2nd July 2014
Place: Vasant Vihar, Thane
The rains have begun to make their presence felt. Pune had to make do with a scanty visit by the monsoons while Bombay - as usual - meekly accommodated a downpour.
It began early in the morning. About the time the squirrels in the apartment block were on their way up the bathroom pipes to sit on kitchen window sills and sift through last night's leftovers.
It splashed a few drops down on the window panes that kept me inside my bedroom. And then it lashed the tin roofs and decided to play a cacophony of sorts.
I had work to go to. So I did not quite pay attention to the mist the rain had whipped into the air. I wound up the dream I was in and made my way through the bathroom and breakfast, and then, I took a rickshaw to my offices in Airoli.
Airoli - or that part of Airoli that houses my offices - is not exactly a place I will invite you to stay in nor socialise in either. It sits along the characterless Thane-Belapur road and doesn't quite mind being there at all. To me and anyone who thinks the way I do, the place seems flung there as if it were a stubborn child whose parents had had enough of its tantrums.
And it does have quite a set of tantrums for sure:
You can imagine the urban desert that it is then. Even so, it's still tolerable and definitely nowhere close to being the Rann of Kutch that Pune is! In Pune (Pimpri-Chinchwad especially), rickshaws never want to go where you want to, their drivers ask for a bomb, restaurants are on the brink of extinction, and city buses turn up merely to sign the muster and show everyone that they do exist!
Here at least the buses do turn up and do make it a point to become an alternative mode of transport. Not so in Pune. But I digress. Let's come back to where I go to work in Airoli.
So, as I said, it has its tantrums. I tolerate them well, but everyone doesn't.
The other day, I was walking about the office premises with a colleague. I happened to mention that this place seems rather isolated. And then I smiled. That's all I did. And that's something I should not have. For that got read as an invitation to dissect the place. And dissect the place the colleague did - in 256-bit Eastman colour!
"Oh this place?!"she exclaimed,"It's in the middle of nowhere! It's as if the whole world got made and then this was thrown here at the last minute to fill a gap of some sort! No bloody hotels, no places to roam around, nothing - NOTHING at all!"
I readied myself to say that even so it is at least decently connected when my colleague added,"And the rickshawwallahs?! They insist on not going by the meter!"
"Did you try the bus?"
"The bus?" She repeated as if it were a rare species, "The bus?"
"Yes the bus? There are quite a few of them that turn up here."
"Oh yes they may be. But it's so inconvenient to get into them. And who has the time to run for them."
I explained that they halt long enough for everyone to get in.
"But even then ya! I am not travelling by them. It's such a headache!"
And that's when we came to the lobby of my department.
"Oh here we are!" I said, relieved that I had an excuse to cut her short.
"Ah yes of course!"
"See you soon?"
"Yes, see you!"
I did wave out, nod my head, and flash a smile broader than the usual one. But I did not crease the skin around my eyes. Rather my face did not do that.
And that was enough of a sign for me to know I would avoid the headache I walked with a few minutes ago.
I went back to my seat and dealt with the palpitations of the day and a minor attack of anxiety.
Business - as you see - was at its usual best...
Place: Vasant Vihar, Thane
The rains have begun to make their presence felt. Pune had to make do with a scanty visit by the monsoons while Bombay - as usual - meekly accommodated a downpour.
It began early in the morning. About the time the squirrels in the apartment block were on their way up the bathroom pipes to sit on kitchen window sills and sift through last night's leftovers.
It splashed a few drops down on the window panes that kept me inside my bedroom. And then it lashed the tin roofs and decided to play a cacophony of sorts.
I had work to go to. So I did not quite pay attention to the mist the rain had whipped into the air. I wound up the dream I was in and made my way through the bathroom and breakfast, and then, I took a rickshaw to my offices in Airoli.
Airoli - or that part of Airoli that houses my offices - is not exactly a place I will invite you to stay in nor socialise in either. It sits along the characterless Thane-Belapur road and doesn't quite mind being there at all. To me and anyone who thinks the way I do, the place seems flung there as if it were a stubborn child whose parents had had enough of its tantrums.
And it does have quite a set of tantrums for sure:
- It's five minutes from the railway line that connects Vashi to Thane. Yet, no train stops there for no station has been built there. This when my offices get around 500 or more slaves to slog while Mindspace and Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City (DAKC) enslaves yet another 1,000 or so.
- Rickshaws do amble about the area but do not ply by the meter.
- And only two restaurants try to please the crowd that is fed up of the company canteen!
You can imagine the urban desert that it is then. Even so, it's still tolerable and definitely nowhere close to being the Rann of Kutch that Pune is! In Pune (Pimpri-Chinchwad especially), rickshaws never want to go where you want to, their drivers ask for a bomb, restaurants are on the brink of extinction, and city buses turn up merely to sign the muster and show everyone that they do exist!
Here at least the buses do turn up and do make it a point to become an alternative mode of transport. Not so in Pune. But I digress. Let's come back to where I go to work in Airoli.
So, as I said, it has its tantrums. I tolerate them well, but everyone doesn't.
The other day, I was walking about the office premises with a colleague. I happened to mention that this place seems rather isolated. And then I smiled. That's all I did. And that's something I should not have. For that got read as an invitation to dissect the place. And dissect the place the colleague did - in 256-bit Eastman colour!
"Oh this place?!"she exclaimed,"It's in the middle of nowhere! It's as if the whole world got made and then this was thrown here at the last minute to fill a gap of some sort! No bloody hotels, no places to roam around, nothing - NOTHING at all!"
I readied myself to say that even so it is at least decently connected when my colleague added,"And the rickshawwallahs?! They insist on not going by the meter!"
"Did you try the bus?"
"The bus?" She repeated as if it were a rare species, "The bus?"
"Yes the bus? There are quite a few of them that turn up here."
"Oh yes they may be. But it's so inconvenient to get into them. And who has the time to run for them."
I explained that they halt long enough for everyone to get in.
"But even then ya! I am not travelling by them. It's such a headache!"
And that's when we came to the lobby of my department.
"Oh here we are!" I said, relieved that I had an excuse to cut her short.
"Ah yes of course!"
"See you soon?"
"Yes, see you!"
I did wave out, nod my head, and flash a smile broader than the usual one. But I did not crease the skin around my eyes. Rather my face did not do that.
And that was enough of a sign for me to know I would avoid the headache I walked with a few minutes ago.
I went back to my seat and dealt with the palpitations of the day and a minor attack of anxiety.
Business - as you see - was at its usual best...
Comments