Mumbai Diaries - Part 2(The One with the lasertag match)

In accordance with the feedback received from last part, here are the names of the character.
Atush - A, Gaurav - B, Nauman - C, Karan - D

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"Where's our beer? The service here is crap" asked Nauman(C).
"Just like the bus service here. Man, would you believe that it took me 2 hours to cover the stretch of 8 kms. In my city, it would take me 20 mins and a cigarette break only", chuckled Karan(D).

“You want to talk about traffic??? I was nearly fried, stuck between two BEST buses.” cried Atush.

“You could have used your AC” said Gaurav(B).

“Remember what we did last time we were drunk?” replied an angry Atush.

“Oh yeah, we left the car and AC running on the highway with windows open.” chuckled Gaurav and started laughing hysterically, but had to immediately stop as Atush started to pick up the fork in anger. “Nature’s call bro, can’t avoid!”

“The battery got so damaged that my father said if I use AC again, he will hack my account and will post a #supportJNU status to teach me a lesson.”

“Oooo that’s cruel.” everyone tried to suppress their laughter.

“Abe let’s change the topic. You won’t believe what happened at the station...” said Nauman.

“I thought, it will be more of a change.” interjected Karan.

"But this is interesting..." 

"Yaar, its Mumbai, these things keep happening."

"Yeah, let’s leave up the redundant traffic talks and tell me with the show of hands, who is up for a game of Lasertag" said an enthused Atush(A) raising his hand expecting a string of high fives from all parts of the table.
"Dude, no way I am going back in there", said Gaurav(B) explaining everyone's dropped shoulders.
"Don't you remember the carnage we conceded last time?" said Nauman
"Get over it man, we lost it big time. That girl single handedly beat our team" added Karan
"And that is why we should go and get our self-respect back."
"Man, people find romances in weird places these days", said Karan understanding the situation now.
"Ohh, our man has got a soft spot for the young lady" exclaimed Karan.
"Its not like that, I just love competition and yeah she is now one."
"Then we have got to go and get our man his girl" everyone roared.

They had this new energy inside coming, injected by the things shown in the movies. When its time to impress a competition, everything falls into place and nothing can get you down. That was the scene when they entered the arena, ready to crush anyone fighting against them.

20 mins later(outside the lasertag arena)

Everyone returned with dropped shoulders, lowered to a new level.
"Well there is 200 bucks and a girl I would never see again" said Atush.
"Chill out man! You did come second. Thank God she was in my team.” said Karan.
"I think she was cheating" concluded Atush.

"Excuse me?"
They looked back with shocking eyes. It was the girl that had beat Atush and his team.

They still stared at her like the star troopers looked at a Jedi before getting cut in half.
"Did you really think you could win by making such a dumb strategy? Who leaves the base undefended?"

"I thought.... I would!" said Atush stuttering. Although scared, he was really impressed by the passion with which she was talking about the game. "Damn! You are so cool", he imagined himself saying.

After completing the virtual nuptials, he finally muttered, “What are you doing outside your arena. Go depress some souls.”

This time she hesitated.

“Oh I came here to give these. These are congratulatory coupons given to the players who are just a little short of my high-score. It gives you some special privileges.” She said winking.

“I will beat your score someday. I will…”

“Huh! In hundred years!” she cut him off.

“The expression is ‘In a thousand years’!” corrected Atush.

“Well that explains why you being such a girl.”

She turned to leave and shouted in anger “There is a number mentioned in the back! Call it if you have any doubts.”

The three of them were in disarray, as they didn’t get what just happened here. They were astounded with the intensity that this girl shouted at Atush. They looked at a supposedly embarrassed Atush, but he looked serene and yet playful in his expression. He gave a wicked smile.

“So, her name is Akriti.”

To Be Continued...

Mumbai Diaries - Epilogue (The One with the Closure)

He came back to her, bruised and exhausted. She wondered this can't be real...it wasn't, but it felt so real.
He could see the pain and love in her eyes, but there was something missing beyond his comprehension. There were no tears. He asked "How have you been". She hugged him, a hug firm but hesitating one, a tender one yet corruptible.
The distance between them had put them in a position where both were trying to understand each other, just looking at each other, words not required between them, they never were necessary. She thought could this be the reason for putting distance between them. Could something so beautiful once, be destroyed by a mere words; or the lack of it?

Suddenly the pain seemingly felt physical, she thought about the unspoken dreams that she had dared to imagine, the dream of a life adulterated by no one; the only life she could imagine since their meeting 3 years ago. Fighting the world seemed like a formality, when they joined forces.

"Does it have to be so hard? Doesn't this pain makes you realize that what we have is real and its a mistake to go apart?" he asked again.

"The pain not only makes it real, but reminds that it is not meant to be" she replied.

That hit him hard.

"Shouldn't you be happy that what was not meant to be is not happening and you got rid of it."

