Rains, Old Monk & Tandoori Tuesday

Two super days of absolute adventure over, I am back at my desk trying to trace where most of my colleagues are & to find whichever scraps of paper I can to show people that I am working, while I write this post.

Started Tuesday with a mild flu like symptoms, didn’t want to leave home but for the last day of my super-accountant from Kolkata. Decided I’d just go visit him in the office, kiss his feet so that he would be ready to part with branch information more easily & not shout over the phone as to how the branch functions more efficiently than the HO & then describe the ways in which the unions in Kolkata deal with demanding bosses. After kissing the brand new “Hush Puppies” (someone in Bata should be decorated for coming out with such a name for men’s footwear) took my boss’ sign on my half-day leave application which I had made complex enough with various medical terms & settled down to waste 4 hours grumbling about body ache. At around lunchtime (we have taken it upon ourselves to have flexible lunch hours, which gives us an opportunity to snack every 2 hours or so) the drizzle started & I decided to postpone leaving a bit. Also I should mention that I am not a fan of the rains, neither do I like water as such (unless it is mixed with cola syrup & sugar). Within no time the rains had increased & the compound in front of our office was submerged (1 hour is all it took). As the time progressed to 4 PM, the ladies were asked to leave (I was stopped even though I was ready to sign a declaration stating that I was a lady) in an office car. I was left at the office with my team, when my boss called me to pack up & offered me a lift to Bandra. Since Bandra has been lucky for only 2 people, myself & “the madnesh”, I invited him along too (here I must mention, to his credit, madnesh was the only person with rainwear, he had taken with him the micro mini umbrellas that you can fold 5 times & store it in your breast pocket. So he had protection for his right or left arm, depending on the hand he would hold the umbrella in). Madnesh & myself began the long walk.

4.30 PM, 26^th July, 2005 – Follow the Leader.

In the course of which, at the first turn we took we encountered waist deep water. As the silent walk went on, we noticed that the water level had increased till our chest & my boss had disappeared (not drowned though, unfortunately). The 2 of us incredibles, madnesh & myself minus our bags but with a micro mini umbrella, were left to fend for ourselves in an unknown area (you would expect more determination from 2 grown ups, but we were lost & hungry, we were scared to be so far away from any office, restaurant, my mom & (in madnesh’s case) fiancé). After wading in the chest high waters for a couple of minutes (actually I was hoping I’d be able to find my boss while kicking around in the water & then ask madnesh to stamp on him to free the world of a marwari) we decided to head back to our base station & find some food first.

5.15 PM- Unanimously decided to head back to Reay Road Station to take stock of the situation & food supplies, if any, in Reay Road.

Reay Road station looked like a transit camp, with no standing room on the platforms, there were old people & ladies who must’ve been standing there for more than 2 hours min. At this time my boss called up & asked the both of us to come walking to Byculla Station (guess around 1.5 – 2 Km. farther) in rain, so that the 3 of us best friends could go home by cab. As we came out of the Reay Rd. Station we met the ladies contingent that had gone out before us in the comfortable office jeep, returning back to the office due to heavy traffic & flooding & despite their pitiful condition, I couldn’t help noticing 3 office guys with them (so the declaration would’ve worked if I’d have held out long enough). It was also obvious that after 2 – 2 ½ hrs. of rain the traffic situation was really bad & we could no longer by the road, only if the trains started or we walked the whole way would we be able to go home.

7.00 PM – Met the wise monk.

Since Madnesh & I were the only 2 fit or adventurous guys in the company we decided to continue going towards our homes even after the ladies contingent begged us to come back to the office (nah, they didn’t give a damn whether we lived or died). Initially in the “josh” of the moment we kept on walking through the debris strewn by lanes of central Mumbai & covered quite a lot of distance (or so we thought) but ended up walking till the next station. We again encountered chest high water & decided to head back to the office & stay there till everything settled down. While going back we smelled a divine smell. Smell so warm & refreshing that we had to enter the place. There we met our long lost friend or rather a friend we had chosen to ignore for so many years. That first sip of Old Monk XXX Rum left a sensation of sitting in front of a fireplace, the dual sensation of hot & cold, the cold outside & hot rum inside. We overdid the fireplace thing, when we got up to go (just because they were closing the bar at 1.30 AM) we had finished a full bottle of rum & yet the rains had not stopped & neither had our appetite for rum. The problem with rum is you need to eat a tandoori chicken with it, & when your boss calls you & asks you to save the food bill for reimbursement, you feel like having two. So while Mumbai stopped & people drowned & died, me & madnesh sat talking, with the help of the grand old monk & a tandoori chicken, about our past, our families, scary marriage scenarios (madnesh's).

