Sunday, July 3, 2011

A Mumbai Rain

With all my procrastination about writing about my summer, it is wierd, that I finally get an urge to write hours before my train to Baroda. Perhaps the thought of leaving this beautiful place is the one capable enough to pierce through my screen of laziness. I hope the following few lines, written in haste as always, in fear that I'l forget all that I want to write if I don't pen it down at this second, fill up as a subsitute for the lack of a camera on me.


Let me first tell you about IIT Mumbai. It is, as supposed to be the best college in India. But I found a few chinks in the armour (not counting that the whole college gets into a blackout if it rains heavily). People over here are good. The computer science department has decent, shirt tugged-in students, who sip tea while joking lightly. The snacks stall near the gate is the best break one could get after hours of head banging in front of an electronic screen. The tea is the best i've had anywhere yet. The ones roaming around in tees and shorts are the profs.. Definitely! The hostels are good. They have a HD projector for a TV. Pool tables inside the hostels.


Somehow, still.. I find DA better, warmer.. Its humid here, in Mumbai. Before it rained, I could never use any tee twice before washing. There are no S-benches to sit around. People don't sit on the pavements and the road here. They don't run around in the cafeteria. They don't have an army of plug points to make the electrician go mad, like in DA, so that anybody could sit anywhere and work. I didn't find 10 people sitting closely knit under a single tubelight, contemplating, cursing a particular prof, nor did I see the concept of a campus walk. They have buses here.. and cycles.. agreed, it helps in such a huge campus. And except for a few instances, I did not see a single couple under the shades on one of my many walks back from the lab to the room at 2-3 AM. Well, I would attribute it to the fact that girls are allowed in boys hostels and vice versa..yet!Mumbai, though, has been just like it promised! The moment I entered, I could feel it. Ask a marathi how he feels when he enters into maharashtra, you'l know! I haven't been to as many places as I'd have wanted to be. But the initial week with Rahul Bhaia set things in motion. I cannot thank him enough for the excellent time! More for that fantastic moment when he pointed out to orange-blue machine which showed the rail map of mumbai! I took a good look at it, hung on to it for my dear life! I took to the city easily! Travelling alone from vile parle to powai and back got me familiar with the city very early. Crowded trains don't frighten a lone bachelor! :P Oh by the way, DADAR STATION SUCKS!


It was getting cloudy all right.. and the wind had also started blowing, this I knew because I had come down to take a coffee break around 5:15 PM. My place at the SYNERG( SYstems and NEtworks Research Group) lab is on the 4th and the topmost floor. I could hear the wind gushing on the windows. And in moments.. i knew it was there.. Mumbai Rains. I do this, call me calculative, but i debated quickly whether should I go or not, the pending lab.. SCREW IT.. I was out. And it was Magnificent.. get the feeling still! The first rains were like planting magnets on your cheeks so that HAD to smile.. Everybody was, the guy next to me shouted "Brilliant". I shouted back, "Absolutely Brilliant!!!!". It lasted for half an hour. But the grey, black clouds through the maze of branches of gulmohar, with orange flowers sticking out is too good to forget!


The campus is more like a controled jungle than a designed landscape! Thank god for the wealthy doctor. Hiranandani was one place that never dissapointed me! Loads and loads of greenery! :D Enough instances to make the boys back at the F Wing Top Floor jealous off, It was fun! People said, try Bandra Bandstand if you want some of that.. That i did! Hiranandani was one get-away. Good food. Subway, Mad Over Doughnuts.. the rest were too much out of aukat! For a lad spending the night for the first time in dream city, the high rise buildings, the flaunting young ( wonderful :D ) ladies, the hours in the local trains, the sea, the late hours in the lab, the richness, the glitter.. were all moments! Moments that I shall miss.


I was probably lucky to end up in Mumbai when it is the most beautiful, before July (after which everything is underwater, thats what I'm told). The sea, is new to me. I've been inland most of my life. Except for rare enounters with the Narmada, never seen so much water, all at one place! Beaches and the sea sides are all fantastic Mental Washing Machines! They'l take away everything.. Somehow, you're a lot more calm and clear in the head everytime you come off the sea side! Food being what I always die for, tasting MOD for the first time was heaven! But I think Gujarat still has it! Nothing is better than Manekchowk.. Maybe I haven't tried all that much yet, but a quick look will tell you that!


Now, its time to leave. I have all my documents signed. The thought of wanting to see how things work outside, has been a success! The things i saw, expereinced, llearnt on internship are a different thing, they are lessons still, however they are! I have my bad packed. I'l go for my last Double Trouble at MOD, Hiranandani!

ps: Khushboo Tekchandani, Thank you! I wouldn't have been able to live all of this without you!

ps2: The title is what I fumbled up in my diary, when I was thinking of something cool, and I thought

why does it have to be gramatically correct all the time!

1 comment:

  1. I liked how you described yourself 'wowed' by Mumbai,describing yourself as being in a big city.Believe me,I've felt the same too. I have been to Mumbai,countless times in my life,but every time I return to Ahmedabad,there is this feeling of dullness or emptiness which fills me. The city looks small and inconsequential in front of Mumbai. --dhruv here

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