Notes from When I'm on the move

13th Nov 2009

On the highway heading to town to attend the wedding of someone who is a stranger to me. With Nancy Ajrams sweet voice in my ears making me miss home I passed by:

-the road to the airport,

-a seven star hotel,

-a line of government Chawls which had the exact same paper star n spangle lanterns- stale leftovers from diwali, hanging in every section of every floor of every building.

-A family of 4 with identical looking boys wearing the same thick glasses on a scooter, whose personality differences were already evident somehow.

-A line of stranded-by-the-roadside foreigners with their luggage sitting on the pavement, something that I’ve never done in all these years of living here (don’t they know how dirty it is?).

-A neighbourhood of 3 and 4 story slums that looked way bigger than our tiny 1 BHK apartment.

-Someone who had passed away being carried through the streets of the land of the living one last time in a flower shroud by loved ones on their shoulders,

-a sign just a few meters away from this procession, on a barbed wire fence above a large cement wall that said-Jesus Never Fails,

-the road to Pune that I wish I was on instead of the one I was already hurtling over in my air conditioned car.

-A run down motorbike with flashing neon blue wheels,

-Political posters everywhere of false practiced smiles that tried to look benevolent but failed when your mind and imagination could sense the sinister intent lurking behind them.

-Tiled government Shauchalays and permit bars with inappropriate names of gods and goddesses.

-Billboards that made lofty declarations and amusing diversions dotting the night sky line.

-An Apna Country Bar next to an Apna Bazaar Co-op that looked smaller than my neighbourhood grocery store as well as its next door neighbour that had a store front display of identical glass bottles filled with alcohol in all sorts of colours to attract a thirsty passer by.

-Permit bars and resto bars of all shaped and sizes, some with fancy glass and metal exteriors with doormen to let you in, while others just making do with raggedy curtains fluttering to reveal glimpses of their dimly lit interiors.

-A stall selling ‘funeral materials’ called Aatma Shanti (literally translated Aatma means soul and Shanti is peace)

-A man in an orange shirt with an empty handcart after a day of trade making 4 roads of traffic come to a standstill while he slowly pushed at his own speed, shaking his hips without a care in the world while motorists and taxis honked impatiently to hurry up.

The world is an interesting place really; you don’t have to leave your city to realize that. You just have to look a little harder to pick out all the interesting details your mind blanks out over the years. And the wedding wasn’t that bad either.

Street photography-Diwali markets

I finally worked up the nerve to go for my very first walk around to take photographs last night. Since it was the night before Diwali I knew I'd get some colourful shots of the local marketplace.
I almost chickened out though. Its one thing to take a few stray photos when you see something interesting. They are quick and you're just passing by so before anyone can figure out what you're doing, you're gone.

But when your camera is constantly in your hand, navigating your way around an EXTREMELY crowded market, dodging cars, people, dogs, and the glares of certain vendors in a place that does not cater to any tourists, a simple thing like taking (a lot of) photographs turns in to a daunting task.

Especially when you've never done proper street photography before. And even worse, when you're doing it with the help of a standard digital compact camera, which requires standing still for a some very long, painful seconds to avoid a blurry mess. Which is what the first few photos looked like-A blurry mess. But after about 10 minutes i stopped feeling self conscious and made it a point to aim, and stand perfectly still till i got the shot, no matter who was staring/glaring.

Here are a few of the decent ones...



Paper Lanterns and Paper stars with a light bulb in the center, along with fairy lights are used to decorate windows.












I love this one of this man with an armful of gold plated chains breaking his big notes with an ice cream vendor for change.









One of the fruit vendors even asked me if i worked for a (news)paper.





Most of these flowers have strong, heady fragrances, used either for Puja, decorating your door, the petals maybe seperated to make rangoolis, and to decorate your hair. When my Mom was a kid she'd sometimes tie a jasmine garland (known as a gajra) to her hair before she went to sleep and by morning her hair would smell heavenly.










