as I see it

So its been more or less 40 days and 40 nights in my new (B) School and to start with has been a nice chapter. I started off with one of my very special birthdays here which was special because of the reception I got here. Soon after, as expected, had to make books my friends and more importantly had to start getting up at 7:00 AM.

Gradually books were put up on shelf and I started off with the bakk sessions with people here. The 7:00 AM alarm has now been changed to 7:55AM. I celebrate my weekend when it is mid-week for everyone outside my college. I have Thursdays off.

I think I now know why the place where food is served is called 'Mess'. All nearby eating joints follow the policy of Sugar FREE. Exaggerating a bit makes me say that even Rotis are sweet here. Perhaps, they mix sugar in flour. Sambhar, Dal, Paneer and even Chicken have that extra tinge of Sugar in it. Perhaps, they feed sugar to the hens as well. And, they don't charge you extra for all this extra 'sweetness' so it literally is Sugar FREE.

Moving out of the 'nearby' circle makes you change your opinion about the sweet food. Many decent food joints serving quality food can be found easily. Plus you get to see a gelato store as often as an ICICI bank ATM. But then not all are as good as gelato Italiano !

Then there is this Dosa shop outside NMIMS and Mithibai that has all weird kinds of Dosas and equally weird stuffings. E.g. Spicy Chilli Paneer Dosa, American Choupsey with Capsicum Dosa, Tangy Chesse Onion Dosa or a Paw Bhaji Dosa. This special mention was because all these varieties of dosas indeed taste good :)

Some more info about Mumbai and then we head to Lonavala.

Rains in Mumbai seem to be controlled with a regulator just like a fan is. Someone switches it on and it starts pouring at level 5. Then someone comes in and switches it off so it goes off all of a sudden. At times that 'someone' uses the regulator so he/she rotates it anti-clockwise or clockwise, just for fun. You get ready to go out and the switch is turned ON and you are all wet. You go back to your room to change and notice that the switch has been turned OFF. You change and move out and the switch is turned ON again. Water-soaked you decide to move on just to see that the person coming from the other side waving at you is all dry and it seems that the cloud above is the only cloud around and is serving you with utmost dedication. I carry a umbrella in my backpack all the time and many others keep it in their pockets as well. Amazing ! I don't even remember when did I use an umbrella last before coming to Mumbai :O

Next piece of info is something you must have heard time and again and it is about vadapav being the staple diet of people here.

Long Long ago when I first came to Bombay I noticed that the traffic is all well-organized. People follow lanes. Not anymore. Moreover, the auto rickshaw drivers are just too good. They go by METER (I am from Delhi so it is surprising for me). The fare is a function of Time * Distance. They have huge speakers installed which from outside sound 'Dhik-chik Dhik-chik'. They can take all steep turns and drive as if it was some NFS Carbon simulation.

This post is getting bigger but I am enjoying writing so I will continue :)

A movie ticket costs 200 bucks so you really curse yourself if you go for Kismat Konnection. And not many would be aware (at least I was not) that before every movie show the National Anthem video is played (the one featuring Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, AR Rahman and others) and people stand and some do sing it along. Nice. I liked it !

Moving on I'll write in something about Lonawala where I went for my Personal Growth (PG) Lab. It is beautiful. Everything around is just great. We went for trekking to this place famous as Duke's Nose (a cliff about 800 feet high that looked like a Nose to Mr.Duke). Then there was another place where we went for a small trek yet again and saw a waterfall, sat by it, drank the purest form of water. It was drizzling almost everyday when we went out and walking though the clouds with water droplets refreshing you was just awesome. Clean, Green, Serene !

You move out and head towards a market and every 2nd shop has this huge board outside it that reads 'maganlal Chikki' in same font and colour. So basically every shop sells chikki, chocolate walnut fudge (nothing like chocolate except the colour), etc. I tried to re picture the market and want to make a slight modification in stats I gave above. It was like out of every 5 shops 3 were 'maganlal Chikki', 1 'A-1 Chikki' and the remaining 1 could be either 'maganlal' or 'A-1' with 0.5 probability each.

And thats it! The last night was the 40th night and since I had no class today I was up till late doing nothing, woke up late today just like yesterday and it reminded me off the last sem @ DAIICT :)