Bye Bye

She fed me fish pulao. 

She brought us all ice-creams on Saturday night after the edition had been released. 

More than anything, she made me speak to Vivek Oberoi. For 4 minutes and 35 seconds, at a time when I was madly in love with him. He wanted to help out a handicapped woman and told me I could text him anytime. I was over the moon. When I handed the handset back to her, I was pretty much jumping up with joy. 

I don't think I was ever introduced to him. But yeah, I had seen him and I most definitely knew who he was. We always used to tease R about him, I am slightly foggy about this-but I think she had a crush on him, or he did, or people thought so either way. 

M called me today morning to tell me that he is no more. He was killed by terrorists at Cafe Leopold, the same place which I have walked past hundreds of times, the place where S and I kept comparing rates for 10 minutes with Mondegar next door and the place where M, T and I went to the last time we were in Mumbai and gorged on all the akoori and the butter.  

He was supposed to get married next week. His fiance and he had set up a wedding site and I saw out their pictures, read the story of how they met and fell in love, even checked out their wedding venue back home in Ranchi. 

I woke up to read how Malayesh had been mercilessly killed at Leopold and read the TOI anchor on Sabina too. 

The string of SMSes she had exchanged with her friends and family made me shiver on this cold, cold morning. They are in my bathroom, I am hiding under the bed, I can hear the gunshots. 

M called me day before to ask me if I was safe and not in Bombay by any chance. And then said, "Why do we end up talking just every time there are blasts?"

Because they seem to happen every other day now, Mona. 

So which city will it be tomorrow?

There were eight blasts in Bangalore yesterday. And 16 in Ahmedabad today. So which city is it going to be on Sunday?

Delhi? Mumbai? Goa? Vizag? Hyderabad?

I don't have any answers.

It's scary. These may be low-intensity blasts meant just to scare people, but they are killing people. May be not as many as a normal high-intensity blast would kill, but they still are...

It reminds me so horribly of the Diwali blasts in Delhi which occurred in 2005.

There were three of them: Paharganj, Sarojini and Okhla. There were reports of another one at Kotla, but thankfully it didn't happen.

I remember that evening distinctly. I was sitting at my desk when Nidhi came in and said there had been a blast. I rushed to the maindesk TV and saw the news flash. I ran to LNJP first for some strange reason. Then I remembered that they must have gone to LHMC and rushed there.

The cops wouldn't let my auto go up to the gate as the chief minister was expected. That's Delhi for you.

Somehow, I ran to the Emergency. Only to be greeted by the stench of dead bodies. People were not allowed to enter. So all of us journos stood with our noses plastered to the glass panes trying to see what was happening and framing our Page 1 stories.

What we saw was a sight I am never going to forget. One person dying and his body immediately making way for an injured one. People breathing their last in front of our own eyes, the beds just a foot away from the windows. Orderlies throwing out loads and loads of blood-soaked cotton through the Emergency doors in order to keep the Emergency clean. One such cotton pad came and hit my foot. I was wearing my grey slippers with red bands. The grey material soaked the blood from the cotton ball. I wanted to puke.

Huge trolleys of medicines were wheeled in with orderlies literally running with those trolleys. One injured man was brought in a wheel barrow. Anu clicked a picture on her new Motorola phone. The images are still clear in my mind.

The next few days were a blur. They were spent in getting as many exclusive stories as possible. The first day I came across a couple who were going to meet a woman whose seven-month-old son had died. I had come across Yash's name in the official records.

I followed the two and met Yash's father. He looked calm, composed even. I would go to the extent of saying he looked cool. He was probably too shocked to look anything else. "Haan, humne subah use jala diya," he said. I think I stopped breathing for a few seconds after that. His wife was in the hospital with 80% burns. She had never wanted to go out that evening as it was time for the municipal water supply. Her neighbour wanted to buy bangles so she and Yash had accompanied her. The neighbour survived.

The next day was as bad. A mother who had not been told that her daughter had died. Two sisters who had gone out to buy kerosene, struggling to survive.

The day after that was Diwali. That night as I sat in my room, I cried. And cried and cried. It hurt me so much when no one from my family was even remotely involved. It gave me so much grief just to see those people. It is unimaginable to think what a man feels when he loses his seven-month-old child to terrorism. And the terrorists know that.

Amidst all the gloom, there was hope too. Nisha had been engaged to get married to a guy. She was injured in the blasts, but he insisted that he wanted to marry her as he could not see himself breaking his promise. He said he always liked her smile a lot. And so a little more than a month after the blast, the two got married on November 12.

