The day that just wasn't mine...

May 31st, Saturday:

Bombay city works on Saturdays too. 'Be a Mumbaikar when you are in Mumbai (and definitely not a North-Indian).' Thinking so, and deciding to work on a Saturday, less partly excited to see the results of my code and more partly excited to read the rediff and cric-info reviews on how the Royals thulped the Dare Devils, I woke up at 7.50 to take the only TIFR bus at 8 from Wadala. Having developed the knack of getting ready in 3 min after waking up at 7.50, which includes taking bath, answering calls- the not-so-unnatural ones- and the other routine things; and going to an 8'O clock class half a minute early, I executed it to more than utmost perfection. I looked at my watch. It was still 7.50. I was slowly walking towards the bus, trying to resolve this paradox of apparent singularity of doing finite amount of activity in zero time whence I suddenly spotted the bus taking off. What followed was me chasing the bus in the typical tam-hero-bus-chase way and shouting in the typical-sayan-oye-oye way. The driver responded to the latter of my efforts and stopped the bus with everybody in the bus taking a scornful glance at me. I ran and got into the bus, just to realize that the mood of the people inside, didnot change. I heard people murmuring, and one thing I was sure was that, it was all about me. I saw my watch again, unable to understand the apparent 'before-time' mentality of the Mumbaikars. After all even they are Indians. It is 7.50 still.


'Eureka', I cracked the paradox. The apparent singularity of doing a finite activity in zero time is as a result of flawed measurement of time, which in this case may be attributed to a motion-handicapped hands ( seconds, minutes and hours) of my watch- which has been used as the measuring device throughout the experiment. With a sense of satisfaction of solving the puzzle, seeing it as an indication of my enhanced 'research' capability, I proceeded backwards from the entrance of the bus just to find two seats empty in the last row.

TIFR buses have this unconventional ability of shock amplification which keeps increasing as a function of your distance from the driver. Microserrations on the Bombay roads are manifested in the form of the back seaters flying in the air during almost all the time of their travel. The average position of a typical back-seater would be 1 foot above the seat-level with a standard deviation of one foot. This is precisely the reason why people crowd in the front seats and leave the more privileged seats to the late comers like me.

Resigning to my fate for the next 40 minutes, I sat in the last seat with Mr.Sun welcoming me through his rays. And yes, the road is straight and treeless, the sky is cloudless and my glass window, completely reflectionless. As if to forget the upcoming difficulties, I greeted my neighbor with a smile, without having a slightest indication that my smile could remove the safety valve of the boiling anger in him. 'Dude,' he started- 'We have been waiting here for you since half-an-hour. blah...blah and blah...' The counsel went for long enough time, but again, I have no records of quantification because of my stopped watch. During the event of his animated counseling- animations including the hand-waving, in them- I somehow peeked into his watch and noted all this was just for being 10 min late. Anyways, the next 40 minutes passed by with nothing less than expected happening.

I entered the lab to see my computer switched off . Reason, I figured out again with my enhanced researching capabilities was a power cut, the previous night and my comp not being equipped with a UPS. 'OMG', 10 more hours for the code to show me the result. I set my code running and was peacefully following the rediff/cric info cricket updates, the ndtv, cnn-ibn, the hindu and the times news. I gave a final try to get the 'IPL final' tickets just to know that the starting cost of the available tickets is 6000 bucks- my one month's stipend. I convinced myself and put a mail convincing my IITB friends that 'all this is a waste of time and money. We are all here to achieve higher and nobler goals.' Irked by my vetti fart and in an attempt to change the topic 'Mal' pinged me saying- that nights plan was Siddhivinayak temple. I didnot want to miss the siddhi and hence readily agreed. The plan's execution was to be as follows: 'Reach Dadar station by 8 PM. Send Castrol off by Dadar-Chennai express. Meet the others there and everyone set out for the temple. ' Fine, agreed.

Excited about the evening, I spent the day vettily reading others' blogs and commenting on them, and of course chatting. At around 6.30 my code seemed to have given me a familiar result. The result which I saw a couple of days back. Once again with the 'budding researchers' capabilities, I figured out, I forgot to change the parameters and ran the same old code. Frustrated, I switched off the comp, wound up for the day and set out to the beach. Spending some time in solitude, I took the TIFR bus again, this time to CST and guess what, the first seat this time- as if it would have mattered: Colaba roads are too good that even the TIFR buses cannot trouble their passengers when they are on them (seriously).

At CST, I took a ticket to Dadar and striaght went into the train as if to give an impression to the observing few (actually none), that I am not new to Bombay, not atleast to CST. I made myself comfortable in a seat and the train started. Now started the big trouble. I donot exactly know when Dadar comes. I have always travelled to Kanjurmarg (7 stations ahead of Dadar), but never to Dadar.Hence I know all the stations that come after Dadar but not before. Nevertheless, I reminded myself, the fact that my intution always gave me the correct sense of direction and destination (really!!). It was already 7.30. My source of time was the watch at the CST, btw. Stations kept coming, train started getting crowded. At this point I would love to quote wiki on Mumbai suburban railway which runs as follows:

'Due to its extensive reach across the 'Mumbai Metropolitan Region', and its intensive use by the local urban population, overcrowding has grown to be a compelling problem (5,000 + passengers are packed into a 9-car rake during peak hours, as against the rated carrying capacity of 1,700). This has resulted in what is known as Super-Dense Crush Load of 14 to 16 standing passengers per square metre of floor space. Trains on the suburban line are on average more than 4 minutes apart, contributing to the problem of overcrowding. The impending introduction of new higher speed rakes may help address the issue.'

