A Bandra kinda guy

6:00 a.m. Barking overheard.
6:02 a.m. You put your head tween your pillow and mattress.  The barking endures.
6:05 a.m. Move over to the left side.  Dig your face into the pillow hard!
6:10 a.m. Curl up inside the covers pretending the barking has stopped.
6:28 a.m. The plan to ignore succeeds and peace prevails.
6:29 a.m. Realisation strikes.  A monster has been let loose.  Scratching sounds at the front door.
6:31 a.m. The whelp yelps.
6:35 a.m. Dreary, rubbing your eyes, you open the first door, look out and with a half wave of the hand go "Bad dawg!"
6:40 a.m. After 5 minutes of trying to convince the dawg it isn't play time yet (as if the idgit would have ever gotten a word of what you just said!), you just give up.
6:46 a.m. You throw on a jacket.  Its pouring outside.  Shorts on, cool breeze blowing, just too lazy to put on track pants, you get out.  Curses! You forgot to take the keys with you.  Locked, till the other lazy bums wake up after 2 hours!
6:50 a.m. After slapping the pooch for around 2 minutes and preaching to her how behaving and discipline is good for her, you knuckle brush her on the head and tug on her collar.
6:53 a.m. Drat! Who the hell forgets to put on socks when going for a jog?! Ah fuck it!

From there on what ensues is pure bliss.  Taking Snowy out for a jog on a rainy Sunday morning, playing ball with her, throwing two sticks in different directions and watching her get confused, roll over beckoning you to tickle her on the tummy.  After 2 hours of dancing and playing around with one of the brattiest pooches on the planet, its time to get her ready for a well deserved nap below the staircase on her soft rug.  Once nestled in all comfy and sleepy-eyed, you tip-toe back upstairs, and after ringing the bell for almost 8-10 times, you just go crash on the bed again.

10:30 a.m. You wake up with a start! Realisation strikes again - its SUNDAY for heaven's sake, give yourself a break.  Ah well, now that you're up might as well make something of it.
10:35 a.m. Fiddling around in the kitchen, making faces at the unwashed pots and pans from last night, you decide Sunday ho ya Monday roz khao ande.
10:36 a.m. The fridge is what would have even an elephant put up notice for room sharing, yet all you see inside is an expired carton of milk and some rotting veggies from a week ago for sure if not a month!
10:40 a.m. You're back out in the rain, this time with an umbrella and oshos on.  Scrambling across the muddy path, a poly-pack of milk for Snowy, 5 eggs and bread make their way into your breakfast menu finally.
10:55 a.m. Too lazy to wash the dishes and then wait for brekky to be cooked properly, crack goes the first egg into a tumbler,  and the second, damn spilled the third, the fourth in and the last one into the container as well.  Give it a good shake, hold your nose and *gulp*. Its gone! Bread. Hmm. No butter, no cheese. Zilch. Ah well, God intended man to eat everything raw and unprocessed, so you gnaw at two slices gorging down gulps of water to get the pieces down your throat.

Reading the day's paper, feet on top of the window sill, rays of sunshine trickling in from the side, sifting through the photo mag, finishing off the next few pages of a book that you've been on for more than a month now, sipping on the carton of juice you forgot outside on the porch last night, time passes by.  The tummy begins to rumble, a pretty good argument to wake the others up and head out for lunch.

Lunch done, time to play with Snowy and Danny again through the next hour or so as they finish off the Pedigree served by the aunty downstairs.  As Danny decides she's become too old to play and cozies into a warm corner, Snowy goes sniffing for hidden treasure and you retire to your bed to watch some TV and probably drift off for an afternoon siesta.

I could go on and describe an entertaining evening out with friends either by the seaside at Carter Road, or sipping on cutting chai at Prithvi, followed with a trip to south Bombay for a sumptuous dinner and beer followed by a night out at Marine Drive and Worli Seaface singing, but that is not the point of this post.  What follows now, is.

Cut to Santa Cruz (E) a.k.a. Kalina - our new abode

I hate this place.

It would suffice to stop at just that, but sitting here in my room, on a Sunday evening sulking, it is probably befitting that I vent out a little.

Sure I now have a room I can call my own, unlike before when we used to sleep on mattresses spread out in the hall.  But if a roach crawling on your bed two nights in a row becomes reason for your roomie to shift base to the swing upstairs, it is not much consolation that you are now the king of a roach infested room!

Sure we have a swing upstairs.  But what is the point if people just love "dying" on it and leaving it a filthy mess having slept and waddled on it as if they were making love to it!

Sure we have an "upstairs" and a "downstairs" in the house.  But what is the point if because of those stairs you spent the first month nursing bruised and swollen knees since they have been made with the intent of surviving a nuclear attack in an underground bunker!

Sure we have airconditioning in EVERY room.  But were you not the one who hates ACs?

Sure we have a TV now that shows ALL the primary colours.  But was it not more fun banging that junk box back in Bandra and doing hajjar natak to get the cable going properly?

Sure we traded up in terms of per head rent we now pay.  But did we not trade DOWN in going away from Bandra?

The list is endless, so is my frustration with having to come over at night and realise its less of a home every day, and more of a pit-stop to get back to the dreary routine of office day in and day out!  Every weekend the sole objective becomes to get out of this rotting hell, which has been hollowing you from the inside, sucking out every drop of happiness.  Lethargy characterises this place.  Its like walking into zombieland after 8 in the night.  The neighbours, if they see you, they cringe, as if we're renowned extortionists and murderers, if not disgusting lepers.  You realise you hate a place too much when "not being able to dry your clothes out in the sun" becomes reason for you to get annoyed even more.

I miss Bandra.  I miss Snowy and Danny.  I miss that life.