Iqbal

At noon yesterday, the Mac comes to my house and says, 'Man, I have to go to VJTI today, you wanna come?' Since I wasn't doing anything, I said, 'Sure!' and after lunch, we left.

After a fag at Mulund station, we got tickets. There was a decrepit old man with a Vaishnava mark on his forehead, wearing a saffron turban, begging. He was squatting on his haunches, his mud-spattered dhoti covering his feet, clutching his staff with one hand, and shaking a steel tumbler that possibly had only one or two coins in it, for it tinkled like a bell rather than rustling like a bag of beans. One distinguishing thing about the old man was that he wore Buddy Holly glasses and those made him look like he'd make a good village elder in some small far away village in the dustbowl of India. But here, in Mumbai, he was just another beggar on the bridge. I gave him a two rupee coin and made my way towards the platform, as he murmured some customary blessing to my back.

Since Mac and I were travelling second class, we could not get into the Video Coach, which is the first class gents compartment that has an almost unobstructed view of the ladies compartment. It used to be a big deal when we travelled to college in my Ruparel days, but now that seemed juvenile. I had been watching Q tv and seeing Zakir Naik fool already foolish people, so we talked about theology for a while. However, the Mac slipped into something much more interesting, The psychology of the Marathi mind, about which we talked from Ghatkopar to Matunga.

We got off at Matunga and I lit up; we talked whether getting a larger place in Navi Mumbai was indeed better than having a nice quiet smaller place in the Dadar Matunga area, you pass some really nicely shaded houses on the way to VJTI from Matunga. Once we reached VJTI, we realised that the office in question that was going to give him the result had been relocated to the Gymkhana and that we would have to go there. I decided to go to the canteen instead and help myself to a cup of tea.

The kids in the canteen seemed really juvenile, and I was fighting the urge to 'orient' them. Suddenly the Mac appeared there with his mark sheet and ordered a tea for himself. We were deciding whether or not to watch a movie, he strongly in favour of watching No Entry at nearby Sion and me totally against it. Finally we decided to watch Iqbal at Gossip, Bandra where the movie was going to be running in an hours time. We decided to take a cab just in case, and the Mac was feeling generous, so he offered to pay for it. We got off at Matunga station and crossed the Z bridge. This brough back memories of Ruparel; pretty strongly too, for I felt this rush when I looked at the flight of stairs that went down to Ruparel.

My day-dream was broken when the Mac realised that he had no idea where this Gossip theatre was. We asked a couple of cabbies, but they had no clue. Then the Mac had a hunch that it would be somewhere near Hill Street, so we hailed another cab and off we were, with half an hour left for the movie to begin. We cabbed it to Hill Street, wherever that is, by which time the Mac had phoned his friends and found out that Gossip was one of the G theatres that included, Gemini and Gaeity.

I have suddenly realised tat I am a bad narrator, or maybe I am good, but I tend to be too damn verbose at times, so I am going to take a break now. Tough luck. Email me if you really really really want to know what happens next. :-)