Mumbai-Pune, the Penurious tourist guide.

If you’ve gathered anything from the title, this blog entry is about the best way to from Pune to Mumbai when you’re totally out of money! This entry is totally true, it’s based on a true experience that happened not so long ago. I was in it!

Well it all started a couple of days after the internal exams got over in our 3^rd year. We had entered the Diwali vacations! It was the day after the exams had ended; last night was a blur of partying at Carnival and exhaustion from exam burnout. All my room-mates are from Mumbai, and a couple of other guys too (ill name them as the story goes on). So Day 1 of the vacation, and it was decided that we will have some fun on this day and leave for Mumbai all together tomorrow morning. The time for departure was set at 10am exact. So on Day 1, we went out, chilled, greeted people and said our goodbyes. As the day wore on, we decided that since it’s our last day here (that was not considering that we’d be back after a month); we should party again, but since we need to conserve some money for the return trip, we can always party at home. So we pooled what money we had, after carefully keeping aside travel allowance, and went and bought the necessities of the party (booze, smokes, food, hookah stuff etc). When we got back, the party had started, unfortunately for us, a few more of the local guys had decided to gate-crash when someone let slip about the home-party. Suddenly there were 9 people instead of 5 (the extras were bipu, jaggy, kadakpav and sudhya – all of whom hail from Pune or its outskirts). This was a problem. When a few of them said they wouldn’t drink, we thought we might about manage.

The party started and went on for a while, everybody drank, suddenly we were out of alcohol. In that deliriously drunken state, we decided to go bring some more booze. This was uncalled-for, but really if anyone reading this has ever been to a party like this, they’ll know that the party doesn’t stop till everyone’s either passed out or puked! A couple of guys took all the money we had and went to some crazy shitty back-alley of Yerwada, and bought some double-priced booze from the back of a whore-house (wait, can I type that? Hell I don’t give a shit).

Now we had booze, the party continued, everyone was shot to hell, and “end of day’s play” was called. The revelers crashed wherever they could find space. Now, since it was decided that we would leave for Mumbai the next day at around 10am, an 8:30am alarm was fixed on every one of the Mumbai-guy’s phones. Early next morning (actually it felt like we’d slept about half an hour back); the alarms started to ring. Curses were thrown, mobiles were thrown and finally it was Upendra Singh (the most mature of the lot) to wake up. With a lot of effort, he managed to wake the rest of us. The local guys, when woken up, promptly left, without even washing their faces (well they did take a dispirin each before going – since we are pharmacists, we keep a stock of these around the house).

It was time to go, we got together by around 2pm. (which was so past the morning deadline, that all trains scheduled between Mumbai and Pune had already left). There were curses thrown again, but a decision had to be made.

Basics of Mumbai-Pune travel with expenses: To go from Pune to Mumbai, there are various transportation schemes I’ll list them out below based on their costs.

• By flight – that will cost about Rs. 3000/- and thus, is totally out of question. Though while I’m at this, I would like to ask a general question – Who the Fu** goes from Pune to Mumbai by flight?
• By Train – Scheduled Trains run either in the morning, i.e. 6am – 8am; or in the evening i.e. 4pm – 6pm. There is one train that goes in the afternoon, which we had initially decided to catch, that leaves around 11am from Pune. It’s a crazily long journey, but then it runs at a human hour, so who gives a shit right? Anyway, these journeys well cost you around Rs. 80/- if you go by General Compartment (means you fight for any inch of space available, or sit on the ground, or stand your way through the 3hr journey); or you can take the scheduled ones which means you gotta reach the station a good couple of hours before the train and it costs around Rs. 100/- or so.
• By Sumo – Or other variants of these transport vehicles. It’s a shared kinda thing, which means you’ll probably be squashed in the middle seat with 3 other behemoths, all of whom haven’t ever heard mention of the word “deodorant”. Well this costs around Rs. 150/- or so depending on the season. (it’s all supply and demand you see).
• By Asiad – This is the bus system that operates between the two cities. There’s two variants here; i.e. the A/C Volvo (Rs. 200/-) or the Regular bus (Rs. 150/-). These leave pretty much all the time but take around 4 hours or so to get there. Which is a tad more than the previous two methods and a whole lot more than method one.

These were the options available to us, it was time to pick. It came to the final straw where the decision would be taken on the basis of the total amount of money that we had left. The options that we gave ourselves were Sumo and Asiad considering Flying was out of the question and the trains had already left unless we would wait for the 6pm train, which meant another wasted day, and that we would reach Mumbai around 9:30pm which made it really difficult for the guys who had to take local trains to their respective residences in various parts of Mumbai.