"I wish things were that simple."

He went numb.

She spoke, "What we had was not love"

"We had love. But unfortunately love is not enough these days. Maturity is required as well."

She chuckled "Maturity! Isn't it an overtly used term these days. Blaming everything on it. When it comes to adventure and shenanigans, everyone seeks immaturity, but otherwise maturity is required. I am beginning to think that immaturity was what kept us together, in fact led us towards each other...".

"What?" he cut her off.

"Yeah! How else would you explain us. We are so different from each other. Our interests don't match. We are like two sides of coin, never destined to meet each other. On some level, we should have known that this day was bound to come."

"Well, if you put it like that, it sure seems the explanation. But it seemed easy that time and looked like our difference somehow were connecting us."

"Well, that was our infatuated mind taking over maturity."

"I understand now" he sighed, dropping his shoulders. "But how are you okay going forward with this?"

"I think I am being mature now", she smiled. He smiled back.

"But tell me this, how do I get closure?"

"Ha, never the one to shy away from the technical terms."

"How else to prove I am different!"

"Closure is nothing but accepting that there is no 'us' anymore and being brave enough to imbibe that."

"Like being happy for you and future?"

"No you fool, you don't have to feel anything for me anymore...be as apathetic as you can. If you care, you are only hurting yourself."

"It will be the toughest thing to do..."

"Me too"

"Who would have thought not caring would be this tough...."

"It is tough when you have promised 'Thousand years' to each other", she tried to joke, but the gazing intensity of him melted anything that was calm inside her.

"Yeah, a thousand years" his words carried something venomous that even shook the nothingness in her.

Suddenly she felt lighter. The cloudy dust that had shrouded everything seemed to be clearing out and she could sense this from within. The heaviness that his remembrance brought was felt no more and she could un-shackle herself easily.

Atlast she woke up with a smile. After an array of dreamless nights, she leveraged the all important lesson that would catapult her towards an ordeal free world.
She can be herself again, completed after a long time.

This dream had done the job much better than her own consciousness could ever do.

"Thanks for 'the thousand years' and I am coming back", she mumbled as she smiled her way back to sleep.

Image Credit: Google Images

Airlift-Uplifted

Airlift – a movie with a heroic attempts by an Indian- Kuwaiti businessman to evacuate 1.75 lakhs Indian from Kuwait via Jordan.

First of all, commendable job by Akshay Kumar and Raja Menon, for bringing into highlight, one of the best and largest evacuation effort by a country.

The story starts with a racist joke “How do you fit 20 Iraqis in a telephone booth?” showing Ranjeet(Akshay Kumar), imbibed in Kuwaiti colours.

We don’t get to see more colours of his character as soon enough, the Iraqi forces invade Kuwait and render the inhabitants homeless. In these tough times, Ranjeet finds himself on a crossroad, as he has to decide between his responsibility towards family or towards the people who are dependent on him. The moment of decision has been shown very subtly and simply.

Ranjeet realizes that he is more Indian than he gives himself credit for, as he takes on camp preparation for the dependents and tries to find ways of evacuation.

Nimrat impresses yet again in her portrayal of strong wife. Though cynical of Ranjeet’s actions initially, but she comes on board later as she realizes that Ranjeet is not going to leave anyone behind.

Purab Kohli, playing Ibrahim stands out in the crowd full of Indians in the camp. His cool and calm portrayal yet again shows his immense talent in bringing justice to any role he is trusted with.

The screenplay is balanced with apt focus on the internal struggle of Ranjeet and Amrita(Nimrat) while focusing mostly on the issue at hand.

Some scenes have been portrayed so well, they will get you emotional. A applaud-worthy effort, ending in a clichéd slow-motion waving of Indian flag, but that still works. J

We would have loved it more if it was based more on real life characters. Though we see some names like “Mathunny Matthews” and “Vedi” in credits, but they could have been portrayed in the movie itself. But, I won’t take credit away from Akshay, as this was a brave and flawless effort from his side.

In an era, where directors really shy away from making movies on historic events, due to fear of backlash from intolerant India, this is definitely a good start. We hope to see more of it.

I would definitely advise you to watch once and revive this genre of movies. 

Image credit: Google Images

Air Guitar Rocks!

The worst habit that damages us is our inability to understand that patience is the key to a lot of things including early success.

We lose so many abilities in our lives just because of our impatience.
How many times in our lives we have taken a new thing and at the start we are star-eyed about it. The new thing is fun and brings out a lot of things out of us. Say, for example, coding; at the start, at the basic level, its all fun and easy. But, as soon as the challenges start to creep up, we start to lose interest in them. Although, it may also be the result of an unprecedented start, without acquiring necessary textbook knowledge, but my point is, impatience here also plays the same role. Instead of acquiring the necessary theoretical knowledge, we jumped on the coding section, without being equipped with the necessary troubleshooting knowledge.
Had we been patient enough, things would have been different.
Another example that we commonly see, is about joining gym. We start expecting as soon as the first bulge of tightened muscle we see.

