It has been quite some time that I have
returned from Mumbai, and I am very late in writing this travelogue. It was the
27th of March that I went there. It was the first time in my life
that I would go to Mumbai, and naturally there was a lot of excitement in my
mind. I was very apprehensive of the trip, and I had reason to be so. I was
going to see one of my very dear friends who stays in Mumbai.
It was only a consecutive 5 day holiday
for me, and that too was possible because there were so many holidays that were
present consecutively – I had to take only a single day’s leave! I went on the
day of Holi. The flight was early in the morning at 6:10 AM, and I had managed
to get very little sleep in the frenzy. I woke up at 3:00 AM, and one friend of
mine dropped me at the airport on his motorcycle at 4:00 AM. I spent the 2
hours at the airport waiting, and waiting, and waiting... It was as if the wait
would not end.
The aeroplane was a good one, in the sense
that there was lot of leg space in between the seats and one could stretch his
legs and be perfectly comfortable, and every seat had a small TFT screen in
front so that the passenger could choose from a list of programmes that were
being played. One could watch movies, listen to the news, or get weather
updates about the altitude and the outside temperature. I did not feel like I
was on board an aeroplane belonging to a domestic airlines company. There was
free food also!
I reached the Mumbai airport at 8:45 AM,
and my friends Debajyoti and Debasis were there to receive me. Tired that I
was, I was in no mood to play with the colours of Holi. The rest of the boys
played with the colours and I was the photographer that day. Afternoon, and we
ate like monsters the chicken that we had cooked. A very long and deep sleep
post lunch left me totally lethargic in the evening, and I felt that sleeping
would be a better option that going to the Juhu beach, dirty as the beach was from
constant abuse by locals and tourists. We went to the Juhu beach in the evening
only to find that a crowded and dirty beach awaited us. People littered food
packets, rags, plastic glasses all around. Where was that Juhu beach that I had
seen in the film Anand? Nevertheless, we started strolling on the sands of the
beach, and finally reached a dark end of the beach that was absolutely quiet
and not frequented by tourists, thanks to the unavailability of food stalls and
also to certain rotting smells of sea fish and sea shells that one finds there.
It was a moonlit night. The airport was just beside the sea, and we were seeing
the aeroplanes taking off above our heads. Sometimes roaring, sometimes
hissing, the waves were crashing on the beach, and the white foam in the
moonlit night was a majestic view.
Next day I went with my friend Debajyoti
to the Elephanta Caves. Located somewhere in the distant sea, one required to
travel on water for almost an hour and a half. We launched the ferry at almost
12:00 PM from the Gateway of India. We passed the warships of the Indian Navy,
lots of cargo ships, and lots of hills in the sea, but the thing that amazed me
most was that there was human habitation in those hills also. I wondered how
people live in those places – some remote island in the sea where there was no
food, no modern facilities, no schools, a place from where you would need to
travel to Mumbai on water even if someone falls ill in the middle of the night.
It was so amazing!
The caves were beautiful at Elephanta,
but the green hills there were even more beautiful. When we went to the top of a
hill we found two canons that the ruler of the place had placed there to
protect the whole region from invaders in the past. We spent a fair amount of
time there and again retraced our way to Mumbai after a 3 hour stay there. In
the evening we went to the Marine Drive and spent a lot of time there sitting
beside the sea, enjoying the cool breeze of the sea and gossiping. One can find
lots of super cars and super bikes that the super rich of Mumbai take out in
the evening on the Marine Drive.
The next day it was a visit to Laalbaug.
We made the decision late in the day to go there, and a car was booked
immediately as the decision was made at 11:00 AM. The car arrived at 12:15 PM
and we set off at 12:30 PM. The driver was a jovial one, and by the way he was
driving I could make out that he loved the drive. It was a brand new Maruti
Suzuki Swift Dzire LDI, and it was so comfortable inside. The driver told us
that he had a Tata Indica earlier and this was his second car. On the way to
Laalbaug we passed through jungles and hills on winding roads. It was a very
long drive and we finally reached Laalbaug at 3:30 PM. I was feeling sick
because of heavy consumption of food on the way. I somehow could not enjoy the
day at all. I was feeling sick. On top of that the sea breeze made me all the
more ill. Both Debasis and Debajyoti had accompanied me, and both of them ran
into the sea and enjoyed a lot. They went rafting, and they insisted a lot that
I should also go with them. Alas, only if my body permitted me! The glare of
the sun and its scintillating reflection in the water gave me a headache, and I
felt like vomiting. But I did not want to spoil my friends’ day, so I kept
quiet, and took only a few photographs. Nature displayed to us her beauty in a marvellous
sunset – I saw the sun gradually hiding itself from us, bidding us goodbye for
the day. Unfortunately, the camera started giving some trouble, and the
autofocus did not work properly, so I missed the photographs of the sunset.
However, the setting sun gave me some relief. My sickness faded away, and I
went with my friends for a stroll on the beach. The twilight was very beautiful
– the beach was dark, the roaring sea was dark, but the sky was a brilliant
fluorescent red. I had never seen such beauty before! I stood staring at the beautiful
sky until it became dark. This was the first time that I had seen so beautiful
a twilight! It was time for us to return to Mumbai after that. Back in the car,
I fell asleep. When we reached home my friends had to wake me up.
The last day in Mumbai was nothing so
eventful. I went out with Debajyoti to Bandra. We had biriyani at Arsalan in
the afternoon. Then we sent to see the sea link, took some photographs, had a
ride in a taxi on the smooth road of the sea link, and finally went to a
shopping mall where they sell Aston Martin cars, Ducati motorcycles, and BMW
Motorrad motorcycles. I am a lover of motorcycles, and seeing the Ducatis and
the BMW Motorrads, I was astounded. I just felt like experiencing a test ride
on those powerful monsters, each with more than 1000 cc of engine displacement.
In the evening we went to the Gateway of India once more, and then we went to a
restaurant to eat some good food. Evening found us aboard a local train of the
Mumbai suburban railway, and we were home at about 10:00 PM.
The next day was the 31st of
March, the day of my return. My flight was at 6:00 AM. I did not sleep at
night, and I also did not allow my other 2 friends to sleep. We spoke the whole
night – we spoke of what we used to do in college, we spoke of what we were
like when we had joined our jobs, and we laughed. We mostly discussed all the
happy and the funny moments. We laughed for more than three and half hours at a
stretch, and that gave me an aching stomach and made me dead tired when I was
to leave for the airport at 4:00 AM. Both of them (Debasis and Debajyoti) accompanied
me to the airport to see me off. Even there we did not stop talking, recalling
old memories and laughing. Finally, at almost 4:30 AM, I decided that they
should return because they were also dead tired.
I checked in, and the next one hour found
me yawning – drowsy, drooping and languorous. I was trying hard not to fall
asleep and miss my flight. Once aboard the aeroplane at 6 o’clock, I fell dead
asleep. I woke up only when the airhostess woke me up for the breakfast, only
to fall asleep again after gobbling up the food somehow.
It was 8:30 AM, and I was in Kolkata...
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