When it came to the budget calculation, we got a rather rude shock, the total remaining per person on average was Rs. 80/- ; I say average, because Sharad had only 30 bucks on him, and after totaling what everyone had, we managed to scrounge an average 80 bucks per person. This meant that both the above options were out of the question.

Discussions and arguments followed, it wouldn’t help to wait or do anything of that sort, because the remaining money was never going to materialize out of nothing, we HAD to manage on this much. Finally after an hour and a half of deliberation, Harsh suggested we take the local train to lonavala, and from then on, try to hitch a ride or something of the sort. Since there were 5 guys, we couldn’t really get into too much trouble, and, it was an adventure. So that’s how we were going to go. The plan had made everyone a slight bit excited if not weary of the possibilities of the journey.

The Journey:

It started off well enough, we managed to walk upto Pimpri Station, which is not really a casual walk from where we live, but since we were really broke, we decided to try it out. We got there puffing and panting after about 20 minutes of hard labor (meaning a not very brisk walk). We had reached destination 1. Rejoice. But, when we got there, the next local to lonavala was to leave in the next 15 minutes, and we didn’t have tickets. The journey from Pimpri to Lonavala is about an hour and a bit by train and so, too long to risk going ticketless. The line at the ticket window had about enough people to fill up the Wankhede Stadium to capacity (or atleast that’s what it looked like). We took turns and finally managed to get the tickets about a minute before the train left. We scrambled to the station just seconds before the 3:20pm time-limit, just about tumbled into the train in time, only to realize that the train was going to leave the station 15 minutes late. At this time we actually had the enthusiasm to laugh about this. The enthusiasm wasn’t going to last too long.

People continued to pour in, we found place enough for about a quarter of a person on one of the benches they install in the train, one person would squeeze in to the space and enjoy his comforts while the others would bide their time standing until they just couldn’t take it anymore and made that guy get up and sat down in his place. There were so many people in that bogey, we could barely breathe, which was good, considering when I did manage to breathe, I realized a lot of these people thought “bathing” was a serious waste of time! Lonavala arrived after a while, and not a moment too soon. We tumbled out as we had tumbled in, realizing after a while that Kevin had lost his wallet in the train. Disaster struck again, we were now short of his share of the money. The ticket to Lonavala had cost us 28 bucks per head and thus we now had a total of Rs. 260/- remaining which translated to roughly Rs. 52/- per head. Now we had to get from Lonavala to Mumbai and to our respective homes in Mumbai in 50 bloody bucks per head! It was madness already and became nearly anarchic when Upen decided that he would die en-route unless he got something to eat (we had skipped lunch, plainly because we couldn’t afford it).

Upen was rudely told that he wouldn’t get anything to eat unless he reached home, and if he did die on the way, we would leave him there and go home. Needless to say, he didn’t take the last part too well. Anyway, it was time to move on; we were now at Lonavala and had to get to Dadar. The local train we were supposed to take from here would take us directly there, unfortunately though, we missed that one, the next would be after a little more than an hour, so we asked around to find the next best way to get there. People standing around told us that we could take one local to Neral and from there take another one to Katraj, From Katraj there would be regular locals onwards to Dadar. We were rather tired of traveling by locals and the prospect of changing 2 trains to get to our destination didn’t seem very inviting, especially considering 4 out of 5 of us (excluding me) would have to take locals again from Dadar to wherever they lived in Mumbai. Now it was either that or to wait another hour at this station. We decided to take the option that seemed easier (it wasn’t as we realized in due course).

Apparently the next local to Neral was standing there at the platform and if we missed that one, we’d have to wait for the next one, we decided to risk it and run to the ticket counter. Just as we started our sprint, someone told us that the train was about to leave. It was decision time, we had to take this train, and we couldn’t risk buying tickets and coming back for it, we were going to have to travel ticketless. Believe me, this is not an easy task. If we got caught, we’d have to pay Rs. 284/- per head for the offense. This was impossible, considering that was more than we had in total between 5 people!

