Rushin's Memoirs

Memoirs of my trip to Pune and Mumbai – Mumbai Part

2008-05-21T11:21:00.001-07:00

Once Mumbai came closer we realized that the bus would not stop at Andheri or any other place near which Jay and Jinie would be coming to pick us up. Not panic-stricken, but in a bit of hurry and some speed thinking we decided to get down at Sion and cover the rest of the distance in Mumbai Metro train. Jay and Jinan were at Kanjurmarg and they said would try to come to Sion, the time we got down was almost 12:30 AM and, taking directions, reached the Sion station. After that, we took the ticket and suddenly we found a train heading Kanjurmarg, so we asked them not to come and climbed the train. Trust Mumbai trains, completely crowded even at 12:45 AM. Jay sent us a quick map explaining the number of stations we were to wait before we were to alight. The trip was quick and it was fun, because the excitement to meet friends at long last kicked in a lot of adrenaline in the body.

The scene at Kanjurmarg when we got down was really touchy, we were hugging each other and there was pure joy on our faces. I suddenly felt the joy that a small child feels when a mother comes around to hug him. Absolute touché…

Jay, Jinie and Rathod had come to pick us up. The trip to Jay1’s house in autorickshaw was equally exciting, as I sat with Jay and talked about the good old days. Just for the record, Jay, Rathod and Sallu are roomies, but I would say it as Jay’s place. At Jay’s house, awaited another surprise, JDS had travelled half-way across the city so that we could have a night-over together. It was really awesome and tired that we were, we still sat up chitchatting till the wee-hours in the morning. This was followed by a pillow fight once the lights were switched off, before the actual sleep took over us. We were yet to make a plan for the next day. I forgot to mention, we had also checked the previous day and my return ticket moved from Waitlisted to RAC, and so I was relieved about my return part, though, frankly, none of us wanted to return back.

6th April, we woke up around 8 and then lay down still talking and resting. Taking funny pictures and stuff, and then finally it was decided that we would go to “The Village” for lunch. “The Village”, located in Raghuleela mall, is an ethnic pan Indian type restaurant located in Kandiwali area. There is one more branch in Mumbai, but we planned to visit the Kandiwali one. At around 9, we called Jimmy and “emotionally blackmailed” him for not coming to meet us. The poor guy got ready and reached Jay’s place at 10 AM to find half of us yet in our night dresses. But we still did some more pranks and fun and finally managed to start at 11 AM. Reaching the bus-stop to catch the bus, we looked at awe towards the Powai lake and the Renaissance Hotel on the opposite side of the lake. Then we caught a bus, we went through some places with real beautiful scenic beauty of R. A. Colony, which is unbelievably a part of Mumbai.
Finally, we after the bus, we walked from Kandiwali East to Kandiwali West and then this was followed by autorickshaw ride and after almost 90 minutes of travel, we reached the destination, “The Village”.
Here we were joined by Vijli first and then later by Pooja and Rahul and one more girl Sonali, who works with Rathod and Jay1 at Cognizant. The reason why Jinie chose the The Village was because it is a really-happening place. With authentic Gujarati and Punjabi food, it also has folk music, dance and all the merry stuff. Now, the funny thing about “The Village” is that they stamp our hands when we enter inside and at the end of the food-drive we went on the photography drive, flaunting those stamp impressions on our hands. I also had a great time talking to Pooja about a lot of things, and as usual, I philosophised about life. ;-)
The rest of the time, till 3:30, i.e. when The Village closes, we had a merry time. We even did the Garba, which is a Gujarati folk dance and did a lot of other pranks and photography. This was followed by singing friendship songs, running around with food, taking photographs with every possible background. Sharma, in his usual self, made a killing eating the mango ras, gulping down loads and loads of it. ;-) We also had a lot of other fun, like when we heard people dedicating songs to their relationships, we all rushed to dedicate a song to our friendship, for which we met after almost 1 year, from different cities. But the moment, we went there, we realized that we had to pay Rs. 100 to dedicate a song, and so, telling eachother jokingly, that we weren’t “that good” friends, we returned to our tables. :-)
In midst of all the confusion, Shaily called me, if it was possible to meet, and ironically, she did not know that The Village was actually a restaurant and she thought I had left Mumbai and reached some real village. :-)

