The long wait is finally over.. After a hiatus of about a fortnight, I am back to regular blogging… Though that itself is not sure coz my broadband connection is acting real weird, and MTNL, acting as per the standards of all organisations of the Indian Government, has still not looked into my complaint.. So as I wait for the ever-indispensable MTNL phone-lineman, I have been granted permission to use Mr. C’s computer… All hail Mr. C for that
If anyone has yet chanced a glance at the time when this post was entered, you might be wondering as to what I am doing at Mr. C’s house at this unearthly time (it may seem to you that 6:37 PM isn’t an unearthly time, but in my time zone the time is 7:07 AM).. Well, sadly Mr. C has been transferred to some place and is leaving Mumbai soon.. So all friends decided to have a night-halt at his place.. That ended up with me, Mr. A, Mr. C and an until-now-unintroduced friend Mr. E at Mr. C’s place.. So basically we gorged on six pizzas, until Mr. A decided to give vent to his sleep and dozed off very early, even by normal standards… Mr. E, the youngest and the most adventurous of us, decided to bid adieu to our friend Mr. C by making a rather adventurous plan, which I am sure owed its origin to the four drops of Romanov Vodka which he had consumed before the pizzas…
Whatever be the case, it is to be noted that at exactly 00:35 hrs on the 3rd day of July 2007, Mr. E decided that we friends (three of us, coz Mr. A had already started snoring) should go for a walk to the local railway station at Elphinstone Road… His initial plan was to take the last train home, and as per the recent movie “Ek Chaalis ki Last Local” we were led to falsely believe that the local trains run till 01:40 hrs.. It was only after we reached the station when we realised that the last local train had already left at 01:15 hrs (the movie makers should be sued for this)… To while away time Mr. E had this idea of walking down from our station to Lower Parel station along the railway tracks.. Bowing down to his wishes and ignoring the threat posed by the numerous pools of shit and the rowdy “taporis” by the trackside, we decided to accompany our friend on this quest of his.. But of course it isn’t the journey which made me write the post.. It was the sight which met our eyes when we reached the station back..
On reaching our beloved Elphinstone Road station, we three musketeers saw that the station had undergone a huge metamorphosis during the 25 mins that we had been away… The previously empty benches were either occupied by sleeping beggars or chatting labourers returning from the mills.. One could occasionally spot a policeman.. One such philanthropic policeman came to us and inquired as to what we were doing… When we told our case, he started warning us about the unsocial elements present at stations, and being teenagers, we didn’t give a damn.. When we had finished talking to him, we just walked on with the intention of paying no heed to his warnings.. After one full round of the platform, we reached one extreme end and found staring at us a group of people whom I couldn’t distinguish at that point of time.. It was only after a hurried nudge from Mr. C that I realised that the group comprised of eunuchs, or Chhakkas, as we more often call them.. Then there was this defining moment in my life, when the Chhakkas gave me one such killer look which conveyed that they would like nothing more than to have my balls in their hand and smash it to smithereens to make me like them (it actually happens in Mumbai)… This one moment has caused me to consider adding the words homophobia and eunuchophobia (if such a word exists) to my long list of fears.. Then one of the “taporis” seemed to have problems with us conversing partly in English, thus giving some rather loud comments, which, combined with the killer look of the Chhakkas, catalysed our unbelievably fast trot back home…
So this was our experience when Mr. E missed Ek Pandrah ki Last Local… And the moral of the day, or should I say the night : Never trust a Bollywood film and a guy who had his Vodka… Just kidding, Mr. E