We risked it, we clambered into the nearest compartments just as the train was leaving the station. Unfortunately for us, a couple of us (Harsh and I) had managed to get into the baggage compartment and that meant one helluva painful ride, thankfully for us, it was a short one. We had no idea where the other guys had got to. A couple of calls later, we found out that Sharad was safely in the Second Class compartment and was trying to hide so as not to get caught in case a TC turned up. Kevin and Upen on the other hand were quite unlucky, the compartment they’d managed to climb into was a Women’s compartment, and they were facing some stern resistance for being there. In desperation they explained their predicament to the ladies and were let off the hook (for a while). After a painfully bumpy ride for the two of us, we managed to reach Katraj station. The both of us hopped off just seconds before the TC came to check on the baggage compartment (this sounds almost hindi movie like doesn’t it? It was true though). We waited at the “vada-pav wala” at the station for a while until the others turned up. Sharad seemed unharmed and quite spritely for some reason (apparently looking at his harried countenance, one of the people in the compartment had offered him a “beedi” and that had helped him out a lot). The other two were a completely different story. Kevin apparently had been sitting next to a Fish-seller woman, and smelled so disgusting, we refused to allow him near us until he emptied almost half a bottle of deodorant on himself (a deodorant he obtained from my bag). Upen seemed to have split a couple of seems in his pants on the way into the bogey back at Neral and had to change in the waiting room to prevent onlookers’ stares.

We thanked our stars that we hadn’t been caught and went to the ticket counter to buy tickets for the rest of the journey. At this stage it was pretty uneventful. The line was small, there weren’t too many people in the line considering it was 5pm in the evening and the rush-hour hadn’t yet begun, anyway we were against the rush-hour “traffic” if you can call it that. The train was waiting at the platform. It was empty. We made silent prayers to thank the Almighty for giving us a place to sit. We sat down looking like a set of people who’d just escaped from a riot. Most managed to catch up on some well-deserved sleep for about 20 minutes until the crowd started pouring in. Somewhere post-Kalyan, a gigantic crowd started pouring into the train. It was back to battle-stations all over again. We had to keep steady to prevent people sitting on us; we were getting trampled by a mass of humanity. Some even tried to throw their bags on us, probably thinking we were part of the furniture. The crowd didn’t subside, but got worse with time, and Dadar didn’t seem to be getting closer. It seems there are atleast 100 stations between Katraj and Dadar and we were stopping at all of them. Unfortunately nobody seemed to be getting out, people just kept getting in.

Sharad managed to produce a bent cigarette out of some pocket and smoked it out the window for a while until some lady up front threatened to call the TC. It was impossible for her to do such a thing considering the mass of people in between her and the door, but we weren’t going to take any more chances. We asked him to throw it out. The rest of the journey passed rather uneventfully. We managed to get to Dadar just before we crashed out of exhaustion. We got off and assembled at the gate where everyone would disperse into various directions.

There was little discussion at that point. We had realized we’d made one of the most dangerous journeys in the history of time (at this point, I’d like to ask Edmund Hillory to swap and wonder if he’d make it). Nevertheless, it’d been an adventure to remember. We’d done something very few I’m sure have tried before and come out victorious. We’d never believed it would be like this, to save a little money we’d put ourselves through one of the biggest bungles in history, but survived, only just. A bit of our sanity got taken from us in this journey. Dripping with sweat, exhausted to the bone, bleeding (Upen had managed to cut himself where his pant had torn). But our spirits felt well, the only plus point probably. Until, we decided to count the money. Turns out, the journey from Katraj to Dadar had cost us about Rs. 30/- per head approximately, which meant we’d spent a total of Rs. 150/- on that trip and thus had almost Rs. 110/- remaining (later we realized that Sharad had spent 12 bucks on cigarettes and thus we had 98 bucks remaining). This was to be divided equally among 5 of us and thus had about Rs. 19.60/- remaining with which to find our way home. Which was more than enough in most cases.

The result of this was, that we had traveled from Pune to Mumbai in Rs. 290/- even with one person losing his wallet somewhere in the middle and one stopping to buy cigarettes. This divided by 5 makes it Rs. 58/- per person. Which was what we spent per head to travel nearly 200km inter-city. This was a feat I don’t believe many have achieved before. This was my inspiration behind writing this. So if anyone falls short of money before that trip, just use my guide. (Or, just take my advise and quit binge-drinking)!

Cheers!

The Misal Pav Diaries!

This one’s courtesy a friend of mine who goes by the name “kadakpav”. Before you wonder why anyone would be called that, id like to take your attention away from that cuz its a story you just wouldnt be able to relate to. The matter of interest being Misal. Personally i’ve always been a fan of misal. Though i’ve been living in mumbai most of my life and face it, people from mumbai know little about ancient marathi culinary traditions, i had a few trysts with misal during my time there. Now pune, thats a place which i believe can be heralded as the global misal capital.

