the way to Goa standing!! I had decided that the trip was going to be a disaster. Even the conductor wasn’t interested in helping us out. What a nightmare!! Luckily for us, two women who had the seaters offered thier seats in exchange for the beds... we jumped on the chance.. better go sitting instead of standing. The rest of the journey was highly uncomfortable and I just couldn’t wait to get off that bus.
To be Continued...
1 comment:
Nice at least you enjoyed your stay in mumbai.....thats good. and trust me whether its a volvo or any other bus on trip to goa .. the fun begins only when you reach there... so i guess the most enjoyed moments are going to be in to be continued.....
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