Firecrackers...fortunately( or unfortunately, depending on how old you are) the amount of cracker bursting this year has been next to nothing. Usually the fireworks start a week before Diwali, but this time, even during the actual diwali day, all you can hear is a stray rocket, if anything.




The quality of 99% of my pics was substandard. But i was flying high from this whole experience by the time i ran out of batteries.

I headed home with a kilo of oranges, a garland of flowers, a box of fuljhadis(sparklers), and over a 100 digital photographs, that might not all be good enough to save, but they made me so happy:)

I can't wait to buy myself a good DSLR next year.

Gateway of India at Nariman Point.



Ferries to the Elephanta Caves, Alibaugh, or just a simple joyride in the sea start from here.


The day i took these pics was the day i was playing the tourist with a friend who was staying in mumbai for 2-3 months for her college project.

We were walking around Colaba Causeway(tourist hub,home of the famous-amongst non-mumbaikars-Cafe Leopold, and great junk jewellery shopping) and i asked if she wanted to see the Gateway cause it was just 5 minutes away, and she agreed.

So we reach Nariman Point and a lot of it was blocked because of repair work on and around Gateway. And i point in the direction of the (very prominent) Gateway of India, turn to my friend and say-"Its supposed to be here , maybe its behind this thing,"(and here i'm actually pointing at the gateway).

My friend gives me this strange 'are you ok' look and starts laughing. And only after 5 minutes did my mistake sink in.

Very embarasing...

Note: My brain may have altered what exactly happened cause i remember feeling very stupid afterwards because of my hand waving and self important air-of-tourist-guide declaration of "I'm sure the Gateway is around here somewhere," like it had gone for an evening walk or something.

Has this ever happened to anyone else, where you feel like you ought to know more about the places that are well known in your city, but which neither you nor anyone else you know who lives there actually visits?

so i finally managed to work up the nerve to tweak my blogger template. Now i can add pictures that wont be the annoying tiny click-on-this-for-a-better-view ones.

You can only expect people to go through that much trouble if your pics are any good, and the ones i post here are..not.Well anyway Yay for that..

But the problem is my blog header(banner?) which looked fine before looks strange and lost floating around by itself in the middle of nowhere.

I'll fix it as soon as i can figure out what to replace it with. Sorry bout the eyesore. That is if anyone other than me is reading this ofcourse lol...

Otherwise this post will be the online equivalent of me talking to the ceiling fan..

to have your cake and eat it all

There are certain things in life that are sometimes, just not in your control. Bad things (and the occasional good ones) just happen and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.

Sitting at home for your exams for a prolonged period of time can have disastrous consequences for your weight. Despite my best efforts to watch what I eat, avoiding unhealthy snacking, looking away with determination from the cookies and chips when I go grocery shopping, saying no to extra butter and cheese, sometimes all my good intentions just fly out the window.

In this instance, a chocolate cake fell into my lap (my hands). Its not everyday that something like this occurs. So when Mom offered to give away atleast half of it, I declined without feeling any guilt, and I did what any self-respecting cake lover would, I kept the whole thing; and then, I single handedly demolished that half kg chocolate cake…in two days!

Its not something I'm proud of. Really it isn’t.

The funny thing is I’m not even that fond of chocolate. But it was cake! And it was good! And it was there, sitting in the fridge, waiting for me to EAT IT!! What else was I supposed to do right?

Mumbai-Pune Expressway

BEST Sandwich

The BEST in a BEST bus stands for Bombay (well actually its Brihanmumbai now) Electricity Supply and Transport. It is more commonly referred to as b.s.t bus... People tend to drop the 'E'. They are usually red and white in colour and they are single decker buses although certain routes have double decker ones as well(my personal favourite). The routes cover the whole of Mumbai city, with bus stops convieniently located in virtually every road friendly area, and since the bus is a state owned enterprise, the tickets are heavily subsidised and therefore, extremely cheap.

If you want a list of all the bus routes there are many places where cheap little books with everyday information like this along with maps, important numbers etc are easily available at Railway Station (for local trains) book sellers and other places as well.