Now, if you don’t know what misal is, dont bother to read further, cuz i aint gonna be able to explain. A gourmet delight if i may say so myself. I wouldnt call myself a perfect gourmet or gastronome, but lets just say i have a colossal appetite. Ah, i drift into obscurity again. I must pay attention to relevance. Alright, the misal tour. Well, ever since my first few days in Pune, i noticed that every restaurant served misal here. Everywhere i ate it, it was different. I was intrigued. So after a few months of misal hunting, i finally opted to take professional help. Kadakpav, (its awkward, but lets just call him that) is what we call an “assal puneri”. What that means, is that he really doesn’t know that a world exists outside Pune, but then he does for that matter know everything there is to know about Pune. So, i went to him and said, “kadak, mereko pune ka best misal khaneka hai”. At first, he was shocked that i hadn’t eaten it yet, but then i told him i was from mumbai. After cursing the ignorance of “us city boys”, ( i always believed pune was a city in its own right); he nevertheless agreed to take me to eat good misal. The best misal he said, was decided from person to person, apparently there were several kinds of misal, and different people had affinities to different kinds of misal. I was rather abashed at this point in time but i decided to humor him. He said he would take me to a few misal outlets ( i was later to find out that all these were to be visited on the same day); and that i would later decide for myself what the best misal was.

So it began, Kadak and I, on the greatest journey i had ever undertaken (im not kidding, i really dont get out much). We were to traverse the length and breadth of Pune, and visit the oldest and most famous misal outlets around. This was just after i had read Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries, so i felt like drawing parallels. Except that Che and his friend drove a 500cc la pederosa where we drove a rickitty old Bajaj Electric in which the back-seat didnt have a cushion, meaning only that I would end up unable to sit for nearly 4 hours after getting home. Also Che and his friend traversed the entire continent of South America where we were just travelling through tiny, crowded and smelly roads of interior Pune.

Anyhow, it started early. We left in the morning, travelling through roads i never knew vehicles could go through and reached a small dirty shack run by an ill-tempered “kaka” (interesting how all such shacks in Pune are run by ill-tempered kakas). Kadak told me this was the premier misal outlet in Pune and that the owner (kaka) started out as a refugee out of Kolhapur. What i was fed there was nothing short of what old wives would call pickle. 20 minutes and a liter of icy cold water later, i still felt like my mouth had been lit on fire (oh i know what that feels like literally also). We then began our journey towards another shack named Bedekar somewhere on an intersection of a certain Laxmi road. Each road thinner than the next, each intersection about half the width of the road itself. Bedekar apparently was typically puneri, and therefore made sweet misal. Also importantly, it served its misal with “slice” bread. When i inquired, it turned out that original misal always comes with “slice”, and that the misal pav that we know of, is just a hybrid. That i believe most of us didnt know. Anyway Bedekar Misal kendra was also run by an ill-tempered kaka who was out buying provisions and hence had left “kaku” in charge. It wasnt a respite, “kaku” had a shorter fuse than the earlier kaka i had encountered and almost slashed at me when i asked for the customary “sample” which is supposed to come free. Well, Bedekar misal was rather sweet, and i ended up feeling like i would end up with diabetes before i finished what was on my plate. We left soon thankfully.

By now i was rather full, but kadak had only gained in enthusiasm. He seemed willing to take me all the way to “karad” where he said one could obtain the best misal in the world (like i said, the world to kadakpav didnt surpass pimpri-chinchwad). But we finally decided that he would take me to a place which served the best hybrid misal. Oh there’s 2 types of misal. One would be home-made misal, which these 2 places served, and the other would be hybrid misal, which was changed to suit a range of tastes. Kadak seemed decidedly adamant that anyone who likes hybrid misal isnt really a misal lover. I said i didnt care, so he took me to a place on the famed JM road, which he believed served the best hybrid misal. By this point, I wasnt really able to tell the subtle differences but i was actually starting to enjoy myself. The hybrid misal wasnt much to talk about and i decided that he was actually correct in noting that hybrid misal isnt as good as home-made misal.

Kadak now offered to take me to his favorite misal joint, which he said was in a place called kothrud where the crux of the population is “assal puneri”. This, believe me, was a long way off from where we’d started. Anyway we head off into the direction of kothrud. The bike we drove on was caught by a neighborhood “mama” (its funny how everyone around seems to be in some way related to you) or police officer atleast 3 times in the process of getting there. This was basically because, in puneri style, kadakpav believes following traffic rules is stupid. Also, kadak didn’t have the necessary papers for our bike or rather relic. When we finally got there, there was a line in front of the place, a line that extended almost till the end of the road. I was intrigued that people would really be willing to wait in line for a misal outlet. After waiting for nearly 30 minutes, we entered a shack that could fit about 10 people including the cook, manager and waiter (all these roles were played solely by kaka), the misal was pretty much the same thing I’d eaten 3 times already, but kadak seemed to relish every morsel. He ate 3 plates after which kaka said he’d run out and just couldn’t make more. The reaction of the people who’d been waiting in the line behind us was almost comical.

