 |
| Telling my Bandra boys about my Bandra story |
I decided to write this ode to Bandra when my friend Denise D’Silva Sankhe told me that today is the most important day of the ongoing Bandra Feast. ‘The feast of the nativity. The biggest day of the (Mt Mary) Fair.‘It’s a pity that it’s pouring now and I really hope the skies ease up for the devotees.
I remember the first time that I heard of the Mumbai suburb of Bandra. This was in Calcutta, 1988. I was in school and the song Julie Julie featuring Mithun Chakraborty and Mandakini was a rage. My friends and I used to sing it. One of the lines from it went, ‘hum-e Sandra from Bandra nahin mangta.’ I don’t think that the word Bandra meant anything to me then.
It did in 1997, when I was placed in IMRB Calcutta from B School. I was told that I would have to spend a couple of months in Mumbai on training as my boss in Calcutta was on maternity leave. I chose to join qualitative research and had told our office head in the recruitment interview, ‘I am not a numbers person, and would not join quant unless you insist.’ My boss, who joined after her maternity leave, later told me that our ‘super boss’ had thought I was rather cocky basis the job interview but that he changed his mind as we got to work together. He came to my book launch in Delhi years later. Being in qualitative research meant that I was the rare male in a women dominated field. The story of my life if you take the fact that I studied sociology in college, later joined a Buddhist organisation which has more active women then men (possibly because men are traditionally uncomfortable with spirituality and philosophy?). I became a food blogger ten years after I started working later and a cat parent after another thirteen years. Both of which are associated more with women than men. I have began consulting a therapist from last November and have found this to be very useful in giving me the clarity I so sought. Again possibly something more women are open to than men, which is rather silly because I think that as a gender we are possibly more in need of therapy than women, if not as much.
I digress. None of the above has anything to do with the story. Or has it? I will leave that to you to decode. Or perhaps I will discuss this with my shrink next time.
My predecessor in the job at IMRB was two years my senior at Presidency College and like me, he too had done his MBA from IISWBM. He went by the rather intriguing nickname of Potty in college which was rather awkward when he went to watch a match at the Eden and girls from his class spotted him and called out to say hi. He had left IMRB to study in the US. I was to replace him and and he was happy to share some gyan with me, but then which Bengali does not? He had gone through a similar training stint as mine in Mumbai on joining before he returned to Kolkata. I wanted to know about his experience as I had never lived away from home before. I had visited Mumbai the previous year but did not know much beyond Fort, Churchgate and Tardeo.
He said that office would possibly put me in a PG in Bandra. A cute residential area with the sea nearby, he said. He added that it was largely Christian dominated, which made it pretty hip and that it had many small but trendy eating places. He had stayed at a PG at Mehboob Studio which was close to Bandstand. This was way before Shahrukh Khan made the stretch famous.
I remember my first evening in Bandra. It was in 1997. End July. I had come to Mumbai for Lyceum, the IMRB orientation programme. It used to be held at Manoribel in Gorai then. We had a free Sunday and were allowed to go into town if we wanted to. McDonalds had just opened in India and there was one at Bandra. I wanted to check it out. A batchmate of mine at IMRB, who was a good friend of mine but whose name I do not recall anymore, offered to accompany me. He had done his bachelors at Wilson College and knew Mumbai more than us. A bunch of us went to Borivili station to take a local. Some were going to Juhu, others to Churchgate, some to Dadar and so on. The train came. The rush was not like any we had ever soon. The two of us made it on to the train. A third, Probir who was a pro in Calcutta local trains apparently, had to get off as his glasses went flying in the crowd!
 |
| You didn’t know about McDonlads? Baby Loaf and little Nimki sat by me as it began to thunder and rain |
Friend 1 (whose name I have regrettably forgotten) and I got off at Bandra station. We saw a number of people in a queue for autos outside. We walked up to two girls. Collegians possibly.
“Is there a McDonalds at Bandra and how does one reach it,” I asked.
The girls looked at us as if we had come from a Moffusil town and said in a heavily American accented English…the new age Bandra accent as I realised later, “yes, it is at Linking Road and you can walk down straight.”
Another Bollywood connection! This was the Linking Road in the Salman Khan and Raveena Tandon song which went ‘Kabhi Linking Road, kabhi Turner Road,’ I realised. We walked down the desolate stretch from the station and then the jazzy shopping stretch at Linking Road before we reached McDonalds and happily had our fill of fillet o’fish (what did you expect two Bengali’s to order?) and fries. After which my friend took me to the Baskin Robins at Linking Road, it was a large parlour then and not the dusty kiosk which you see now, and introduced me to the joys of the Brownie a la mode. Something K and I would often have when dating a few years later. Here and at the parlour at Marine Drive which too is shut now.
I remember my first night at Bandra. It was the Sunday after I lost my Mc Donalds virginity. Lyceum was over. I left Manoribel with my colleagues from Calcutta and went to the hotel in Juhu where they were to stay for the night before taking the Gitanjali to Calcutta the next day. I bid goodbye to them and left for my PG, which indeed was in Bandra, in an auto. I suddenly began to feel very sad. Alone for the first time in my life and the half an hour long ride gave time for this sink in. I began to feel increasingly sorry for myself. Reaching my PG did not help. I had seen the place the week before and it offered nothing to look forward to. It was at Nutan Nagar near the Bandra Station. The courtyard was filthy, the buildings crumbling, the staircase to the apartment was dank and dark. More Shyam Benegal Mumbai than Karan Johar! I had to share the room with an unknown roommate. I had had my own room ever since I was born and this was not something that I was keen on. The toilet was Indian. Again something I was not keen on. The family was vegetarian and non-vegetarian food was not allowed. The elderly couple that run it were Punjabis, not comfortable in English and belonged to a world far away from any I had known. I was miserable. It wasn’t anything like I had thought it would be.
