A lot to catch up on

And since I am in a half decent mood today, I shall try to dig up all those thoughts I should have blogged when I thought them, where I thought them. But since I am a lazy bum, I will try to regurgitate them here...

So I have been travelling. From Mumbai to Delhi to Tirupur to Coimbatore to Delhi to Goa, and back to Tirupur and then to Mumbai. But the longest journey I made was from Chembur to Lokhandwala Complex. And the biggest culture shock is going from Chembur to Lokhandwala Complex.

Like I have finally realised the pleasure of nonchalantly ordering a "double large", and cocking a snook at the waiter when he asked if I wanted ice to fill up the glass in absence of a suitable beverage to mask the taste of the undiluted alcohol poured into my glass.

Like I found and experienced all the things people dont like about Delhi. Like noisy people, and combative irritating people, and expensive food with no taste, and cocky waiters, and horrible traffic, and mindnumbingly vast distances between places, and meetings, and getting confused between vihars, and ganjs, and nagars, and enclaves, and layouts, and kunjs, and baugs, and phases, and roads, and places, and circles, and gurgaon, and noida, and okhla, and cold winters, and roasting summers, and high hotel prices, and even higher alcohol prices, and snooty punjabi women with vacant expressions and buxom bosoms, who look for gold rings on your fingers, and gold chains round your neck, and expensive watches, and who know the difference between silver and platinum but not the difference between pearl jam and linkin park. And people speaking like they know how to speak English, but use behenchod liberally, with a lot of dude, man, yaar, saale, chutiya, and some assorted phrases like chill yaar, to make up for their completely indecipherable pronounciation of sentences.

And I have not experienced the things that people like about Delhi. Like the new Metro.

Like the alcohol prices in Delhi, make me want to hide my pain in South Goa. Until the rates in Goa rise.

Like South Goa is like Calangute in 1996. But now the Russians are there, I think it will take less than 11 months to make South Goa crowded, and irritating, and unpleasant, and commercial, and crass and Gujju for Holiday.

And All small towns in India look the same when you are slightly sleepy, and the streets are whizzing past you. The cows look the same, and the rickshaws look the same and the trucks look the same, and the LCV's trying to wedge themselves in your face in the street meant for 3 people to walk shoulder to shoulder, look the same. And walled cities, and small shops, and old carved edifices of erstwhile successful establishments gone to seed, and small trinkets sold outside colleges, and new gaudy electronics stores with branches, and localised promotions, and international bank branches, and ATMS, and aditya hitkari smiling down at you benignly from Peter England posters exhorting you to be like Mumbai and buy the honest shirt.

And I have seen coconut groves in interior Tamilnadu, and wheat plains in coastal Goa.

Like Anil Kumble is the only man who can kick anyone's ass from the top to the bottom. Hell, hes so senior he could probably kick Sharad Pawar's ass too. Like his wings are now unfurling. Like Saurav Dada and Viru and Sachin and Dravid and Yuvraj and Mahi and Irfan and Wasim Jaffer and Gautam Gambhir and Dinesh Karthik and all the kings batsmen cannot put together 20 wickets for Mr Kumble.

And the ICL came and went. And nobody bothered about it. Sorry, Kapil Paaji, but Kapil Dev da Jawaab finally hai.

And Airports are now fun. And Airport lounges are fun. Watching people look important, tired, happy, sad, united, fighting, unhappy, lonely, busy, creatively irritating, bored, nonchalant, interested, vacuous, alert, unimportant, and silent is always fun.

utekkare,

pranay