For more info on BEST buses you can go here

From Pretty to not-so-pretty

Mind your keedas

i feel like getting me a tel maalish

What was I thinking??

I’m the sort of restless person who constantly has to change my desktop and cell phone wallpaper, my ring tone and my hairstyle(although I had to stop this one cause I eventually realised I didn’t have an unlimited supply of disposable income, or hair on my head) on a regular basis. Its quick an gives me an instant (albeit momentary) high. And its about the only thing in my life that’s kind of in my control.

I also have the tendency to change my cell phone covers constantly to give it a new look when I feel like it. I had a whole bunch of em for my old cell. I don’t use those shiny cutesy thingies that dangle off a cord (what are they called?), mostly because in a place like Mumbai, you’d be virtually inviting someone to flick your phone if you use something like that… it makes it easy for them to yank it out of your pocket/bag.

But in my current N73, I had a very hard time finding myself a decent cover, and I don’t mean the absurdly expensive original Nokia covers. So I had to make do with my boring black keypad and cover for over a year, which looked great at first, but it can get really old really fast.

One day I was walking in a mall when I happened to notice one of those in-between-stores places that sell junk jewellery and other trinkets…and I noticed his rather large collection of N73 covers. Jackpot!!

In a sea of red, pink and icky ice blue covers, I spotted the sole green one. Now I had been strongly anti-Pink for the first 22 years of my life, and even though I wear certain shades of it now, I have to draw the line at pink mobiles. And I love green. So my brain kind of short circuited at that point and I kept thinking-buy the green one, buy the green one, buy the green one, so I did.

Its only when I came home and inspected it in harsh tubelight conditions I finally noticed the colour- it was a glow-in-the-dark shade of green. This wouldn’t have been such a bad thing, but the N73 is wide, and the part which cant be changed is very broad, so the black side and back with a weird green was looking terrible.

I almost gave up when I thought to myself, maybe I can just change the keypad. But the cover is insanely hard to open! The tabs are concealed under this overlapping part on the side.After two days of struggling with it I took it to this guy I know who gave it to this other guy who nearly broke two of his super long finger nails for my phone. But he finally did it!

So I come home triumphant and slip the new keypad into place and snap the cover shut. Then I finally saw the wisdom of the Nokia mobile designers. It was to save idiots like me from our bright ideas.

It looks like theres moss growing on the keypad. If my cell phone could talk it wouldn’t. It would probably just cry for the loss of its dignity.

This picture was taken outside a mall in ksa...And i managed to take it with a lot of difficulty..Mostly cause since it is the loading/unloading area it was outside one of the (very crowded) mall entrances(Mostly crowded because of lots of very cute teenage boys trying to sneak into a family-only mall).

To whip my camera out in a place like that is out of the question, and my cell phone camera has this annoying mini flash feature that works even when you switch the flash off. So this had to be taken at night, close to mall-closing time with my dads cell phone camera(which kinda sucks compared to nokia). So its not like i had a choice, and i finally got the shot i'd wanted since i first laid eyes on it.

The thrill was kind of weird, but i had been in a strange state of mind, so i got my kicks out of doing something in a cloak and dagger way which made me feel like i was in a spy movie..i live for cheap thrills eh?and this one was for free...

A Wonder On Wheels

Happy Independence Day

I really wish i could have taken a better picture. Its a streetlight covered with a creeper plant somewhere in Pune. If it were upto me i would have stopped the car but i don't think my dad would've taken kindly to my wanting to stop on a narrow crowded street for a photograph.

cola-brellas

for the summer sun and monsoon downpour...

Picture on a box of Qahwah (its a kind of arabic coffee,thick,strong flavour,aromatic and absolutely delicious)

When i was younger, certain supermarkets would distribute free Qahwah during certain days of the week in tiny paper cups. The size of Qahwah cups are small, they have no handles, and they look like mini bowls. We have a Qahwah cup set somewhere at home.

Its usually had without milk. I like mine with a lot of sugar, or with dates. The taste takes some getting used to because of the consistency and the bitterness. Its also popularly known as Turkish coffee.