 

What we need to understand that things don't work that way. One must toil a little to achieve something. Although its known by all of us and we do keep it in mind. But somewhere down the line, right between joy and the first roadblock, this particular thought becomes blurry.

To look on the positive side, these acts of impatience sometimes define and prioritize our passions. There are some things in life, we keep coming back to. They keep crossing our path, until we accept or discard it completely.

It is only when we are too passionate about something that we give it all and achieve it. In my perspective, life is all about achieving milestones, however small it maybe. And the smaller the aim, the better. Small achievements or goal completion give us that something motivation to keep us going in our monotonous lives. Don’t we love it, when we have a small but surprising bonus, or the happiness to beat out our rival in a cricket match, or for the nerds, the completion of a level that had been a pain in the arse for so long. So, basically what I want to say is that patience is a key stakeholder and companion in our ‘Harvey Dent’ or ‘Two Face’ phase.

So, the actual and only roadblock that we face is our will to submit to the circumstances to give up or to dust ourselves up and keep up the fight. Even though it may become boring, but it won’t be fruitless.

In the words of Paolo Coelho

“You can think of yourself as a victim and suffer throughout your life or you can think of yourself as an adventurer who is always ready to move on and experience the best out of life.”

Image Courtesy: Google Images

Mumbai Diaries - Part 1(The One with the Introduction)

Its a friday evening. 4 friends(Atush, Gaurav, Nauman, Karan) were talking in their Andheri office about how they never went on a trip, where there would be only friends, booze and carelessness. One of them, say Gaurav gave the idea 'Lets go for a trip tomorrow to Alibaug by ferry. Everyone seemed excited, everyone looked onboard until Atush explained the plan, 'So, I have heard that one has to take ferry at Churchgate at 7.30 AM as its very busy there.

Atush started to calculate loudly, '7.30 means, we will have to reach the place by 6.30, which means I will have to start from 4.30 in the morning, for which I will have to wake up at 2.30 to prepare myself, for which I have to leave office by 12.30 today.
Then they all looked at the clock, it was 11.30. 
'If I start now, I will make it to the ferry at 6.30', Atush said.
Everyone's face saddened. 'Dude, leave it please' Gaurav said dropping his shoulders.
'Lets plan for a Sports Bar then', Nauman advised.
'Yeah' everyone cheered. 

That was life in Mumbai, where the most plausible hangout place, ironically was the office itself. But these guys were going to learn it the hard way.

So the next morning, Atush started by his car very early, infact earlier than everybody as he wanted to surprise his friends that he is not a late comer everytime. Gaurav and Nauman lived in the same area, so they were coming together via the very famous and reliable local trains. Karan had to come by bus as he lived in central line and the destination was in western line, so it didn't make a lot of sense to take local and change it again. Gaurav & Nauman reached local train station at dadar and the intricate and intertwined queue was nearly the length of train itself. Gaurav & Nauman went for different lines, for obvious reasons. After fighting off the counter-guy for 'change', Gaurav comes off victorious and now they move to the platforms.

Karan starts from his home to the nearest bus-stop. Just as he is about to reach the stop, he sees his bus leaving. Karan runs a little, but in vain. He comes back to the stop cursing his luck about the bus timings. He looks at his watch, there is still a lot of time. Little does he know that Mumbai traffic makes you pay for every missed bus. 

Atush starts his engine along with the music playing. He still is superexcited about the virtual get-together of the 4 Mumbai friends. 
Well that is Mumbai, where meeting of a complete group is so rare that once a group accomplishes a full-show, it is quickly dubbed as a reunion.
Atush still is smelling like his deo and revs up his engine to full speed from his home. His excitement takes a full U-turn as he joins the auto and car lines crawling up at 20 kmhr. His mind quickly goes into calculation of 20km at 20kmph mode.

Gaurav & Nauman are very close by their station. The train nearly stops at their station and just when they are happily stepping down on the platform, they are greeted by a rush of Virar heading commute, which is nothing less than the Kumbh visitors, ready to kill just for the sake of touching their destination. Nauman somehow makes it to the platform feeling violated, when he realizes Gaurav hasn't yet made it yet. He shouts for Gaurav, hearing his faint voice amongst the shouts of 'Pude station! Malad(Please don't forget to add the irritating tone as well)!'.

He tries to make out what Gaurav is shouting, he hears 'BC..... is that my station?'. He thinks hard but it doesn't make a lot of sense to him, so he decides to wait at the station for Gaurav. 
As he turns around disappointed and kicking dust, he sees a girl who is nervously eyeing him. He smiles as the train leaves the station. He had no intentions of reaching to the Sports Bar now.

To Be Continued...