Mumbai Rains

I love the rainy season in general and I love staying at home and watching the rains from a vantage point near the window. I love watching the sea when it rains. I love eating hot food when it rains. In short, the only activity, which I dislike when it rains, is going to work. Apart from having to get wet when wearing nice clothes, it also means spending the day cooped up in a soulless cubicle corner, oblivious to the weather outside. Luckily being in Chennai means very few opportunities for such regrets, given the sparse amount of rain we get most years. Fortunately my visit to Mumbai timed nicely with a spectacular cloudburst and I got to enjoy the whole range of rainy season activities.

The initial annoyance of getting out of the airport was forgotten once I hit the roads. I had spent twenty happy minutes in the lounge reading, quite appropriately, ‘Chasing the monsoon’. My friend, whom I had convinced to pick me up before we headed for lunch, had meanwhile been struggling to park his car. In the end he just parked his car in the middle of the still traffic and waited for me to hop on board.

Both of us agreed that it would be a perfect waste of completely good rains to sit in a closed restaurant. Being a true born Mumbaite my friend knew a not-so-popular place close to Band Stand where one could order cheap coffee and watch the sea.

Café S was a plain brick building with one wall lined up with windows facing the sea. The windows had no bars and were covered with transparent sliding panels that could be opened fully to get a good view of the sea. There were just a handful of people and we could choose from one of the many empty plastic tables by the window. My friend kept warning me that he had not been to this place in years and he was not too sure about the quality of food or service. I was too thrilled about finding a normal looking building in Mumbai that faced the sea and did not charge the moon and ignored minor concerns like this.

We sat at a slightly wet table. The windows had been closed on account of the rain. After positioning myself comfortably with my feet against the wall, I opened the window just enough to be able to see the sea without getting wet. A waiter came running immediately and chided me for getting the tables wet. He pointed out that he would have to wipe the table non stop if I kept the window open. I tried convincing him that he could just wipe in the end when we left and finally compromised by closing the windows just a bit more. Satisfied he went back to his task of chiding other erring patrons. The rest of our stay I noticed he pretty much continued to jump up and close the windows at the slightest sign of rains. Interestingly enough when people wanted ashtrays, he just asked them to use the floor. Clearly, he was in charge of cleaning only the tables.

The restaurant also did not believe in taking down orders in spite of its obvious surfeit of labour. One had to go to a counter to order the food and my friend had been doing all the hard work thus far. I guiltily took on the job and found the payment counter empty. The five waiters were spread about, twiddling their thumbs and informed me that I would have to wait while the counter guy came back from lunch. I was astounded by this perfect division of labour and the complete inability of anyone else to take down an order. Luckily the youngest waiter (and clearly the only one with some enthusiasm left to do the job) took down my order. I came back holding the receipt in my hands and my friend pointed out that I had to give the receipt to the guys at the food counter two feet away from the payment counter. All of them had been watching me walk away and had not bothered to ask me for the counterfoil nor had they bothered to get started on the food I had ordered. The mystery of why this café was not so popular was slowly beginning to get solved.

While I was waiting I looked around and realised the décor comprised photos of Brad Pitt and Elvis Presley. It suddenly struck me that perhaps all the waiters in the restaurant were just actors bidding their time. I began to look at them afresh with more empathy – strangers all stuck in jobs they may not have particularly liked.

After nearly three hours of staring at the horizon and watching the sea reflect the grey skies, we realised the place was beginning to get a bit crowded. Bombay’s usual crowd was taking over this haunt too and it was time to leave.

Bad/Good hair day

Last week I was in Salsa class as usual, doing my twirls and twists religiously. All the women get to dance with all the men in class and vice versa to ensure no one is stuck with a bad partner or no one hogs all the time of a good partner. So T ended up standing in front of me ready to go. T is one of those tall, dark and handsome types. He is also just out of college with nothing much to do, has a great wardrobe and clearly plenty of time to beef up his muscles. He has long, straight hair (a lot like Mahindra Dhoni in his pre-cut days). All in all the kind of guy who would have had any college kid tongue tied and who amuses me greatly by always looking in the mirrors on the walls while dancing. And out of the blue he asked ‘So how often do you wash your hair?’