After all this, and a 60 minute bike ride in the chilly pune winter, I was duly dropped home. Kadakpav left me saying “Have a good twilight”. It took me nearly 2 days to decipher what he meant, only to realize that he’d been reading the GRE wordlist and found that twilight was a time just before sun-down (he’d dropped me off at 6 p.m.). In retrospect, I felt a lot better for the journey. An experience that would change my life forever (like I said I don’t get out much). I had just traveled through unknown lands eating unknown food, or rather the same food at different places. I had realized that any bystander on the street can be referred to as one’s relative, that one who follows traffic rules in pune is a retard, and that going on misal tours can leave you bedridden with gastric infections for almost a week.

What does Revolution mean to contemporary India!

Ill try to make this as short as I possibly can. The subject I’m trying to discuss here is Revolution. To a lot of the readers, this might seem a particularly vague topic to discuss; this is mainly because when we think of revolutions, we think of history, basically what we learnt from our history books. So naturally, we would tend to dismiss this thinking it’s just a matter of past. Is this necessarily true? Did the people that revolutionized the common world as we know it today dismiss it at the time thinking the same thing?

If you’ve finally agreed to grasp the idea, you’d tend to ask why I’m bring this up right now in the first place. There’s a solid reason behind this. I’m an Indian, for a long time I was really proud to be, that’s not to say that I’m not now, but when I look around me today, my mind tends to raise a lot of questions about freedom. The dictionary defines the word ‘revolution’ as an overthrow or repudiation and the thorough replacement of an established government or political system by the people governed. Is this the point I’m trying to construct? In some form atleast.

India is changing. It’s been changing for a long time now. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not so much. One of the major changes has been the change in the Indian government over the years since independence. At the time of independence, wise leaders put forth a constitution that would in coming years form a perspective, based on which future India would command itself. They were bright, knowledgeable men who risked their lives to give us freedom. To give us the right to live by our own rules. Is this the way they wanted it to turn out? They wanted their descendants to live with freedom. Yes, freedom. Freedom to express our feelings, freedom against discrimination. I look around myself and see that is not really happened. Has it? Social, economic and religious discrimination has become commonplace in our country today.

Several brave men gave their lives for our freedom. We should be proud in reminiscence. A great revolutionary once said, “how can I feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?”. This applies to me as it seems to be. How can I feel proud of their accomplishments, considering I haven’t really been able to experience the fruits of their labor? They wanted me to live in a free India, a place where freedom meant something; where freedom meant you never had to live in fear. Fear, that brings us to another topic altogether. As common men in a country over-run by swashbuckling, power-wielding politicians, do we not feel a sense of uncontrollable fear? An administration that runs itself on whims and fancies of unaccountable leaders who continue to cause distress among the already burdened bourgeoisie, so that they can experience comforts that we can’t even dream of? A judiciary that tries as much as it can to keep the control going, but at some time will crumble at our feet to yield a state of anarchy.

The police are mere puppets, or rather more like a set of rampant tyrants, who hold the law in their own hands and more often than not, twist it to their own advantage. They tend to get auctioned off to the largest bidder. Traffic is controlled by a set of incompetent, largely unhealthy officers who very often create more trouble than there already is. We’ve all experienced this sometime in our lives haven’t we? But we know enough about police misconduct for me to continue on these lines.

The lawmakers themselves tend to make laws based on their own benefit. The reservations law for example. The law was brought about among widespread public agitation against it. So much for freedom of speech. Police brutality against those who tried to speak against the law, also speaks volumes about the way this was conducted. When the reservations were initially brought forward by an insightful Ambedkar, he wished them to uplift the ailing lower castes, to bring them to a respectable social level, wherein they could stand toe-to-toe with other better endowed classes of the society. It was to be run for a short frame of time. This didn’t happen. It continues rampantly today, and we see that upper-caste individuals, no matter how economically depressed, no matter how intellectually gifted, are pushed back by less deserving candidates who just wield lower-caste certificates. Is that what we’ve been brought to? A world where people justify educational qualifications by supplying a complementary caste-certificate?

Isn’t that the total opposite of what Ambedkar would have wanted? To justify his claim for increased reservations (to reserve nearly 75% of seats in all educational institutions for the socially repressed), Arjun Singh went on to state that according to a census taken sometime in the past, nearly 80% of India’s population belonged to the OBC (other backward classes) tag. Let me calculate, so according to that, wouldn’t that make us so-called Brahmins the minority? And aren’t the minority supposed to given reservations so that they can improve economic and social standing?

