Frus-station

"The train arriving on platform no. 2 is 12 coach slow local for Churchgate. It will stop at all the stations."

             Woah. Mumbai. Local trains. Traffic. Rains. Traffic. The Sea. Traffic. Night Life. i haven't witnessed one. Traffic.This is Mumbai for me. It's a mad mad place with mad mad people. Mum, Wiser men kept telling me Mumbai is not that easy but hell i wanted Mumbai, i wanted to live life the Mumbai way. Man, what a dumb ass i was. A Complete Idiot.

            Well, the above mentioned statement welcomes you when you go to Andheri Station. That's where i go.Daily. I catch the train to Churchgate. The first day i took this train, i was full of enthusiasm, positive energy, I had no place to sit in the train but still i was happy standing at the door, wind rushing through my hair. I felt confident. Felt i could take over the world. Felt like i was the only one. Again, A Complete Idiot.

           A few days, weeks passed before i realized that i wasn't the only one. There were thousands of girls (or should i say women :| ) like me carrying a LARGE handbag in one hand, cell phone in the other and ears plugged to an iPod. By LARGE handbag i mean a LARGE handbag. Extremely large and shiny one. It has to be large coz it carries everything from a comb to make up kit to atleast 3 tiffin boxes to a pair of shoes and what not. And shiny, that's because people here are freak.

            Initially, i wondered why were the people here in so much of a hurry. Hurrying to climb the train, hurrying to get down, hurrying for everything. Then i was introduced to the Mad Mumbai Race (MMR). MMR is basically a virtual race. To explain in details it would be when people are in office they are hurrying up work and thinking of going home early. When people are at home they are thinking of leaving early to avoid traffic. When they are on the platform they are thinking of jumping into the train and grabbing the seats, when there is an empty train coming they are still jumping into the train grabbing the preferred seats. When they are getting out of a train they want to rush to catch an early bus. When they are in the bus they want to rush to catch the earliest train. They talk to their husbands, yell at their boy friends, scold their children, fight with the 'bai' on phones. Their life is a mobile phone. Now i know, why Mumbai is a fast paced city. They have to win the MMR.

If this is what a mumbaikar is, i don't want to be one. Although i am afraid i have become one already. :O
Let's hope my train doesn't stop at Frus-station.
Well it does stop there daily, otherwise there wouldn't have been a topic for this post. *Sigh* 




 

Who Moved My Cheese?

Who Moved My Cheese? And Why?
And why is it difficult for me to accept this fact? Why can't i accept it and move on? Why instead of changing myself, i want to change the situation?

It's not that i can't adjust. That, i perfectly can.
It's not even that i haven't read the titled book. I read it ages ago.

Perhaps it is because i do not want to change for others, due to others. But i forget it's not that i will change for them, i will change for myself. I will change for my improvement. My stubbornness will only harm me and my loved ones, which i certainly do not want.

In today's dark world, very few people value you and love you and want better things for you, and it is for them you must change.

Change is inevitable. Growth is optional. Choice is mine.

Growing Up...Growing Down...

It seems like a million, zillion years passed since i went to school. Every morning while undertaking the painfully short-distance-wise-but-long-time taking journey in a three wheeled man made machine which has gained no less an importance than a god’s own vehicle... yes the black coloured, cacophonic autos... I see these little children wearing half pants with a dirty sweater, almost bursting square bags, water bottle in one hand and a lollypop or a Rs.2 Pepsi (is it Rs.2 now or Rs. 200, you can’t say!) in the other hand...

I remember when I went to school my some of my worries included the high probability of me getting punished because of reaching late or because of having overgrown nails or wearing lose socks (which happened at the most twice a month when the other pairs were drenched..esp during the rainy season). Forgetting books was not much a worry because i was particular in that department although the one day in an year when i would forget a history textbook, my teacher used to get this brainwave of punishing or worse taunting the girls who had forgotten theirs!

Other things that disturbed me and all of my fellow mates was that her lead pencil was the shortest or her crayon stick wasn’t ‘fat’ enough or worse what if it rained in the games period and you wouldn’t get to go out and play your favourite game of throw ball! Or worse for people like me who liked running like horses or like phoebe on the ground when the only games class used to get converted to some stupid boring ‘Marathi’ class.

And when it was your birthday, you would announce it proudly a week earlier to the entire class about the oncoming auspicious day. And on the auspicious day, you would get ‘sweets’ for everyone irrespective of the fact that they have brought gifts or not. And the whole class very enthusiastically sang a ‘Happy Birthday’ with loud, happy claps and you standing, blushing in the front and whispering a ‘Thank You My friends’ in the end... and then you would get a wet kiss by the teacher on your cheek (which i generally avoided and tactfully wiped off). All in a Happy, happy birthday... no mental math calculation of treat (if any) money or unknown faces asking for ‘treat’.

But alas, good things die early. Now that i am dreading the oncoming of my ‘auspicious day’ i wonder how and why things change. Now it’s more like ‘Happy Birthday (I don’t care), TREAT!(is all that i care about and i can contri any small amount of money for the formal cake and oh yeah i won’t even sing because i am drooling over the cake).

I don’t want a fancy cake with my name in icing. I don’t even want anyone to wish just for the sake of it... all i want are a few wishes that come from heart (and some gifts too! bwahaha) because i need the wishes baby! I am growing old and i am not a tad bit happy about it! I wish i just don’t get up on my birthday and directly wake up on the next day, just skip the 24^th! As Joey says ‘Why God! Why?!’

Man, i refuse to grow up.