This is the type of question that makes anyone want to pray for sudden death or a fairy godmother who can do a decent hair job before you can blink. Coming from one of those effortlessly well-groomed types, I was upset, tearful and irritated all within a span of 10 seconds. Then voila! It struck me that today my hair was at its bouncy best. I had spent half the morning washing it and then the evening getting it cut and set. There was no way my hair was a mess.

So confidently I looked at T in his eye and asked ‘Why do you ask?’ T just gave an enigmatic smile and it was time to switch partners.

The rest of the evening, notwithstanding my new hair cut, I kept wondering if my hair smelled. Resultantly half the time I looked like one of those possessed people who have their hair hanging over their faces. Worse still, like a person possessed by a dog since I kept sniffing at my hair too. If my hair had not been a mess to begin with, it definitely was by then.

In the end, my pride did not let me ask T what was with the question. Not to mention I wanted to maintain my cool working woman superiority and not display flashes of college-like vanity. After talking to a friend I just convinced myself T must have been looking out for tips on great hair and still being a kid did not phrase it better.

But I am waiting for the day when I can ask him ‘So do you ever look at anything other than the mirror?’

Chocolate

If someone were to write a book on ‘How to win friends and influence people’, they should include a chapter on ‘give away free chocolates’. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I do know in my team it is bound to make you popular.

Last week one of my colleagues from Singapore had come to India to make a presentation on some newly launched product. He was from some department in treasury – always considered the snootiest of people in most banks. Not to mention, he was from Singapore and hence perceived to be snootier still. And the presentation was at 9.30 in the morning when most of us are too sleepy to have acknowledged the fact that yet another workday has began. A combination of all this ensured that we sat and stared at him grouchily as he started his presentation. Within five minutes, he had figured out that the presentation would probably proceed on the lines of a funeral if he did not take some quick measures. With a flourish he announced an impromptu quiz on some really elementary topic and told the winners would get chocolates. Man, you should have seen the lot of us. We were miraculously transformed from impassive sulky employees into enthusiastic members of a great team.

What is about free chocolates that can make a bunch of people in their late 20s and early 30s react like good school children? It is not like we can’t afford to buy our own chocolates. For me, I think it is the unexpected binging trip. For someone else it is a throwback to those days as a kid when a classmate’s birthday meant a sudden rare chocolate to cheer up the daily grind.

Whatever the reason, when it is chocolate my entire team can sell its soul really cheap.

Bollywood musings

Today was a lovely ‘Thank God it is Friday’ day. Everyone lingered for well over an hour after lunch, discussing stuff and nonsense. Suddenly we were in the middle of the worst scenes/stories from Bollywood movies. Here are three of the picks:

Hello Brother – The main theme of the story is heart transplant. No, it is not a message about donating your organs. Salman Khan dies. His heart is transplanted into Arbaz Khan. Then Arbaz Khan falls in love with Salman Khan’s sweetheart, Rani Mukherjee. Why? Because Salman’s heart is now in Arbaz. In case you have not already collapsed under this weighty medical discovery, you can read further. After a series of funny scenes (and fairly good stuff at that), we reach the climax. Rani is talking to Salman Khan’s ghost and confesses that she would have probably not loved Arbaz had Salman’s heart not been in the former’s body. Salman Khan then goes to heaven, a happy and contented ghost. But boy, am not sure if Rani was thinking of how her family life is going to be with husband Arbaz always wondering what the deal with him is.

Raja Ki Aayegi Barat – This was apparently Rani Mukherjee’s first movie. It had the path breaking storyline of a rapist’s victim (Rani) taking the rapist to court and getting a judgment to marry him. Traumatised by this injustice, the rapist-husband tries to kill Rani. One of the many ways he tries is letting a snake into her room. Rani looks at the snake and swoons. The disappointed but enterprising snake goes and bites rapist-husband. Rani wakes up and realises he is dying (the rapist not the snake). So proceeds to suck the poison out of his body and spit it out. And she saves him. By this point, most people in the audience are thunderstruck and wondering how long the story will proceed on complete and utter denial of reality. Firstly, a judgment that can only exist in cuckoo land. Secondly, the billion dollar question of how do people procure snakes so easily and manage to handle them even more easily and expect it to find the correct target like one of those heat missiles. And finally, do snakes usually shy away from biting unconscious people?