Wiki couldn't have been more correct. Some time when the train stopped, I asked somebody -who made his way inside just then having struggled since two stops before that- shedding all my shyness and probable fears of not being able to communicate in Hindi fluently, 'Bhaiyya, yeh kis station hai?' Answer I got, 'Dadar' .See, again my intution worked. Huh, now is the time for me to get down. I stood up and tried moving an inch, whence the train took off from Dadar. Okay, Matunga then, I thought. Zero outflux and only influx at Matunga. and I have been pushed an inch away from the gate. Then I made an intelligent move. Kurla is a station where all the passengers near the entrance are thrown out of the train. I had such an experience earlier. Until then I thought Kurla was a danger station. Not any more. It's my saviour in such a situation. From Matunga to Kurla, I progressed to some position in the vicinity of the gate. And yes before event the train could stop at Kurla, I found myself outside the train, almost about to collide some sitting-bench. Having controlled myself and having admired my intelligent move, I proceeded to the other platform, just to find the return train too equally crowded, both inside the train and outside it. For some strange reason, I found the vendors coupe relatively accommodative. Yes, I got into that and spent the next 10 minutes near the door-whence even that was getting crowded. So Matunga left and next is Dadar. While entering Dadar, I realised that my side of the door doesnot have a platform. So again Parel and then back? Am I doing some damped harmonic motion around Dadar? 'No', I decided. 'Let me get down on the track. Luckily for me, no train was there on the track on which I got down.

I entered the Dadar main station again to realize that I forgot to ask Castrol's coach number. So I was doing a binary-search then. Searching for either Castrol or a telephone booth. I found Castrol first. Huh, some sigh of relief. On approaching him, I found there was only Castrol there and no Mal, with whom I had to go to the temple. As if having sensed my puzzling expression , Castrol said 'Mal left just now. He was waiting for you all the time.' Without giving me any time to reply he immediately called Mal. Adding to my frustration hidden under the mask of composure, Mal's the phone was switched off.

I was then reminded of a very apt gult adage 'Asale koti, aa pai kallu taaganu, aa pai daiyyam pattenu, aa pai cheema kuttenu' (which transliterates to 'Anyway a monkey, added to which its drunk, added to which its haunted, added to which an ant bit it.') Finally for some reason Mal called Castrol back whence I snatched the cell from Casti and ordered Mal to be near S6 of the Dadar express. When I cut the call, the train started, meaning the mark of the location I mentioned to Mal is completely erased. 'Come what might, I am waiting there for how much ever time it may take,' I thought. Finally after some 10 minutes I pointed out Mal aimlessly searching for me. Immediately, I waved hands and met him. Fine, mission 'Siddhi Vinayak' now to get 'siddhi,' ofcourse.

Mal warned me about the TC's who were fining people for not possessing platform tickets. Before the conversation could end, we spotted one and Mal was trying to escape from him, indicating me to do it. I royally walked across him for I had a ticket, the CST to the Dadar one. The scene there was buckets and buckets of tears from some ladies who didnot possess the requisite tickets and an adamant ticket collector. 'Ticket', he asked. Expecting it, I gave the ticket, the only one I had ofcourse. He looked at it for a while and said 'this is not valid.' 'You need to possess a platform ticket.' 'Oh!', I replied,' I never knew it. I got down at the other end, rushed onto this platform to send my friend off and now I am getting back.' 'Hmm, the funda is this is the main station and local train tickets donot work here,' he said in a soft pedagogical way. 'Fine, in that case next time I'll do that'. Well, I never said this. When I said 'fine', he said '150'. Then I had to act. I tried explaining him how new to the city I was, that I have never had experience in north India and especially in local trains blah blah and the usual senti, though not a drop of tear came from my eyes unlike my lady counterparts who were still there. Just to prove my South-Indian origin, in the middle of some conversation I said, ' Saar, enna saar idu,' and was thinking about the tamil version of what to say next. 'Idu ellam regular stories, appa. Fine pay panni, ponge', replied the TC. Okay, I wasn't so helpless anytime. I never expected a TC in Dadar railway station to speak better Tamil than I do, that too when his name happens to be some 'Shinde', as written on his badge. So detatching myself from this money minded world, with no sense of losing out the valuable 150 bucks with which I could have 20 Wada-Paavs, I gave it off to him. He said ' thank you, sir.' 'Nice send off, atleast,' I thought.

Finally we set out to Siddhi Vinayak temple admist all Vighnas since morning. Mal bought me a wada-paav, pitying my situation. I ate and then set off to IITB , for I didn't want to take any more troubles alone. We wandered across the streets of Mumbai in our search for Dadar station during our return from the temple, for we got no empty taxi. Finally reached it, took some train- which we later realised is slower than the slow trains. 4-5 trains have overtaken this train. We were the silent-standing spectators. Finally got down at Kanjur Marg and set to IIT B in an auto- halted it miles before Mal's residence to have a sugar cane juice. Ill fate again, there's no kind of juice what-so-ever in that shop. Walked from here to the hostel, drank water and as a short-respite from the bad day, I had, I heard Chennai won the match against Punjab. I rushed to the common room and rested in peace there.