A lot of questions. How can these be answered? By a revolution? Are we rebellious, mutinous, revolutionary? Che Guevara, who most of you must know, once said “What is a revolution without guns?” Is this necessarily true? To note a point from history, the erstwhile Aztec civilization of the valley of Mexico were free set of people who lived by their own rules. They lived in solitude, in peace. Their arts, crafts, agriculture flourished and they lived comfortably amongst their own. Until though the gun-wielding Spanish conquistadors turned up. Led by Hernan Cortez, these conquistadors totally decimated a race of people that did not much know of wars and battle. This may be unrelated to the topic being discussed but it holds some importance to the argument I’m trying to make.

When we think of a revolution in India, we think of the non-violent independence struggle of India, but do we tend to forget the thousands of armed rebels who played their part in bringing about independence? Or do we just remember the parts our history books told us about? Yes, changing of history books, another point I’m not really willing to discuss at the moment, but one of utmost importance in today’s argument.

What do we do to fight injustice against us in our own country? A country where we were meant to live with freedom. Is a revolution the answer? Another question I don’t know how to answer! The world is changing, will we continue to let us be left behind? A revolution? Against whom? The lot that run our country? Who are they, aren’t they really commonplace Indians just like you and me? Do we continue to live with the injustice saying “jaane de, you can’t fight the system”. Everyone’s heard that at some point in their lives, haven’t they?

The latitudes of silence. Silence speaks a thousand words say wise men, pity I can’t figure out what it’s saying!

Death in Teheran!

Once a rich & mighty Persian walked in his garden with one of his servants. The servant cried that he had just encountered Death, who had threatened him. He begged his master to give him the fastest horse so that he could make haste and flee to Teheran the same evening. The master consented & the servant galloped off on the horse. On returning home, the master himself encountered Death & questioned him “Why did you terrify and threaten my servant?”. Death replied “I did not threaten him, I only showed surprise in still finding him here when I planned to meet him tonight in Teheran”.

MEATLOAF

For quite a while, i’ve been a really big fan of the rock&roll group – MEATLOAF. I like quite a few of their songs. Apart from the music, which is obviously their USP, the lyrics are really something. Its not a very well known group, they’ve had quite a following, but kinda faded out of the groove a few years back. The music never looses its touch though. The band itself consists of their lead singer – Marvin Lee Aday (a.k.a. Meatloaf). The music has always had that 80′s groove to it. The rock and roll feel. Though, Meatloaf prefers to call it “wagnerian rock” or “progressive rock”, its not far from good old vintage rock.

The noteworthy thing is the lyrics like i said before. The lyrics are actually written by a ‘Jim Steinman’. Why i speak of this guy is, the lyrics are original and quite impressive. They have that whole “sex, drugs, rock&roll” thing going for them. But what differentiates their music from their other contemporary groups is their affinity towards Harleys for one, and the whole inclination towards dark and gothic lyrics. Quite a few of their songs discuss themes like these. Meat Loaf or the songwriter Steinman seem to be totally taken with bats – which is why all their albums are name Bat out of Hell! Every song has something about Harleys, the sound of a revving Hog especially. Harleys are mentioned in almost every song. Another important thing about their songs is the whole REBELLIOUS streak. Its one of the reasons their songs have always appealed to me. A lot of rebellion and a lot of gothic defeatism is evident in the songs.

I personally suggest everyone reading this blog try out a few of their songs. They should be available on P2P, but considering its not that famous a group, you might have to search around a bit. The older albums – Bat out of Hell I and II have some of my favorite songs, though the latest album isnt bad either. I’ll go ahead and list a few of my favorite Meat Loaf songs so as to make it a little easier:

1) Bat out of Hell – rocking, dark!
2) Objects in the rear view mirror – just unbelievable
3) Rock & Roll dreams
4) I would do anything for love
5) Paradise by the dashboard light

& my personal favorite
6) wasted youth (a.k.a – everything louder than everything else)

This blog entry is a whole lot different than the others i’ve been posting all this while, but i felt it worth to mention Meat Loaf. If there’s any other fans that are reading this….Cheers! and if i’m able to create some more meatloaf fans thanks to this…Cheers!

Just try to understand the lyrics of the songs…especially wasted youth. Then you’ll know what i’ve been talking about. Songs like those make me a little happier cuz it helps me understand that other people think the way I do. Steinman is awesome – HAIL! As is Meat Loaf himself – HAIL you too!

An excerpt from the lyrics of wasted youth!