I promised I would meet her, but her Granddad being in Nanavati Hospital, made her pretty immobile. She asked me if I could come to Andheri and I refused as it was not really feasible. Nevertheless, we then went to Andheri with the hope that I would meet her for some time, but she was in the ICU at the time and so could not meet that special “Virtual friend” of mine. Maybe, that is the way it was destined to be, but then, trips are made to enjoy and that is what we did. Pooja wanted to go shopping with me, so her brother (me), would sponsor her some goodies and I happily refused. ;-)
Anyways, we returned from Raghuleela Mall, again changing 2 trains and 1 bus, because we went to Andheri this time, physically drained and emotionally super-charged. Jinie had to go to office and so did Jimmy, so I bid a farewell to Jimmy, because I was going to meet Jinie at night as we were to spend that night at his place. Ashu also left for Gandhidham and so with pain in our hearts and agony in our minds, we bid farewell to one of my closest friends once again. Coming back to the trip, we went to Jay’s place and had a gala-time there, more of lying down and catching our breath back and savoring the happy moments we had in each others’ company.
In the evening, we made a trip to Hiranandani Go-Karting, where we did not take a ride, but I spent some good time talking to Sallu there about his plans for further studies and stuff. This was followed by a break in the garden nearby, the time was running out, but our talk was not. :-) But this is what makes our friendship so very special. Then we had another monstrous meal at Lakshmi Restaurant and then Jinie came to pick me up. We sat for sometime at Jay’s and then with a heavy heart, I bid farewell to those friends once again. Another bus-train-rickshaw later we reached Jinan’s place. Man, Mumbai is really a huge city and the way Jinan knows what mode of transport to select, kept me in awe..! :-)
The reception at Jinan’s place was as usual, very very homely. I met Dadi and sat for a long time with uncle and aunty. This was followed by a midnight icecream (despite my refusing 1000 times) and another discussion. My train was to start at 1:30 PM on the 7th and so I kinda finished my work and went off to sleep. The morning came fast, which was followed by a Nirma style early lunch comprising of Shrikhand and stuff. Then another autorickshaw ride followed by a trip in the Metro, from Borivali to Dadar, we reached Dadar station at 12:30, my train was scheduled to leave at 1:15. Since he had to leave for office, with a heavy heart, Jinie left me at 12:45. The train was at the right time and so my happy trip was on the verge of an end. Now there was another element of surprise here, I was to recharge my mobile, because the roaming had taken a heavy toll on my talktime and I was down to last 10 rupees. I asked Jay to recharge for me, but our GREAT Jay1, instead of recharging on AP Airtel, did the recharge on AP Vodaphone and as a result I never got the talktime. Nevertheless, I called up Aditi in Hyderabad and asked her to do the needful.

The jouney in the train was pretty decent. I had the top seat and I sat at the window remembering the wonderful time the last 2 days had been for me (probably for all of us) and then slumped into sleep after the toll taken on my body by the excitement. Well, in next early morning, I was greeted by the same old Begumpet Railway Station, where I got down at around 6 AM. Then it was pretty simple, I got home, unpacked, rested a bit and then getting ready to go back to office, thinking of all the fun we had, the happy times we spent and the sweet memories that we will always cherish in our minds and probably relive many times with this blog.

Last but not the least, I would like to end this post with a simple line, which I believe is completely true.

“All good things must come to an end, except in our memories...” :-)

And, one more philosophy for this trip, for my wonderful wonderful friends.

चलते, चलते, मेरे ये गीत याद रखना,
कभी अलविदा ना कहना, कभी अलविदा ना कहना...

Skipping the other lines to say the final point

बीच राह में दिलबर, बिछड़ जाए कहीं हम अगर,
और सूनी सी लगे तुम्हे जीवन की ये डगर,
हम लौट आयेंगे, तुम युही बुलाते रहना... :-)

Memoirs of my trip to Pune and Mumbai - Pune Part

2008-05-18T02:45:00.000-07:00

This post contains information about my trip to Pune and Mumbai in the first weekend of April 2008. It was a 2.5 day tour and the sole intention of this tour was to meet friends, no relatives, no work, just catch up with college friends, who I was separated from geographically by physical distance, but who are still with me virtually, and will be there for me whenever I need them. I guess I can write a whole post to describe what we all mean to each other, but the blog is with a different purpose and so, cutting the philosophy aside, I would get down to business and start the description of my trip.

The blog contains a lot of nicknames, so I would clarify as to who, each one means.