10.30 – Find a dry banian!!!??

Before we had drunk too much we decided we’d go & crash at a hotel at dockyard road where the super accountant from kolkata was staying during his visit here. We informed him about our intentions & bribed him with his own qtr.bottle of “botka” (as he likes to call vodka).

As the memories & daaru flowed freely (it should be the other way round, I think) I received a call from my boss telling me he had crashed at the hotel before we did & now he wanted us to bring him some food & before he hung up, he told me “Bird, are there any stores open that side? I need you to buy me a banian.” The carefully built up tempo of our conversation, expensive & extensive counseling by the old monk to relive & forget the old & new fears, were shattered by a new challenge of buying a banian for my boss at 10.30 in the night in a city which was slowly drowning (actually bigger challenge was to hold my laughter till I finished talking with my boss). We felt it our duty to buy 2 more bottles for our mildly senile boss, obviously he was in a shock. There we were, on one side my boss, who, when people were dying, were spending a night in a train for the next 12 hrs. without food or water, when the houses that they lived in did not have a single thing that they could call dry, was expecting us to find him a brand new banian & on the other side the two of us, drinking, eating & making merry, were not even worried about our boss having to sleep minus the banian (I must mention here that the quest for new banian was completed by our ever-helpful nepali peons, who not only found my boss a banian but also managed to lay their hands on a lungi).

1.30 AM – Hotel.

I decided to call my boss before we squared off the bill at 1.30 AM, as the waiters threatened to throw us out otherwise. I wanted to know what he’d want to have for dinner at 1.30 AM ( I wanted him to eat as much as he could so that he’d forgive me for not buying him a clean banian). I was surprised to know that even in such trying times as that day, my boss had efficiently ordered from a nearby pizza outlet & had already slept. So the 2 of us walked back to our hotel in the rains, put up the clothes for drying, put on the towel, drank till 5 AM & then tried to sleep (the disturbance being Madnesh’s phone which kept ringing after every 15 mins. At first I thought it might be an alarm but found out later that many people were missing Madnesh.)

3.30 PM, 27^th July 2005 – Homeward Bound

As it neared lunchtime the next day, we decided to catch a cab & go to Delhi Durbaar near Bhendi Bazaar. Had our fill & decided to get back to Churchgate & catch an Andheri Local. This time too Madnesh argued with me to go by cab till Bandra & then at Bandra, decide the future course of action. For the first time (in my knowledge) Madnesh proved to be right, the trains were running only till Mahalaxmi & then from Bandra onwards, as a result of which the exit of Mahalaxmi station looked like a bomb shelter & there was no way we could get a cab there (I’ve always hated Mahalaxmi for the simple reason that Essar’s main office is situated there & I had my first failure working in my present company at Essar. Also the receptionists there gave me a smaller conference room than what I had expected & asked for.). We reached Mahim in ½ hr. flat & as we came out near Mahim Church there was a huge traffic jam. The cars were just standing still (for the first time in proper lanes), in some cases the drivers had just walked off leaving the cars in the middle of the road. There were Fire Engines & Ambulances trapped in between, it was all chaos & to add to it Madnesh was going to walk through it. In such a scenario we started a long walk back to our homes. Before going any further, I’d like to ask every person who travels towards Bandra to look into the Mahim creek. I always thought that the natural colour of the water was black, but due to the heavy rains & the great amounts of clean fresh water introduced into the creek, the water’s turned muddy brown. Couple more days of rains would’ve got the water’s colour to blue. I suggest everyone to go & see the miraculous change.

I do not remember much, but I could see a lot of people walking, felt like being in a protest march or something. With the lane of S V Road which goes north bombay, full of cars parked & the other lane full of people trying to reach home. Around Khar Jn. I heard singing, surprised I turned around to find Madnesh covered in sweat, stumbling along, totally exhausted, singing!!! Not humming or anything but loud singing. As I started to sing along with him I realized it got our minds off the details like which area we were in, or how much walking was still required or to ignore the dead man we saw on the footpath near khar station. We went on singing & marching (& drinking tea, eating biscuits, thanks to all those beautiful people who mistook our singing for crying).

I hate writing about the good times I had when so many people suffered but I guess I have written this post so that I could archive for the future that I had really walked so much, even tell my kids the day when I walked from Mahim to Andheri. Also if any people other than Iyer read this post, to publicly thank that old dude who had joined us at Mahim in our march. We got home because we did not want to look exhausted in front of the old dude & the old dude must’ve gone home happy that he was in a better shape than 2 young guys (Hope he reached home safely).

I'd like to finish this post off on what H G Wells had once written , “While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end, your cheerfulness is not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful.”