Eating in the car.. while driving .. made so much easier.

Well done chaps

Today was the 10th day of Ganpati Visarjan in Mumbai and here it can be a hellish experience. Bad, bad, really bad traffic jams… people who do seem to come out of nowhere  and station themselves on the road.. cars and buses that move absolutely not even an inch.. and you ruing the time when you decided to venture out.

Its honestly very bad every year so much so that offices, schools and colleges so this year, for the tenth (and biggest) day of visarjan, I was dreading going to work. But the distance that normally takes over an hour today too me 35 minutes to go and under 30 minutes to come back.

I was surprised to say the least, but at the same time, I realised this was so only because of our the super-efficient cops. I have to say here that they did a superb and well organised job. Nobody realises how much work they need to do on days like this but I have to go on record here that on days like the traffic machinery in Mumbai rules.

The world as we know it, is certainly ending

We live in this land of homogenised paper cups, vending machine the spew out moccachinos, ‘capachinos’, hot chocolate and ‘plane’ horlicks. Its a cramped newspaper office with spelling mistakes galore but not let me not digress. It’s my new office.

I say homogenised land of paper cups because here at my new office, we have a very snazzy vending machine that bursts forth with dozens of hot beverages and for the first few days I hardly drank any. My conscience would not allow me to drink more than one cup a day or one type through the day so as to waste fewer cups. (Yes, one of those). So I solved my problem.

I got my own neat ceramic and marched forth ahead for that first environmentally sound cuppa. But now I had a different problem. The cup would not fit into the vending machine. So I was stuck to dissolving milk powder and coffee and going stir and drink .. stir and drink..

I had noticed people slugging suspicious looking hot drinks in many a fancy mug and wondered how they solved the problem. Without wanting to appear very foolish (some would do) at perhaps not noticing the obvious, I asked one colleague. She says, “Simple. Fill your mug up with a paper cup and enjoy.”

Sigh…

Has anyone every noticed how much paper is wasted at a paper’s office? Try it! We have trucks coming to collect the raddi!

Happy Birthday

Hey I didn’t even realise but this blog is now over a year old and certainly has lasted more than I thought possible. Here’s to one more year and I dare say, one more city?

Oh, you are that type!

Is it my imagination or have people become more judgemental? more impatient? more obnoxious? more something? more everything? Is it a Mumbai thing or is every human-inhabitated place suffering from this malaise?

In the last few weeks, this particular question has been directed towards me a number of times.

“Oh! You wait for a red light even though the others sides are empty. You are one of those, eh?”

“You reuse papers for printing? Oh! You are one of those, is it?”

“You cant take money from your parents when you finish your salary? Oh you are that type, is it?”

“You let your parents’ expectations affect you is it?”

“Why are you getting an NOC for your car when there are so many other cars who don’t?”

I don’t know what type is that..and now go straight to purple when people ask me that.

Ah and yes,

“You like Jhoom Barabar Jhoom? Why?” and after hearing my answer, “Oh that type eh?”