Ashish Sharma - Sharma or Ashu
Jay Shah - Jay1
Jinan Shah - Jinie
Jimesh Doshi - Jimmy
Jaydeep Solanki - JDS
Vijal Shah - Vijli
Vivek Rathod - Rathod or Bachchan
Shailesh Kandula - Sallu

4th April evening, a much awaited Friday ending at the company and I had brought my luggage (just 1 carry bag) to the office and was literally counting the minutes for my 6:30 PM reporting, for the 7 PM bus. The early bird that I am, I left office at sharp 5:45 and reached Paradise area from where the bus was to start at 6. Then I moved around for time, ate some nice sundae at Dinshaw Icecream Center and awaited my call at the Travel agency desk. The carry bus arrived at 7:10 (ofcouse, things here work with IST) and started at 7:20, but the excitement of the trip was so overwhelming that nothing could have spoilt it. Then the carry bus moved through the city, passing my office at 7:45 (funny, I should have caught it from here ;-) ) and we reached the Travels bus at 8:15. Boarding the bus, I got a phone call from Rucha and Snehal, who were unsure of my trip and we decided to meet in Pune on Saturday for lunch. Then like every day I called mom and dad for a normal 5 min chit-chat, when I disconnected the phone I realized that the phone had critically low battery. I was a little scared because of the battery ran out, I would be screwed as I wouldn’t be able to contact Sharma, when I alight from the bus at Pune. I switched the phone off and silently prayed that the battery would last that phone call in the morning. But around 11, the bus came to a Restaurant for a refreshments break, and the first thing I did was find a place to recharge my phone. I couldn’t get anything Jain to eat, which was expected, and so I had a milkshake and the 15 min recharge of the cellphone gave me enough relief to relax at night. Then a lot of dilemma followed as to whether I should drop down where Devang lived or where Sharma is, and finally, it was decided that I drop down at Sharma’s stop and then we would go to Devang’s. The bus showed a Telugu movie first, which was then followed by Taal.

The morning of 5th was also evenful as I reached Pune city at 5 AM in the morning. Now, Ashu lives in Symbiosis Hall of Residence, which is like 20 km outside Pune city. The driver did not know the area and so I started my phone and kept checking the area name. Finally, my instincts helped and I suddenly asked the driver, who would have otherwise forgotten to drop me, if we were at the Wakad cross roads, and hence I could get down at the right cross roads. Reaching there, I called Ashu, who came on the bike to pick me. Now this Hall of Residence is like 3 km from the place where I was. When Ashu came, you could have seen the real joy on our faces and all he said was, Ruskin, tu finally aa gaya. :-)

The fun doesn’t stop here, this was 6:30 AM and on our way back, the bike punctured just 200 meters to the Hostel. By God’s grace, this did not happen on his way to pick me, else we would have been stranded, but, when you’re on a great tour, nothing can go wrong for long. :-) We rested a bit at Sharma's room and I met a lot of his friends including Diwakar and Ankur. A special thanks to Diwakar, for giving us his bike for the day. That reminds me, the bike got a punture, so we got the bike fixed at around 8:30, which was followed by a long trip to the well-renowned Hijewadi IT Park, the IT Complexes made by Infosys and Geometric amazed me. All the buildings were great and being an early morning, that too. a Saturday, there was absolutely no rush. This was then supplemented by an awesome breakfast at Tamanna Cafe. We talked about a lot of stuff, how things had been over the 6 months, stuff was great.

This was followed by going to Devang’s place and catching up with him about the latest news and nostalgically remembering the old days. After this, we went to meet Sneha, who apparently lives at a distance of 10 min drive from Devang’s and spending some 15-20 min with her, we moved to Chaitanya Paratha Center for lunch. It is not a REAL HAPPENING place. The only USP was that I met Rucha, Snehal and Krupali here for lunch. It was really heartening to see Rucha come to meet me, even with her illness and doctor’s appointment, and I suddenly re-realized that I have always been really lucky with friends.

The lunch was followed by a dessert and it was time to bid farewell to those three members of PiNKRiSK and Devang as well. We returned to Symbiosis Hostel, this time in the Symbi-Bus Service and it was fun. This was followed by Sharma’s packing up and all that. Then we met 2 of his friends, Suchi and Kriti, from SIIB, and then getting our dinner, which were yummy wraps packed from Faaso's, went back to Wakad to catch our bus to Mumbai. The first day of our trip was about to end, but the bus there got delayed from 9 to almost 10, and that one hour, the discussion I had with Sharma was really wonderful. We talked about our futures, a lot of personal talk and especially the one that involved philosophy and stuff, just like the good old days. But, this is one discussion, which we'll never forget, right Sharma? :-)

Then we started from there and the bus of Neeta Travels, stopped at Neeta Café, where they served "Jain" Dabeli and even when we were both very full, Sharma and I had our "fill" of Dabeli there, reminiscing the good old days, when we used to eat Dabeli at Bhatta. The beautiful view of Lonavala in the valleys at night with all those wonderful lights doubled our joy and more than that was the excitement which was going to unfold once we reach Mumbai. I sighed at the thought and just waited for the bus to reach Mumbai.

