Goa to Bombay (1)

My first trip this summer. And it was to Goa, from where we had to get to Mumbai. With pit stops of course!

The bougainvillea

We reached Margaon, Goa at 10 in the morning. Getting into a taxi, the feel of a small lazy town soon drifted to us. Our hotel ‘La Flor’ was a small place, in a rundown area with a railway track opposite the hotel. Imagine waking up at midnight because of a train horn!
Of course the first task was to find a good place for lunch. Asking a taxi driver where we would find local food, we set off asking locals for the directions. At Khamat we had a delightful ‘thali’.

A truck on a train!

The hotel was lovely. Small but you could sit out front under a mango tree. The fusion of bougainvillea, mangoes, cats, trains and shouts of children enjoying the summer accompanied by a gentle breeze was enthralling.

In the evening, impatient to shoot a sunset at a beach, I dragged my parents out asking an auto to take us to the closest beach.
We soon reached Colva, which was your typical tourist beach. Cafes, roadside shops selling beach dresses and water sports. A lot of people were parachute sailing, others using jet skis. Frolicking in the surf was fun. After which I settled onto the sand getting some spectacular snaps of the sunset.

Dinner was cold pizza, and cola at a small café by the sea.

The City With The Pulse- Mumbai

This is what I’m missing I thought. It was eight thirty in the evening and I was sitting on the parapet at Marine Drive. The Queen’s Necklace as vibrant and colorful as ever. I watched a boy, probably sixteen or seventeen years of age taking a dog and a pup for a walk. People jogged by listening to music.

Not only did I not have a place like this to walk around in my town, there was no way I could do it alone, especially at night. During different situations friends and I had been forced to use autos instead of walking, thanks to hooligans on the street. Here, you scream, people beat up the guy near you and then ask what is wrong.

True, Mumbai’s a big city, too big for me, a small town girl at heart. But then you have these wonderful opportunities!
 You have restaurants by the sea where you have a karaoke night with DJs. Bookstores with wonderful collections and cozy armchairs tucked away in corners to escape reality, and cafés with scrumptious food. Believe me serious reading makes one hungry.
 

The true essence of Mumbai is, I guess, the way all opposites seem to live together happily. You have your Bollywood superstars, and you have the biggest slum in all of Asia, Dharavi in the same city. You have people selling toys and porno movies on the same street. Buildings that look Tudor and Victorian house banks like HSBC and BSNL.

Mumbai cannot be described in one article. In the coming days there’ll be more I assure you. So keep an eye on this page.

A tryst with Sharman Joshi

A few weeks ago, while taking a walk around Fort area, Mumbai, I noticed a crowd gathered next to Jahangir Art Gallery. Curious, I went and became a part of it. There were whispered conversations from which one could decipher that it was a film shooting, and the star was Sharman Joshi. He came out of his van, and was having a chat with a man before they started shooting. I, being the quintessential shutter-bug immediately took a snap. Unfortunately it came out blurred so I deleted it. A man saw this and came and requested quite politely that I delete the snap saying it’s not allowed.

Telling him that I had already deleted it wasn’t enough. He wanted to see for himself. I really wanted to ask him if he’d like to go through all the 144 snaps I’d taken of Mumbai, that very day.

Ok so maybe snaps like these are taken and released when they aren’t supposed to. But do you think that it’s fair to do so when it’s a public place? For all he knew I could have been taking a picture of the cobbled street, or of the lights.

The streets belong to everyone. Or so they say.

 Apparently they don’t.

If you have a different point of view which you wish to express, please post a comment or write to me at ritealot@gmail.com. You never know, you could be the inspiration for my next article. :)