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai – Ok, this is not absurd per se. But I really thought most people missed noticing this scene with great comic potential. Kajol is about to get married to Salman Khan. But she really loves Shah Rukh Khan. So when she is descending down the stairs into the wedding mantap, she starts weeping and looks pointedly at Shah Rukh Khan. All the guests fall silent realizing it is going to be the wedding story of their lives and wait with bated breath for action. Salman Khan is fast realizing that there is going to be no wedding or honeymoon for him. Amidst the silence comes a sole duty-bound voice ‘Kanya ko bulavo. Shubh muharat nikal raha hai’ (Ask the bride to come. The auspicious hour is getting over). It is the priest. Salman Khan gives him a withering look that says it all ‘Sense the mood buddy. You may want to give your money’s worth later on…if required’. The persistent priest tries once more before finally giving up under Salman’s continued withering stare. It is a shame few people appreciate a strong sense of duty, but perhaps in this scenario I can empathise with Salman Khan.

My Prince Charming?

One of the side effects of being 28 and single is that every once in a while, your parents foist someone on to you and then sit back and hope you will get married to the person. This happens to me at regular intervals (And I must say the advantage about growing older is that the intervals become less and less frequent). Anyway, after a fairly longish period of not going through any lectures on having to settle down, my parents seemed up to something. I can usually see the signals of such things coming up. Hushed whispers when I am not around hinting at due diligence being done. This particular time, since the prospective groom’s parents belonged to a different community, a little more than usual due diligence was done. All I can is that whether I meet my soul mate or not through this route, my dad’s acquaintance circle is certainly expanding.

So there it was. One fine evening I checked my inbox and saw a mail from my mom saying that XXX is interested in getting to know me better and I can mail him. We have a quaint system in our house. Dad actually does the due diligence etc, mom is in charge of passing on the message to me – always over mail. And I need to do the part of getting in touch with the guy. This is convenient to everyone since it prevents embarrassing discussions on how a 28 year old has to depend on her parents to be set up with someone.

XXX had a pretty ordinary profile that mentioned the usual things – “I like music, I like traveling and I like sports”. There are very few profiles I read where someone says I like reading and by that means something more than Sidney Sheldon. The picture that went with the profile showed a tall young man in a sleeveless t-shirt. Pictures of men in sleeveless T-Shirts always put me off for some reason. Nevertheless, with no strong reasons for objecting, we started mailing each other.

The first mail is usually easy. By now I know how to write a mail that is short enough to provide some interesting details without being garrulous, but not too short to show a lack of interest, a mail that gives some idea of myself without revealing too much in case the guy turns out to be a stalker and finally a mail that asks some questions to get the guy going. XXX sent a reply. I replied again.

I opened my inbox to check my mail, and there it was. A mail that went ‘I will write to you later. I am getting into a conference call’. Whoa. The deal on such mail communications with a perfect stranger is you don’t expect them to write every hour or even every day. They can write whenever they have the time and the inclination. Which means a mail every third day is also fine as long as it shows a tread of continuity. Not something that is completely unconnected with the topic of discussion, especially with a meaningless piece of info.

Since I could not comprehend a single sensible reason for this mail, I was not too keen on writing to this guy any more. But for some reason I persisted. Perhaps, at the back of my mind was this slight feeling of guilt that I had to spend at least as much time on this guy as my dad spent with his dad. So I wrote back a light funny mail asking him why he told me about the conference call. I did not get a funny and light reply but a rather embarrassed one liner mumbling some inane reason. Good enough. We kept at it.

However, after nearly a month of mailing, the only thing I knew about him were (a) he attended conference calls (b) he was excellent at writing one-line pointless mails that kept a contact alive (c) his parents had been to Bhutan. The last one because I had told him I was going to Bhutan.

Anyway, it was time to test the strength of our ‘relationship’ and see if it would withstand moving to the next level. I wrote a polite mail saying it has been fun writing to him but we were obviously not getting to know each other better and perhaps it would be a good idea to meet up.

Man. I have heard that men are afraid of commitment. Surely, that does not mean meeting someone. All I have heard so far is silence. All of those twice-a-day one-liners came to an abrupt halt. I am trying to see what I said that could have scared him away. He could have surely not expected me to spend the rest of my life conceiving light and funny replies to mails that went ‘I am on a conference call’.

This does however prove my theory that men who wear sleeveless shirts should be ignored.