I'm a huge fan of coffee, in any way shape or form. My coffee kick started when i was a kid, in the form of a candy called Kopiko, which tasted exactly like strong sweet coffee., andI used to eat it in place of chocolate(which i dont really enjoy all that much).

When i started college, i officially started having coffee by mixing a heaped spoonful into my milk. And i sweetened it with condensed milk.Not very healthy,i know.But it tastes soo good!! And I went from one mug, to two, and eventually my daily coffee intake became 5 mugs!(or was it more?) And each mug was around 300ml of milk! You do the math.

Coffee kills your appetite, and i had pretty much stopped eating. Not that i did it to lose weight or anything. Condensed milk isn't exactly fat free. Mom was really worried cause when she refused to buy me any more coffee I'd just go out and have some.

Then, during one of my 'vacations' to ksa, mom got rid of all the coffee in the house, and i couldn't go out to buy any by myself.

That was a really difficult time for me. I went through withdrawal symptoms., and i was cranky and depressed and frazzled all the time.I mean imagine going from 5 mugs a day, to none!

Whenever i'd pass by a vendor or a coffee place I'd make a sad face and look longingly at my mother. But she was pretty strict about it. And i slowly started regaining my appetite. She finally let me off the hook after about 4-5 months.

So that was it. Now, although i still drink the stuff, I've learnt to control my intake to 2 mugs a day.I've even had to cut down the sugar from 2 heaped teaspoonfuls to one level teaspoon per mug. Diabetes runs on both sides of the family so i gotta be careful.

The only sad thing is during exam time, i have friends who rely on the stuff to help keep them awake, but coffee relaxes me and ends up making me feel woozy. I'm actually immune to caffeine now.

This ones for the Budget.

The tall building in the background is the BSE building. When you move closer to the structure you can see the gigantic ticker(for lack of a better word), ok let me just call it an electronic board,which constantly displays the prices, and change in rates, of the various shares that are listed at the BSE.


The BSE building is located in the Fort area in South Mumbai,and that particular road is called Dalal street. The word Dalal means broker or dealer.

There are two national level stock exchanges in India, and they are the NSE(National Stock Exchange), and the BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange). The NSE index is called Nifty,or National Fifty, and the BSE one is called SENSEX,or Sensitive Index.


This is a picture of the Bull taken right outside.

As for my personal opinions about the 2009 budget, well I think I'll analyse it first before i make any comments about it, and they wont be in cyberspace..

Inside Churchgate station

balloon men

The balloon men of juhu beach

I just noticed this a couple of months ago...Eggs that come with their own date of birth and death...i wonder who came up with this one...and why no one thought of it sooner.

According to my last count (which was a few days ago when i was cleaning my cupboard), I own more than 30 grey t-shirts in all shapes sizes and hues!!!

In my defense a couple of them are over 10 years old, but still...30??

I really had no idea my grey addiction was that bad.Whenever i go shopping and if there's a rack or stack of clothes in multiple colours, I always go for the grey. Somehow they tend to fit better than all the other colours. Or maybe its just in my head. But still...30!?!

If I line all of them from sleeve to sleeve, how far would they stretch? If i'm bored enough one of these days, maybe I'll sit and work it out.

The Exit sign can be particularly distracting when you're stuck in a theatre watching a movie that only you think is boring.
I wish certain difficult or awkward situations in life came with an Emergency-Abort button or an escape route.

You know you've been studying too hard when an episode of the Simpsons, where Homer is actually considerate (for once) makes you weepy:P

I want to go to Goa again...Mebbe its cause of the exams, or the fact that its summer. Actually going to Goa needs no excuses.Go there once and you're hooked for life.Ask anyone whos had a taste.

no p p please

Best part about the sign is the location-its high up on a tree.I guess they assume people are actually going to look around for warnings before they get on with business as usual...They've got high hopes(sorry,its a really bad joke i know:P)

I wake up one morning, half asleep, and look out of my window. And this is what i see...


Yes they are fully grown trees ready for planting. How cool is that!