Category: Stories

City to a “Big” city – snippets

Posted on by Preeta Ganguly

From a small town to a big city

When I moved to Mumbai, many years ago, I was, I am sure, quite innocent and gullible. I received a lot of tips from relatives and friends.

“Don’t travel by local trains as there is the danger of bomb blasts”.

“Do not travel by bus, as Mumbai men can be quite rowdy. (I just ignored this as after Kolkata, were standing up and fighting with men trying to brush against them is a daily affair, managing men while traveling would be simple!)

“Don’t drink water outside home. Jaundice in rampant there.”

“Do not travel in taxis. Did you hear of a story where was white skinned foreigner was strangled in one two years back at midnight?” (I ignored this again as I look nothing like a foreigner. I like to call myself a BDAP (big, dark and almost pretty) woman. No taxi driver would like to mess with me!)

Ready with a bundle of medicines (to tackle any of the virus/bacteria this city is assumed to be laden with), I landed at Victoria Terminus, as it was called then. I hailed a cab once I stepped out of the station. I stood in a taxi queue for 30 minutes and got into one finally.  “Where to, bai?” asked the driver. “Marine drive”, I mentioned. “Why did you take this taxi” asked the driver. “What do you mean” I asked. “I have been standing to get a long-distance passenger for the past 3 hours and then you get in and ask to go to Marine drive, which is just 15 minutes from here?” the driver said and he stopped the taxi outside the station. “Why didn’t you say so that you will not travel short distance”, I asked him, tensely. It was 7.00 p.m. and I was in a new city, already getting into an argument with a taxi driver. This is the time when good girls return home in Kolkata! But I looked from the taxi window and realized that it was still daylight. The norm in Kolkata was that good girls were to be home before dusk, before street lights came on. This analysis to myself reduced my tension and turned back to the driver. I have time to fight. “How can you drop me midway after I have spent 30 minutes waiting in a queue? Come to the police station” I retorted. “Sorry, bai”, carburetor needs tuning and has stopped working”, he said. “It was working so far, how can it stop suddenly”, I asked. “These things happen sometimes in life. One has to just accept it and get on ahead with life. Please get down unless you want to spend two and a half hours in the taxi”, he said, unsmiling. I fumed and got down with my luggage and started walking towards the  bus stand nearby. I heard a buzz behind me and realized the taxi with the “untuned carburetor” was actually fine and the driver had duped me and left me stranded. I mentally made a note of the taxi number and walked to the bus stop.

“Jhcheeek, jhcheeek”, I heard behind me, while waiting for the bus. There was a young man standing behind me and making this funny sound. I glared at him and he said “give way, madam, me going ahead”. I moved aside and let him pass. The bus cam and I got in and got a seat to sit. “Jhcheeek, jhcheeek”, someone said behind me. I was not in a mood to be “jhcheeek-ed”.  I turned around and was ready to slap the person behind me, when I realized that it was the ticket collector. He glared at me and said “jhcheeek, jhcheeek”. I glared back and said “WHAT”. He said, “what do you think, I would ask you for? Do you want a ticket or not? I mumbled and told him “Marine drive” and gave him the required money and bought the ticket. The guy moved ahead and made the same sound. The lady in front, instead of slapping him or screaming at him, just gave him the money and the process continued. It suddenly dawned in me that in Mumbai, “jhcheeek, jhcheeek” was a way of addressing or drawing attention of a person of any sex! This did not make me feel any better, ofcourse. I got down at the bus stop and walked to the building were I was supposed to stay as a paying guest.

“Mrs. D’souza? Ah..I am Aanya from Kolkata. My father had spoken with you and booked a room for me?, I fumbled. Mrs. D’souza looked me up and down and said “Your father said you were 23 years”. He should have told me your right age. I have different rooms for 30+ women”. I went red in face (actually, with my complexion, I think I turned purple) and said indignantly “I am 23 and 2 months”. You want to see my school leaving certificate”? “Naah”, certificates can be forged now-a-days. Anyway, I will not make any changes now, unless you roomies complain” and opened the door wide to let me in.

Married to an audiophile

It was a lazy Sunday morning and it was drizzling outside. I opened my eyes and looked at the clock. It was just beginning to light up outside and it was 6.30 a.m. It was too early for me to get up, I decided, especially on a Sunday. I looked at Areen snoring next to me. “Maybe I can hug the snores away”, I thought and went close to him and put my hands over him. He snuggled upto me and said “aha” in a rather cute sort of way. It was a good day, I decided, and feeling quite wanted and ran my fingers over his cheeks. He opened his eyes slowly. I thought back on the many movies that I had watched, where the hero opens his eyes slowly (mainly in hospital beds), looks into the eyes of the heroine and…no words could describe the romantic moment.

“Arrhh” screamed Areen as he looked upon me and jumped up. “What happened”, I asked shocked. He didn’t reply but ran out to the drawing room. I followed to check if he was feeling unwell. “Feverish, maybe”, I thought. “He has got malaria”, I thought, worried. Saw him sitting with a piece of paper busily writing something. “It can’t be his will, I thought. Does he think he has some incurable disease and has suddenly decided to write his will?, thought”. “Oh, how much he loves me that he rushes out like this when he thinks life is coming to an end”. I woke up from my reverie. It looked like he was drawing something on the sheet. Wills don’t have drawings, I thought.