I went out seeking the sea beach of Bandra, which Potty had told me about, as the sea always made me happy. I was rather shocked when I was dropped at the Carter Road stretch by an autowallah. “Bandra ka samundar yeh hi hain?” I asked incredulously. There was no promenade at Carter Road then. Just a pebbled path, with lovers necking by the rocks, in parked cars with dark windows. Some people squatting further down the rocks doing, you know … ahead lay a ship which was stuck between the rocks. Just as it seemed I was. Metaphorically speaking.
Little did I know that night, that Bandra would become my home in a year or so. That the memory of all the new friends I made, with whom I would hang after work in town… and occasionally at Bandra…watching night shows at Gaiety Galaxy, downing Royal Stags, Smirnoffs and Baccardis at Temptation and Toto’s, having delicious food with funny sounding names at Thai Baan, wolfing Mexican food with a tomato overdose at Sheriff, downing chilli chicken and hakka noodles at Saybaa which was so different from that to be found in Kolkata, tandoori chicken, kaali dal and alu parathas at Khane Khas… would call me back to Mumbai a year after I went back to Kolkata, as the cities were now called. This time for good.
Little did I know that I would end up staying at the same PG when I returned to Mumbai even though I had arranged to share a flat at Bandra with friends I had made at work. One look at the beer bottles and pizza boxes strewn across the apartment and I ran to a PCO to call my PG aunty. Like my Baby Loaf, who runs out when the door is open, I liked to pretend that I was this cool dude who wanted his freedom. But I did want a neat bed and folded clothes and a sense of order in life. “Aaap bas a jao,” said PG aunty, though her husband had earlier told me on phone that nothing was available. They had just made two wooden sectioned ‘single rooms’ in their house. Aunty put me in the one which faced the Bandra talav. “Uncle ko kuchh mat bolo, main dekh lunga.” She kept me at shared room rates, though I was her first single room guest. My first ever ‘room upgrade’ and the most meaningful one in my life. PG aunty passed away a few years back and with the advantage of time, I realised that she was a quasi mother to me and that her care was the reason why I managed to stay on in Mumbai despite the initial tough years.
Work at PQR (qual in IMRB) was stressful. A deep rooted sense of loneliness would see me walk down Linking Road on Sunday evenings when I had no plans with friends, or catch a late night show of whatever was running at Gaiety Galaxy, or go to Joggers Park and walk alone if I was done with work early. There were many others who whiled their time away playing solitaire or tetris on the office comp, sitting in an air-conditioned environment, claiming their dinner allowance and leaving. Not because they specifically wanted these. It’s just because they were away from home and very lonely. Not me. I was too Bengali to spend a minute more than required at work, even if I had no other plans.
Very few of the friends that I had made back then, who had come to Mumbai to work from out of town as I had, have stayed on in Mumbai. Perhaps none!
I was floating along in life. I had no plans. I changed jobs and moved to FCB Ulka Advertising. There I met a girl who wore thick glasses and came to work in round necked tee shirts, chequered pyjamas and platform heels. A Parsi from Dadar whom I fell in love with over many lunches and walks back together from work. We spent a year dating before we got married. Many of our evenings were spent having dinner at places in Bandra such as Saybaa, Thai Baan, Saybaa, Just Around the Corner, Toto’s and Khane Khas before I dropped her home.
Bandra was the unanimous choice on where we wanted stay after we got married. Tough as it was to afford for agency folks in the early stages of their careers then. Impossible today I am told.
We rented an apartment at Khar. We came to Pali Naka to shop. We could not afford to eat out after a year of dating. So we shopped and cooked in our tiny kitchen.
Two years later, based on a ridiculous leap of faith, we bought a tiny apartment in Bandra. That’s where I began blogging, using the office laptop, in 2007. We then moved to a rented place near Pali Market, which was larger, and rented out our own apartment. A new Candies branch opened next door as if to welcome us. That is where I wrote my first book but I am getting ahead of the the story.
Our earlier place was too small to call anyone over, but here we could do so. I made many friends through my blog from across the world whom we invited home. We had many lovely parties here, where I cooked and K fussed over the guests. She bought me my first laptop and then a writing desk which I still use, and I had my first study. It had French windows and I had a nice green stretch to look across though most of my writing was at night after work.
We moved to another rented apartment when our lease got over and the owner wanted to sell the flat. The study here looked onto a fancy unoccupied building which only had security guards walking around in vests and their underwear for some reason. Not the idyllic spot that a writer sought. That’s when I had to move out of research and then went through anxiety and depression before I was pulled back by K with the help of a few close friends, my doctors and my faith in Buddhism. I finally began the next chapter of my life. That as a freelance writer. With no idea of what lay ahead. Driven by a desire to write.
We then managed to mystically buy an apartment in the same building as the one beside the men in sando ganji jangiya. This was when our earlier flat got sold to a builder. I say ‘mystically’ as the currency denomination happened just before the sale and yet the sale happened though most other builders were rescinding on earlier commitments. The apartment was away above our reach but I fell in love with its windows and held my ground till we could buy it. Here I got the study of my dreams. I look onto trees from my desk. Oblivious of whats going on behind me. There’s a bed beside me to nap on if I so wish! Unless either of our mums are staying over.
It was as if we were destined to have this apartment, for this is where you came into our life, Baby Loaf, and a year later your brother little Nimki. My Bandra born sons.
Who would have thought 25 years back, when I sat at Carter Road thinking there was noone more miserable in the world than me, that this is how things would turn out.
That is the magic of Bandra. The blessings of Mother Mary. And there couldn’t be a luckier man than me.
 |
| Telling Loaf about some good news which he in a sense is responsible for. No, not another brother. Or sister! |
