A month is of gone by, typically for many, however quite uniquely for me, here I recount moments usual and unusual.
Most interestingly I decided to get active after my first semester examinations in college and through a kind friend I found myself ingesting , transcribing and in the posh bungalows of every celebrity Rajdeep Sardesai needed on his prime time show. Thus was my month was spent (well or otherwise) at the CNN-IBN office at Lower Parel.
Now Lower Parel was quite a distance from Nerul and the daily local train rides stopped being thrilling after a while when I traversed in rush hours and found myself saved from stampede each time I reached the Kurla station. It’s a world of its own there in that city where millions seek, and others simply remain just to watch .
Train journeys it began with and it ended with that as well. The interim had so much in store; some wonderous and others dull, yet everything is worth a mention. The rush in Bombay train is hardly news to you (who has heard about it with this mention a billion times now) and me, who just faced the crazy, just almost maddening mass of just humans and more human beings. As if the fact that stench of pitched arm pits were not enough, the women who took devil’s form every morning with their ‘tokri’ of fresh, but supremely smelly fish got a clear passage everywhere they went. Although I hated them for wishing me good morning in the most horrid manner, I envied them for getting a clear passage wherever they went.
Thrown into this sea of people, characters some from Shakespearean tragedies while others from that of Shaw’s, I found myself meeting not people but characters or I should say a mirage of outlook in all. Now I shall brood over the work pressure on days and the total lack of it on others, the latter being domninating. Of course, Prithvi, my fellow intern and a friend now told me that it was important for me to come up with things to do. Which I did, in time, while others engaged in long hours of Farmville(not that I was not on Facebook for a minimum of an hour a day).
However, boredom and idleness did have its merits too. Apart from some serious Facebook-ing ,there were also conversations of a different variety each day. Sometimes about absolutely ridiculous books that Prithvi read on International Relations, or about Kartick’s niece Cia whose tales were absolutely amusing or simply about the free evening snack I had missed in the canteen. It was funny , really, sometimes entering the office and I could already see from one corner of my eye Nirmal faking up names of places during our most loved ‘Atlas’ game. Nirmal, a person truly one of the atypical kind would need a different story altogether but what I found unusual was the ambition, the drive or some irrational and cruel thirst for success some people of our gossip group had. It is something I had never seen before. Just morally wrong and a basic misunderstanding of what really ‘doing good’ stands for. But that taught me something, difference of opinion, one in which there is no argument. And one which in which I didn’t share an understanding as others might have.
That by itself as if was not revealing enough, I found myself encounter somewhat strange but even somehow hilarious incidents. One such was the couple I saw decently cuddling behind the bus stop but a scenery to the residents of all the low rise buildings which fell on the rear but quite unaware, I chuckled a bit for I saw the ‘action’ on the footpath but they obviously were oblivious.
The hardest part was to balance all of that with the usual Saturday night dinners or a tiny walk after dinner for ice-cream for which I dragged myself after having reached home at some odd hour when everyone else was already putting on their denim, and I rushing to shower and tales of my office miseries and those somewhat better were shared not over my hurried gulping of rice and dal but during my tired walk towards the ice-cream parlour.
Bombay, Bombay and Bombay.
Maximum city, Slumdog Millionaires and I still feel the need to share about it. It spirit is almost contagious and sometimes daunting when you feel like you are about to be the victim of a stampede situation or even worse, lose your identity in a sense.
Strange stories I had heard often before and now I was getting to know more, some more believable now as they came straight from the horse’s mouth and this one was the queerest and I find the absolute need to share it. Now one of the most revealing moments for me in Slumdog Millionaire was when the children were blinded to get a better bargain when they begged for alms. Now this story told to me was another revelation as I heard that while the government did provide them rehabilitation, they chose to give out those on rent and continue to live in these dilapidated houses because this way they made a better earning. This shocked me and put some very significant questions forward. Are people wrong when they criticise the government? Somewhere perhaps they have done their job? Or is it perhaps right for these slum dwellers only do this for a better income?
OR the simple explanations of all: I simply just woke to reality.
Survival of the fittest –Darwin’s eternally true and applicable true theory was simply functional through every single day of my life. It still is. But who really is the fittest? It is us, who has needs to have each individual definition of the meaning of fittest lest we lose our individuality in this terrible trial for survival.
Full of idiosyncrasies and my office work, most of which was a farce, I will admit it was thrilling, all of it.
Hail Bombay.
You give me spirit.And I might have just fallen in love with you.