I was beginning to feel anger creep into me. “What are you writing”, I asked grimly. No reply. I put my hand on his shoulder. No reaction. I put my hand on the paper and whispered in his ears “What are you doing?”. Oh, he replied innocently. “Did you know that I can use the Linquitz model to build my speakers and Arun has mentioned that he will courier the parts I need from the US. I just thought of how I am going to put this together. See the lines here, this is the input and this wire here, is the output. I will have 10 amps build in, and did I show you the knobs I bought yesterday. Beautiful”.

Yes, I was seeing lines and spots of various colours. Shall I kick him on his butt or slap him on his face? What shall hurt the maximum, I thought. “Hey, are you feeling unwell”, he asked. “You are looking quite blue. Go and lie down sweetie”.

Life of a working married townie woman

Posted on by Preeta Ganguly

Day x

A train traveler

Rushing in to get a window seat

A must if you want to beat this heat

Sarees flying, purse swinging

Some humming, some cursing

This is a first class ladies compartment

In which travel ladies who shop in large departments

Cold, aloof, unsmiling faces

Though wearing some lovely laces

Unwilling to share their seat

With four people instead of three

A pregnant lady stands near

Nobody offers her a seat, my dear

Her legs paining, body tired and aching

She could not jump in as her legs were shaking

She got down at the next station

Rushed into the 2nd class

Was pushed inside by the crowding mass

Hey look out, she is expecting

Cried a commuter to another

Make her sit, says a grandmother

Pushing, jostling to make way

The lady then sits, while granny says

You shouldn’t be standing so, my dear

Feeling faint, are you, but never fear

We are there till this journey ends

No jostling, pushing you need to fend

I was happy with what I had written. It had brought tears in my eye about the prudishness of the ladies traveling in the first class vs the ladies the second class. And, I had just given up my window seat to a pregnant lady (hope she was. I was having second thoughts as she was now jumping up and down her seat trying to keep her bag on the stand above the seat. Is she just fat or she is pregnant. I blanked these thoughts from my head and gloated over good “deed” I had done for the day). Feeling happy, I moved near the door and stood there, my short hair blowing all over my face, and making me look exactly like a woman caught in the eye of a cyclone (“How to you think of such similies” asked my husband, Areen when I excitedly showed him what I had written in the train. Do you think you would have a chance to hold a mirror in front of your face and see your self when you were caught in the eye of the cyclone? And, by the way, your GK is quite horrible. And you call yourself a geography student? Didn’t you know that the eye of a storm is supposed to be calm?).

Next to me, a lady was complaining to her friend about her husband. He never looks at me now-a-days, she said. “Just spends most of his time with his mother. When he was courting me, he kept staring at me and kept saying how beautiful I was, how he wanted to hold me, kiss me, me, etc. Now he keeps looking at his mother saying how well she cooks, how lovely the saree looks on her”. Her friend cooed politely and agreed with her.

I went home and told Areen about how brutal men were. They chased you, worshipped you, loved you, etc before they proposed and then once they got the girl to agree and marry him, they considered their duty done and turned their face to their mother and became the little boy that their mothers loved, going “maa” “maa”, sounding just like the baa baa of the goats. What is the difference between a man and a goat, I philosophized. Men should be born as goats, I came to the conclusion. Areen looked at me and gave me a very concerned look. Aha, I thought, “Mr. Know All agrees with me and has no answer, at last”. I gave him a feminist look. He said “Dear Aanya, ever thought about making love to a goat? Try being kissed by a goat or why not take an initiative and kiss a goat yourself. Share your experience with me and maybe we can have a discussion on this later”. He gave me a grim smile and switched on the TV. He looks exactly like a goat with a goatee, I think. You stupid TV watching Goat, I cursed and abused him mentally. “Kiss a goat and then we can discuss about men and goat, Areen smiled and said. Men! I thought. Just irrational goats!

Areen slept in the sofa today. When he came to kiss me goodbye, I sulked and told him that he reminded me of an old goat. He said he will try kissing me good morning to see if my vision improved.

Day X+1

I told Areen in the morning when he tried to nudge me awake that he smelled like a stinking goat.

I am in no mood for a joke today. I have a big meeting of the egos today. I am meeting some four people, senior professionals with many years in the business, and am planning to interview them. The clash of the egos has to be handled well. Sridhar Mukhi, Anand Lodha, Tirinya Ganesh and Ritesh Malwani. I of course, call them, Mr. Mukhi, Mr. Lodha, Mr. Ganesh and Mr. Malwani. I know Ritesh for many years now. But either they are called by the first name or everyone by the last name. Ego clashed, otherwise. I dreamt last night that all four were screaming at each other while I was standing on a table doing a belly dance and was about to say something to calm them when at this crucial point, the Goat at home, woke me. I was not in a pleasant mood, of course. The smelling goat went to brush and I woke with my hair all upright due to tension. Hope the meeting goes off well.

Driver called to say he can’t come today as his wife’s mother’s aunt’s cousin is getting married. When I asked why he could not have told me about this earlier, he said that the cousin had eloped yesterday with boyfriend. Parents were pacified through midnight and invitations over phone were being done today. Jet age, jet elopement and jet marriages, I thought. How lucky.  I asked the goat if he can drop me a the cab stand. The Goat said “ if you can stand a smelling goat next to you for 10 minutes in the car, I will”. I checked if I should sit behind in the car. The goat said “I can be a goat and drive the wife to a cab, but I refuse to be a driver goat”. I slammed the bathroom door and went to change. The goat slammed his bathroom door harder. The matter was settled. He would drop me to a cab stand and I would sit in the front seat next to him!