Weekends Then and Now
I always liked Bombay from the start. It is an immensely beautiful city. It has everything. For example when I wanted certain Jazz notation books and broke my head everywhere else in the country to find used books, including Bangalore, a dusty old store called Furtado's in Metro, Bombay sold me the three-book volume for almost the price of a smile.
My life was always like a vagrant's in Bombay. To take a nap, I usually took the train to Marine Lines, walked towards the Express Towers and dozed off looking at the Arabian sea on the parapets. When I would wake up, I would walk to Café Mondegar through Kala Ghoda and Fort for some sulaimani tea. Well they don't exactly call it sulaimani there, but then I will stick to the name. Sometimes I would stop by at the Jehangir Art Gallery for a peek or spend some time at Rhythm House.
After a long hour of tea and Mario Miranda at Mondy's, I would walk again to watch the yachts at the harbour till I think it to be time to go back. Also, my phone could play music those days. And I am not even talking about my Bohri Mohalla dinners and the after-dinner fresh ice-creams. Such were weekends well-spent.
And while we are at it, this Saturday I braved slush sprayed on me by speeding motorists and two hours in an otherwise 20-minute drive to go to Commercial Street to bail out my stranded family who were denied transport back home by a crowd of panic-stricken, umbrellaless shoppers that battled for a ride home in unavailable auto-rickshaws like scared rabbits.
Oh come on, it was just rain, not the world's end. But it happens always in Bangalore.