02nd January 2011
We attended a communion party yesterday. Everyone whom I had avoided all throughout the year landed up for this event and I had no choice but to sit, stand, smile, say: "Hi! Hello! How are you?" and exclaim: "Oh! I haven't seen you for ages!"
We were invited for lunch so we first headed off to Don Bosco's for the 10 'o' clock mass. Thereafter, being the family we are, we got into an argument about how to travel to Bandra from Matunga.
"Cross the road Mother, we have to cross the road".
"There are no buses from here?"
"No, all of them go towards VT."
"You're sure?"
And sure as hell, I was irritated.
"Mother, this road lies in the direction of VT and that road," I said, pointing out to the lane across, "goes towards Bandra."
"How do you know?"
"Well I know."
"Let's ask someone," she said - this after we had crossed the road - and Daddy and she caught a group of old men. Well, senior citizens to be polite, but they did look like old men. Their scalps had a lot of skin to show. And the hair that decided to cover the rest of their scalps had turned white - perhaps out of the fright their owners' thinking gave them.
Anyway, there they were standing in their shorts that Sunday morning trying to look as if they had gained some of their youth and there was Father Dearest asking them about how to travel to Bandra.
Now I have nothing against such men. It's just that - more often than not - they seem to have decided that their way is the only way to anywhere. And the manner in which they say it it leaves you bereft of the idea that there can be another way there as well. These young old men did just that.
"Oh Bandra!" exclaimed one fellow as if Nirvana had struck him that very moment with one of its guitars, "you will have to cross the road and take one of those buses that side that goes to Tilak Bridge".
"And this side? This side?," persisted Father.
"This side they all go to Sion."
"They all go to Sion," Mother repeated.
"As if I don't know," I snapped.
"Then what are you saying you'll get a bus to Bandra from here?"
"Obviously Mother! You have to change at Sion for none of them go directly to Bandra!"
Yet she wouldn't listen and she began round two of her travel-to-Bandra investigation.
I made a face - a really bad one - and walked off to the bus stop closeby.
A minute later, Mother walked up to me. "See we are not sure whether you travelled from here which is why we are asking around."
"Well Mother," I barked, "I am telling you I know and yet you will not listen! So now, since you and Daddy know so much, you two had might as well lead me there. Even if I know how to get there, I won't open my mouth."
And so, we got into Bus no. 213.
"Daddy is booking the ticket."
"So? Why tell me?" And I bloated my face and decided to utter not a word even though I had quite an urge to deliver a sermon on why they just had to listen to me.
Well the bus ran off towards King's Circle and began to approach Sion. And though I could see Sion circle and knew we'd reach there in a minute, neither Father nor Mother made an attempt to get up. A second later, Father announced from the front - he was sitting in front - that "I have booked tickets to Santacruz depot! It's the last stop. Let's travel comfortably you know. So we'll get down at Santacruz depot and take a rickshaw to Bandra!"
Well, I was livid with rage and I had vowed to not talk at all. But not even my vow stopped me from giggling at this attempt at travelling in comfort!
But my vow, did, however, stop me from saying anything at all. So, we travelled and travelled and travelled for a full hour looking at Kalina, Kalina University, St. Anthony's Church Vakola, and at all the other harassed, hassled streets that passed by as if we were in Mumbai for the first time.
Sometime in between, when Vakola made way for the road to Santacruz station, Father decided he had better give up. He turned to me and said, "From the station no? We'll take a rickshaw. You'll tell him no how to get there?"
Well, he just had to say that an hour ago and we would not have gone right around Mumbai in the first place.
.... To be continued
.... To be continued
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