I called them up next year and their marriage was going strong.

Hope. It's such a wonderful thing.

Party anyone?

We had a party at college today.
And as always, I was in no mood to attend. I have never liked parties, be they at office, at college or worse, at a relative's place.
Why do I never feel excited about them like the other girls? Why do I never want to dress up for them? Why do I never even manage to locate the solitary lipstick that I have at least for such parties? And why do I never ever feel like dancing at these parties till I am dead drunk?
I wonder.

The end of an era

Why is that each time I go to Mumbai they close down my favourite theatres in Delhi?

In December, they closed down Chanakya which was for most Delhiites nothing short of an institution and no comparison to those drawing-room sized overpriced garish monstrosities called multiplexes.

This time, as I discovered the other day in Nehru Place, they have closed down Paras. My Paras. A theatre where if at 3.20 I decided I wanted to watch a movie, I could actually leave, catch an auto, reach the theatre, buy the tickets and the popcorn and be seated in time for the movie to start at 3.30.

A theatre where a balcony ticket still cost you Rs 60.

A theatre where the staff was so caring that when I went to watch Rang De Basanti the day Nana came back from hospital, they ensured that I got a seat next to ladies and was seated comfortably as I was watching the movie alone.

Between the two of these theatres, I must have seen just about every Hindi movie that I ever saw in Delhi.
Let me count.
Paras. Hmmm...
Aitraaz
Kisna
Hulchul
Paheli
Rang De Basanti
Shaadi Se Pehle
Karam
Khakee
Yuva
Bunty aur Babli (twice and on consecutive days)

Oh, and that Godawful rip-off of Anger Management where Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar dance in grass skirts.

And many more.

Chanakya, much lesser but nonetheless...
The greatest Hindi film ever made Neal N Nikki
The Rising
No Entry
Taxi number 9211
Goal
Khoya Khoya Chand
American Desi (that's the first movie I saw there)
Dhoom
Fida
Chak de India

Many of these movies I watched alone and no one ever bothered me.

Now, the shutters are down on both of them and my last hopes are pinned on Sangam where I have watched
Munnabhai MBBS
Dhoom 2
Phir Milenge
Lageraho Munnabhai
And a few more.

Chanakya is going to be razed and the NDMC is planning to replace it with an ugly multiplex. And Paras may re-open but I would not count on it. Sangam may be closed down any time to make way for a multiplex.

Makes me feel nostalgic and sad. The only thing that could make me feel better is the taste of the popcorn that they used to serve at Chanakya washed down with a bottle of Catch Clear Blackberry/Black Currant flavoured-water.

Alas, it's all gone. Never to return.

Payday

The paycheque's here! After nearly two years... Damn excited. And already planning a huge list of things to buy.

Mumbai

Have been in Mumbai for about a week.

Have been wondering...How long before I can take my own decisions?

Some transitions are never meant to happen...

Time for a break

The first year's over. Another few months after the summers and it will be time for placements. Parhai will finally be over and done with.

Meanwhile, am off to Mumbai for the next couple of months for my summers where I hope to blog a bit more. Lappy dearest has stopped functioning and the irritating three-day break means I just have to make do with this ramshackle keyboard in the basement computer lab. And the phone company has been kind enough to block my outgoing. They need lessons in how not to treat their valuable customers.

So, yetserday afternoon as we werewaiting for the pizza guy to arrive, we came across this Tanzanian guy who had flown in straight from Dar-es-salaam, had been dumped at the institute and had no clue in the world as to how he would get to Gurgaon. "But what if someone falls sick today, what are you people going to do," he kept saying.

"I haven't rested in 24 hours, I just wanna get to my hotel please," the poor guy kept explaining to the guards. All the taxiwallahs at the nearby stands were drunk. He looked as if he would start crying any minute. I mean here he was- this huge guy in his 30s and ready to shed tears. We called the radio cab numnber,they said they would take 90 minutes. So we made him wait in the hostel. Only the dispensary was open, so I made him sit there.

"Oh, it's the right room for me, I am a doctor," he kept saying. Finally the cab arrived at 5 pm. He got in and kept on thanking me over and over again.

The incident really made me wonder. For all the talk of metropolitan India heading towards a 24X7 society, the reality is completely different. Any major festival and the entire city comes to a standstill. Good Friday, Holi and Sunday have meant that the banks have been closed, the institute office has been closed, my lappy cannot be repaired, hell- I didn't even have any place to eat yesterday except for those horridly-overpriced pizzas. All this even as we revel in the glory of our multi-cultural secularism. Food for thought. (Or FFT as a certain teacher here would say).