The rest of the drama of the “Mumbai-part” of the trip will be followed in the next post.

Memoirs of my Goa Trip

2007-11-06T02:47:00.000-08:00

If you don’t know what this blog contains, in one line I would describe it as an in-site (insight) on my on-site experiences on the Goa offsite.

The schedule of the day was that we would fly to Bangalore via Indigo Airlines, and then to Goa in Air Deccan from there after 6 hours. So it was decided that a trip to Synopsys office at Bangalore be squeezed in as well.

5 AM of 18^th September, I am on the verge of starting what is my first ever offsite and like most people, I too am really excited. Also since the Paryushan ended last week and it is just yesterday that I came to Hyderabad from Ahmedabad (Home!), I am all the more excited at the prospects of a further 4 days of extension. The fact that we will be staying at the esteemed “Holiday Inn” just made the trip more and more fascinating. But, reality soon bit in and heavenly is not the right word to describe after the day’s events unfolded.

Dhaval and I meet up with Aditi and reach the airport at 6:30 AM, the normal queues and the checkin procedure which always bore me persist due to the confusion set in by people, but I am still too excited to really worry. The flight is on time and we reach Bangalore airport in time. The rest of the trip from airport to the office is made in Airconditioned buses but the Bangalore traffic ruins a lot of time. The way is just about 15 minutes, but we take 45 min to reach the office and 30 more min to just turn at the entrance of the building. Now, starts the confusion, no one ever told us how much time we have here to spend, nor do we know, what we were to do. As a result, we ended up moving around the cubicles in that office. Compared to our tiny office, this Bangalore office is huge, cause all facilities got relocated into the same building, but the culture is completely different from our lovely Hyderabad office. The cubicles are almost 50% bigger, but higher are it’s walls as well. People just get into the cubicle and lose themselves to work unlike all the hiphop and over-the-cube wall sessions we do have at our place. Nevertheless, we met Lata (Padmalata i.e.) and then Aditi and I move around the cubes trying to find all the people we have had assigned over the span of the short 4 months we spent at Synopsys. The facilities are pretty lucrative and the huge and beautiful auditoriums and band and all attracts us, but there is somehow an eerie in the environment and there somehow, I felt, that people lack socializing, without which I probably would not be able to live.

This is followed by lunch, for which we have to go down and select from a lot of food joints, I took a Pizza from Dominos and Aditi took some Subways, at Avtar’s or should I say, my expense ;-). Dhaval, the good guy he is, took some meal combo. The lunch was followed up by more confusion as we did not know what to do and then finally, we boarded the buses again, this time with people from Bangalore to go to the airport again, and next stop was supposed to be Goa....

Go Goa, isn’t that what they say, well, in all the probabilities of making a huge “Dil Chahta Hein” we reached the Goa airport in full splendor, with a whooping 100+ people from SNPS on board, it was more as if it were our flight. Reaching Goa, we encountered the rains, ofcourse it is rainy season in Goa and evenings are drenched with showers. We ran to the buses and then reached Holiday Inn after another 90 minutes drive in airconditioned buses and all. Reaching there, the lazy people Dhaval and I are, we rested our selves well, some dinner, followed by a session of cards.

Well, I forgot to mention the room, the one Dhaval and I shared, it was a wonderful room, a couple of really warm and cosy beds, airconditioner, mini-Bar (hehehehe, we never used it though), TV, a tiny Fridge, some dry fruit packets, one of which we ate before realizing it costed Rs. 50, right Dhaval? ;-) But, the thing that Dhaval and I were really interested in, in the room was the Bath Tub, yeah yeah, we’re lazy bums, but then, who doesn’t like a lazy lie-in-hot-water session?

Day-2, this is supposed to be a day of presentations and I would have attended the one at 8 AM, had I not been so-informed about the realities by our esteemed seniors who have had the prior experiences of such offsites, but then Ashish woke us up at 9 AM and said that the presentations were to start at 8:30, sounds dumb? It is dumb :-)

Nevertheless, neither Dhaval, not I would be missing the bathtub, so we got ready at around 10 and reached there, probably the last few to enter, but the environment was really boring, even in the luxurious tables and nice ambience of the Holiday Inn Conference Hall. We reached our group, the usual back-benchers and then had a session of Sketch-me if you can, Hollywood Bollywood, Tic Tac Toe, Dot Game and whatever such other mind-sharpening activities you can think of to avoid siesta. This was followed by lunch and more presentations and more presentations. (This is not an over-exaggeration, ask any fellow Synopsoids!). The evening had our show “Bheja Fry”, which consisted of our short skits, some comedy drama and the wonderful singing by a few people. This show took a lot of preparation and some “nice” video shooting as well, some wonderful memories which I will cherish for a lifetime. Anyways, this event was enjoyed by all those people who were still in their senses after all those free visits to the drinks counter. The session was followed by a Gala Dinner and the DJ Dance Party, which was bunked by Dhaval and me to go to the solace of our room and watch India take on England in the Twenty20 Worldcup. I guess Aditi missed a lot of fun dancing for not going even after being invited by so many people, multiple times. Right?