They got a file on me and it’s a mile long and they say that they got all of the proof,
that I’m just another case of arrested development and just another wasted youth
They say that I’m in need of some radical discipline, they say I gotta face the truth,
that I’m just another case of arrested development and just another wasted youth

They say I’m wild and I’m reckless
I should be acting my age
I’m an impressionable child in a tumultuous world,
and they say I’m at a difficult stage

But it seems to me to the contrary, of all the crap they’re going to put on the page,
that a wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age!
A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age!

ROCK ON!

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College Sodun Zaatana

Yeah, i know that a blog usually has stuff that you write yourself, but this one’s by a friend of mine. He’s been attempting poetry for a while now, he tried and failed……and finally decided to write in ‘marathi’ because he believed that would help him write something decent.

It did. He’s written this one! It’s basically a retrospective poem about college life. I notice that he’s as bitter about pimpri as I am. 4 years here has been more than enough. Kept hoping it would end soon, but now that it’s ending, im getting reminiscent about the “good old times”. Wonder why this happens everytime. Anyway take a look at the poem. Oh BTW, you wont get it unless you understand marathi!

COLLEGE SODUN JAATANA

घरापासून दूरवर आलो मी ह्या पुण्यनगरीत
उत्साह, भिती, थ्रिल, … भावनांचे मनात झाले भरित

चार वर्षे एकट्याने राहायचे
शिक्षण घेऊन स्वतंत्र व्हायचे
असे ते दिवस फ़ुलायाचे
आयुष्याचे स्वप्न सजवायचे

आई वडीलांचे लक्ष नसणार
केव्हाही झोपणार, उठणार, कसाही वागणार
दिवसभर टवाळ्क्या, मस्ती करणार
वेळ उरलाचं तर लेक्चर attend करणार

चारही वर्षांचा दिनक्रम ठरलेला
प्रत्येक दिवस timepass ने खच्चुन भरलेला
खाणं, पिणं, मौज-मजा
प्रत्येक दिवसाचा मीच राजा

खुप वाट पाहीली परंतु प्रेमप्रकरण झालेच नाही
एखादी जरी आवडली तरी कधी तिला विचारलंच नाही
एखादी सुंदर मुलगी यायची माझ्या स्वप्नी
पण माझा नंबर लागलाच नाही ती व्हायची माझी वहिनी

अधुनमधून परिक्षेचा राहु पत्रिकेत करायचा भ्रमण
अभ्यास करताना वाटायचे कधी सुटणार हे ग्रहण
दिवसभर लेक्चर, प्राक्टिकल, आणि जरनल submission
syllabus पाहून चक्कर येते आणि मास्तर देतो tension
xerox, नोट्स याशिवाय topper चा ठेवायचा मान
एवढं सगळं करुनसुद्धा मार्क मिळाले नाहीत छान
चा दिवस जवळ येतो तसं सुचतं मला अध्यात्म
‘यह सब मोह-माया है’ म्हणुन येतं मला वैराग्यं

college life चे धुंद दिवस लळा लावून गेले निघुन
पण जाता जाता देऊन गेले सुख दु:ख दोन्ही भरभरुन

सुख त्यांच्या आठवणीचे, दु:ख त्यांच्या जाण्याचे
आता फ़क्त कापत राहायचे अंतर जन्म आणि मरणाचे

कॉलेजमधले मित्र-मैत्रिणी, शिक्षक आणि इतर सोबती
आता यापुढे एकटयानेच चालायचंय, कोणीच नसणार अवतीभवती

चार वर्षांचं हे माझं जग कालचक्रात विरघळून गेलं
काहीच शिल्लक ठेवलं नाही सारं काही हिरावून नेलं

मित्रांची टिंगल, मुलींची छेड, मुक्त जीवन आणि दुनियादारी
आता ह्यातलं काहीच नाही आता फ़क्त – जबाबदारी

कॉलेजमधली चार वर्षं गेली हवेत विरुन
college life ची शेवटची रात्र गेली ह्र्दय चिरुन

माझ्या या कवितेत कदाचित वाटणार नाही तुम्हाला तथ्य
पण जेव्हा कॉलेज सोडुन जाल ना; तेव्हा जाणवेल ह्यातलं सत्य

By Nikhil (YEDA) Nazirkar.

The Free mind – And Pimpri!

Sometimes, the mind speaks freely.

A barrage of unrelated thoughts. Complete confusion. But it makes sense. There’s no need to contemplate, there’s no compulsion to decipher, no exigency to analyze. It just makes sense. All I have to do is sit idle and let my mind speak to me.

