Nip in the air

For the first time this year as I stepped out from my bath, I felt a slight chill run up my body. Of course, this slight chill shall soon be bandied by the Mumbaikars and all local media as the arrival of winters to Mumbai or if some journalist is feeling lucky, even a cold wave. For me, at best it is disappointing and at worst, a reminder of what it could have been. Having spent almost all my life (except the four years in South India and 3 years here in Mumbai) in the north of Vindhyas, winter has had a special significance for me.

The arrival of winters, whether I was in Delhi for my schooling or job, or if I was in Patna/Buxar growing up, was marked by many distinct happenings. One of them, of course, was the grand revival of the quilts and the woolens. Dumped aside in some big box for the rest of the year, the woolens used to make their presence felt as Diwali came to pass. Starting with the half sleeved pullovers and the thin blankets and ending up at full bodied jackets and heavy duty quilts, the smell of mothballs combined with the heat trapped inside them after a day of being shown the sunlight form some of my happier childhood memories.

As I grew up, winters also became the opportunity to show off. Unlike girls who can actually heat things up in summers with their multi colored apparel extending up to multiple standards of length and size, guys hardly have options on what to wear. It is only in winters that the blazers and the jackets, the tweeds and the denim come out in full force. I started realizing this once I moved to Delhi from a sheltered Patna and became a part of the pack. The jacket that Mananmama bought me from the local Tibetan market in Patna was a prized possession then and continues to be with me, 15 years down the line. And then came the suits as well...starting with a dumb beige suit to the now-often-unused smart black suit, this sartorial journey has been a pleasant recollection for me as well.

Probably the most favorite recollection I have of winters has been the one associated with the Christmas cheer, the one I witnessed in Paris. Having heard about the terrific atmosphere pre-Christmas in the western world, I was not to be disappointed as my exchange program during MBA chanced to happen in a way as to be spread over the months of September to December. The best time to visit Europe, the winters were in full flow by the time we were starting to prepare for our journey back to India. From ice skating to my first ever experience with natural snowfall, I could see all of it and I loved every moment...cherishing every experience.

The Christmas spirit, the warmth of new year that I had seen so much in movies, read so much about in books, heard so much of...was all there. Shops were decorated as if all light and flower arrangements in the world would run out tomorrow and today was the only day left to use them. Cafes were doing brisk business, people were walking about with smiles on their faces, and even the normally stiff metro co-passengers appeared to have that sense of joviality reflected on their faces.

It was quite a contrast from the winters I had seen in Delhi, for example where it becomes a challenge and an ordeal at times instead of people actually enjoying the party. The living standards starkly different, it is understandable I guess, if those who can't afford one square meal a day hate the season that exposes them at their most vulnerable, chilling the very bones of their existence...at times to the very end. But then the other strata in Delhi enjoys the season as well as any of their counterparts elsewhere in the world. You can always find droves of people (including me and my friends) around stalls of anything hot and edible...chaat, rolls, momos... Even a simple cup of coffee with friends and family turns into a celebration of the season that winter is.

Now in Mumbai, where the different seasons simply don't seem to exist, life (just like the weather) seems to chug along in the boring monochrome. The ceiling fan operates in full gusto in my bedroom whereas cold is busy gripping the sunlight out of other cities I know of...the contrast is stark. Is there an option but to bow down to the will and designs of that eternal being who controls all this...makes all these stark differences possible, rules our lives and of all that around us with such absolute control?

Birthday celebrations and Patna eat-outs

It was really sweet of Shanu to have been waiting for me to cut his birthday cake. He has always been like that...a little partial towards me and that is to be expected, too. Despite being a cousin, I guess I am more of a brother to him than anyone could have been and he is the same to me. Ever since he started identifying people, he has seen me around and has spent quite a major chunk of his childhood playing, fighting, going to school, having fun with me. Having stayed with my maternal grand parents for my school education, I have always had the same amount of affection for Shanu as he took away from me, the mantle of being the youngest in the household.

I am glad that the weekend and the fact that I am doing my training in Kolkata (which is so close to Patna) gave me a chance to go to Patna and be a part of Shanu's birthday celebrations...or as much of celebrations as the cake-cutting was. The ceremony part was actually left for the morrow...the Saturday, when all the bachcha party went to the movies. Patna, incidentally, has some good cinema halls and given the low entertainment tax or some such reason, the rates are pretty cheap, too. I don't think that it is possible to watch a movie in Dolby DTS in an air conditioned theatre for as low a price as twenty bucks...that is Patna cinema for you.

Well, we did not get the tickets of Kaal for twenty and that is another aspect of it altogether. The poor me was given the charge of arranging for the tickets while Shanu had the responsibility of getting hold of all my cousins (five of them, actually) from different places in Patna and bringing them along to the theatre. The queue at the counter, despite all my good intentions, was impossible and with the free swing that the policewallahs were giving to their sticks, I thought it prudent to stay a little distant from the proceedings. Staying away from the proceedings, the only option was the dus-ka-bees...which actually was bees-ka-sau in my case...that is, for people who still did not understand (duh!!!), the tickets worth 20 bucks cost me a hundred bucks a-piece when bought from the typical Rangeela black marketeer.

I had hoped that Sunday would be a chilled out day at home with nothing to do except catch on to loads of gossip and apart from a few instances of going out, once to get Shanu's bike repaired and another time to stuff something in at one of the new eat-outs, I was at home. The rains on Saturday had made the weather amazingly pleasant and with no sun and sweat to bother me after a long time (3 weekends in Kolkata do seem to be a long time if you consider the amount of sweat that you can generate in all these days), I was having fun.

Even the eat-out venture was good, despite my stomach playing tricks with me. I did not have the speciality Golgappaes at the place but did have a good Baskin Robbins scoop to cool my stomach down, or so Shanu convinced me of doing. The Bollywood Treats, as the place calls itself, is located right down the Maurya Clarke Hotel (Patna's only five-star), and has a huge area, given its location. With a mini amusement park for kids in the lawns outside and some video games inside the restaurant, the place with its theme of Bollywood has come up quite well. The right side of the menu does give a few shakes to the left side of the chest but then, that is to be expected now...what with Patna's middle class competing with the rest as far as purchasing power goes.

Luckily, my wait-listed ticket in the Sunday night Amritsar Howrah mail was confirmed and I had a comfortable journey back. The journey to Patna, earlier in the weekend, was not too bad, either and was my first experience in the Jana-Shatabdi or the poor man's Shatabdi, as some call it. The train reached Howrah a little late today morning and the queue at the pre-paid taxi booth was quite long, too. It was only at 11 that I was able to reach office but Sunita, my sub-guide, was pretty cool about it. It seems that today's meetings are scheduled for the second half of the day. The second half of the day has just arrived and the work is beckoning. This week should be busy work wise, with the presentation to the PwC UK person also due in the middle of the week...I just hope that I am able to stand up to it.