Ok, Day-3, Dhaval and I realize, two days into Goa and we still haven’t been able to do justice to the beach and the sea, so the 3 of us, ofcourse, in our version of Dil Chahta Hein, the 3^rd character is a girl, or as we say, the modern 3 Musketeers went for a Morning Walk at the sea shore, which eventually led to a sea bathing session, from the leg wetting one, by Dhaval and me after we were joined by Amarji, Rajnish and Ashish. We returned to the room, got ready and for the first time, reached breakfast on time. We also planned to go to the beach early morning the next day to relive these moments and have some more of the beach before we bid final adieu to Goa. This day had a couple presentations followed by a sightseeing tour, which took us to some old-temple first. This was followed by the visit to Francis Xavier’s Church. I would do injustice to the blog if I fail to mention the amount of entertainment we got on the way, by people playing Antakshari in Telugu and ofcourse, Dhaval and Aditi went on some sting mission, getting pics of people drowsing (including myself). This was followed by a shopping spree at Panjim, which for us was not-so-much of a spree and we ended up buying some cashewnuts and Dhaval played some what-is-your-weight game.

This session was followed by cruise, the name sounds lucrative and since I have been on one of these before, I tried to lower the expectations of others, but still, the cruise experience in one word would be “Disastrous”. We missed the evening cruise, so had to go on the 7:30 cruise, hence the skyline of city was not visible, the dance was at most pathetic, cannot use other words on the blog. The sitting was @$#$@#!!#, need I say more? To top it all up, I felt sick, feverish and totally frustrated and the discussions that Aditi and I did on the 90 min way back to the Hotel, are few which would really show our true frustrations, but nevertheless, we’ll remember them for a long time, won’t we Aditi?

I skipped dinner and slept early because I was too tired, India won against South Africa, and South Africa, my favourite cricketing team after India was thrown out of Twenty20, Murphy still Rules, doesn’t he?

Day 4, all that rest helped me and the morning thawed a lot of new energy, new hopes and ofcourse fun. Beach at 6:30, we collected shells and stuff and went on a long walk. Finally. We settled with Dhaval and Aditi making a tunnel where as I started with a temple, remembering those wonderful days of childhood. Ofcourse, Aditi and Dhaval left the tunnel at about 80% and went off to face some music of the sea, when I completed the tunnel and then got pics to prove the same as well. This was followed by another session of bathing at the sea and today, Aditi bravely came with us. It was fun, shallow waters and we all went gaga... Then the kiddie boys we are, we mimicked all those dancers of the cruise in knee deep water and Aditi was giggling and taking the video and snaps. We had a wonderful time at the sea and then, looking at the watch, with a heavy heart, a little sadness to get reminded of the fact that all good things come to an end, we went towards our rooms with happy memories which we will all cherish for a long time. I thought we were done with the trip, but some of the surprises were yet to come, like Dhaval choking the bathtub and stuff. Once ready after the last cosy bath at Holiday Inn Resort, we went on the photography path, moving around here and there, trying to capture a lot of pics which would remind us of these beautiful days for a long long time to come...

The final lunch was pretty normal and then with another long trip to the airport, the tired guy, i.e. me, slept off in the bus only to be published onto another set of pics :-D.

We flew back to Bangalore and this time were to spend a few hours on the Bangalore airport, where we desperately tried to find a free Wi-Fi network and failed. The dinner comprised of a sandwich and a “Devil’s Own” from CCD, which was later reimbursed by Synopsys. I know, Devil’s Own always tastes great, but if it is FREE, doesn’t it seem more wonderful? Like they say, all good things come to an end, so did our beautiful trip. The flight from there brought us to Hyderabad at around 10:30 and we came home around 11, tired but happy, exhausted but contended, and then with a smile, we lovingly looked forward to the soft nice bed at home, which though not as luxurious as the one at Holiday Inn, was still very inviting.

Slipping into the comforts of my bed, I went into sweet slumber telling myself, Dude, it is Weekend Resting Time!!!