Different thoughts, different emotions – all at the same time. I don’t letch for enlightenment, I don’t desire intellectual freedom, I just want time to think! Jubilation, joviality, rage, despair, frustration, love, hate etc. all these emotions come freely. I feel like I’m confounded, but, I’m not! I’m thinking more clearly than I’ve done for a long time! It’s never easy to think like that, there’s always something more important, urgent playing on the mind. Always something that solicits more impetus than idleness. So, its rather difficult to bring myself to behave like this, or to think like this! I wish for the license to think freely – which RTO officer to do I have to pay and how much to get that license? [;)]

Pimpri’s done me good. I understand India a lot better than I used to. It’s not what we read about, its not what we think about, its not what we imagine. On the ground, reality struck me hard, struck me across the side of my head. Two things I realized are of utmost importance here, one is money, the other is “contacts”. This side of the world, your intellectual capabilities count as much as your ability to ride a unicycle on a crowded Vallabh Nagar street. Let me not make it sound like Pimpri’s hell on earth, its not, but its close!

Back to the main point – money and contacts. If you have either of the two, you can live comfortably, if you’ve got both, you’re the king! If you have neither, you might as well pack up and take your ass back home cuz you aint surviving here! Let me narrate a story, there was this chick from Mumbai who came to live in Pimpri, she used to prance around the area leaving the hormone-infested jocks with their mouths wide open (sorry for being oh so crude, but it gets the point across). There exist some politically connected guys (ugly, frustrated but moneyed 20 something’s) who’s claim to fame is that they bring their cars and stand around the college in a large group heckling everybody that walks by, getting into fights for no reason at all, smoking, making loud conversations etc (you get the point, you’ve seem them too sometime, somewhere). Well these guys, seem to have their eyes on every new PYT that crosses paths with Pimpri. To this day, not one of them has ever got any attention, but that’s aside from the point. Well as the story goes, this chick used to keep garnering a lot of their attention. One of these cronies decided that she was to be his wife! (ah yes, wife). He attempted to approach her a few times, but nothing ever came of it, still, he was madly in “love”. Time passed, the chick continued to ignore these rowdy behemoths. Now is where the story gets interesting. There comes along this guy from Delhi, nice guy – decent, intelligent etc. The chick’s caught his attention too (like anyone doubted that), but then the difference is, she’s interested too. They meet, they talk, they go out a couple of times. Love is blooming. Until, the ogre finds out. One day there’s a scuffle somewhere around Pimpri, and upon inquiry, I realize that a set of behemoths entered Delhi’s house (hostel room) and beat the living shit out of him, tell him to stay away from ogre’s future wife. And walk away. Nothing more is heard of this, except that Delhi’s got a disfigured face, a broken hand, and several other bruises, apart from the bruised ego!

Delhi decides to fight but then is talked out of it cuz face it, once more, and they’ll just leave ashes! Delhi is distraught. Delhi is from Delhi, knows nobody here, doesn’t have the money to pay the police and get the ogre into trouble, doesn’t know enough people who’ve got the balls to take on the ogre one-to-one. (Oh, the ogre, however large he may be, never fights alone). That’s where the story ends for Delhi.

So, just to test his theory, this guy from Mumbai (all evidence points here) decides to play this trick. He knows this chick is interested in him (time’s passed since Delhi, and Mumbai’s a skirt-chaser), but he’s never really taken an active interest, cuz well, Mumbai’s in love with someone else, but that someone doesn’t live in Pimpri, and wouldn’t know about this trick. Anyway, Mumbai decides to play a game. He, takes the chick out, and just to spite the ogre, Mumbai walks around with the chick, right in front of the ogre and his friends. Now, ogre is fuming. Mumbai’s walked around with her hand-in-hand a few times in front of the ogre. He’s about to burst. Mumbai’s waiting, and waiting. But nothing’s happening. No confrontation, no fight, no beating up, nothing. Mumbai realizes why, his theory’s perfect. Mumbai has for a long time, known a very important person from the Nationalist Congress Party. Mumbai’s well known in the political circuit of Pimpri, Big Don NCP treats Mumbai like a son. Technically, Mumbai has no money, isn’t originally from Pimpri, but suddenly, people are afraid of him. He does as he pleases, and nobody has the guts to do anything about it.

But then, one day, the ogre approaches Mumbai. Suddenly Mumbai becomes aware that if this guy gets physical, Mumbai (who’s rather small build-wise), will perish even before his protectors can come and burn the ogre alive! The ogre approaches, and timidly tells Mumbai “you like this chick don’t you? If you’ve liked her all the time, you should’ve told me, even I liked her, but now that I know you do, I’ll let her go”

Mumbai sniggers. His theory is proven. He’s understood how this place works. Poor Delhi. Mumbai’s no more interested in the chick. He leaves her and goes back to his girl. Everyone’s bewildered, the ogre, the chick, Delhi, everyone. Except Mumbai. He’s just been enlightened!