Ramu,Drive Slowly!!!
My Mumbai visit from 25th to 28-December 2008.
Thinking about the trip,its second best trip in 2008.In Mumbai by brother (Vishnu) stays with my Mom’s Elder sister and Husband. He is working in L&T Infotech. The timing was good since my cousin’s were also there.They had come to India for Christmas vacation from US. Cousin’s- mom’s elder sister’s Son (santosh- we call him Santu,thotta,bcoz he is more than 6 foot) and Daughter(Padmaja – we call her seema) along with Son’s Kid(Vihaan- he recentlycelebrated his 1 year birthday) and wife(Veena- meeting her for the first time after their marriage).
The worst part was the travel from bangalore to Mumbai and back to bangalore in Raj Travel’s volvo. For those who are planning to travel in Raj travels I advice you not to jump into that adventure as they have a poor service and normally you won’t be getting the seat that you booked online. To your surprise chances are there that there can be two or more owners for the seat number. Otherwise the long weekend was awesome. I’ll talk about my Raj Travel’s experience later in the blog. 
I was so happy when i started from Bangalore @ 4PM, since at 2.30PM i passed my external certifications with flying colors, obviouslywith the help of the dumps/cramp sheets.I got a whooping 94% and I was in a hurry to get back to majestic since it was already getting late for the bus. I had a meal from KFC and took an auto to goto the Raj travels stop which was merely a 10 mins walk from KFC. I didn’t know that until the Auto driver was so happy when i told him the place.
I was supposed to get down @ Chembur garden’s in Mumbai, where my Uncle (I call him Valiachan) and brother was waiting. The good service provided by the driver and the cleaner of the bus helped me a lot that they dropped me somewhere else by telling some crap reasons of traffic. Meanwhile i called my brother and told him the place that the driver planning me to kick out. They dropped me near to an over-bridge, and that was a junction where vehicles where coming from all the directions. My bro called me and asked me the exact position and i told that what i can was see was a over-bridge, a traffic island and a HP Turbojet hoarding in the bridge with a Sardarji’s pic.He was asking whether i can see this ad that ad and all which i tried to see till my sight reaches, but didn’t see anything. Then I came to know that they were on some other end and I’m on the other end of Mumbai. Not too bad , my first step on Mumbai alone. I waited there for more than half an hour i suppose and ultimately took an auto and went to the place where my bro was waiting( My bro was giving directions to the Auto driver).
Ultimately i found them out, instead of they finding me, after all waiting for half an hour and thinking about the long bill from airtel for lavish usage of the mobile while roaming. One more good thing happened was that i forgot to take the new Nokia charger and it was having less than 20% charge. Nobody at mumbai was having that small pin new nokia charger. So i switched off my mobile for all three days in mumbai.
When i opened the car door i saw my cousin Sister siting with that big frame goggles, which my bro describes as the windscreen of Volvo buses. I was so happy to see her after a long time. I think when she saw me she called “hi thavalle(means- hi frog, my nickname that they used to call) ” or “hi kisha”(people in kerala finds easy way to call some difficult names which they find will cost more saliva for them to be wasted, names like Krishnan, which they pronounce as “kishan”, like Prabhakaran = Pakaran,Padmanabhan=pappan). She was asking about journey and all and i was telling that i didn’t brush my teeth so I’ll answer to all once i reach home and brush. Valiachan was driving and he was asking me what you want for lunch, usual questions like Chicken or Fish. I told him that since i get chicken a lot in Mysore i prefer Mutton. Dhim. Asked for a wish and i gave him a task. He tried to find out a meat stall somewhere but couldn’t find that time. So he promised to get that before i leave there.
We reached Uncle’s house at around11.30Am and everyone was waiting for me to have their breakfast. I met Veena and Vihaan for the first time. Vihaan was having his breakfast. I engaged myself dor half an hour in the rest room and came out for the breakfast. I was feeling so fresh and hungry to eat anything. Valiamma (Mom’s elder sister) prepared dosa and Vazhakka appam(Its a typical kerala sweet prepared using Maida flour,sugar and banana). Vihaan was playing around. After breakfast we were planning for the next 3 days. Suddenly came the plan to watch the movie “Ghajhni (starring Aamir khan and Asin)” which was released the same day. My brother called his friend’s sister working in PVR cinema’s and booked the tickets.
Vihaan was not feeling well, he had loose motion and slight fever. So we Santu and Veena planned to take him to Doctor and Valiachan was planning to take them to doctor in his car (Hyundai-i10). Smelling the opportunityi asked him to rest and told him that I’ll drive the car. Vishnu came along with us and Santu and vishu gave me the name in the title of the blog – “RAMU” (Common name of driver in Hindi cinema’s). Fine, i didn’t bother as far I’m getting my first chance to drive in Mumbai’s 3- 4 lane roads in good traffic. They were asking whether the car is cleaned and all. Veena was little bit scared since she didn’t know my driving experience. Santu also had but didn’t show that much. Veenawas asking whether she has to drive as she has experience in driving alone in US for long hours. The only problem with both veena and santuwas that they are not familiar with driving a manual gear transmission vehicle as their car in US was an automatic one.My bro was telling that she knows to drive but not that experienced and not interested. So finally their Ramu only have the privilege to drive.
Who drives in Mumbai’s big road at 40KM/hr in a brand new car with 5 speed gears? Whenever i get a straight road with less traffic i used to go till 90km/hr at a stretch and since the most of the vehicles were obeying lane rules it was so easy to drive since u didn’t have to get feared about somebody suddenly jumping the lane.
We reached the clinic and my bro was guiding me in finding the way while I was driving. I met Veena’s younger brother Abhishek there at the clinic as he joined us there and we were there at the clinic for more than one hour. After that we went for a small shopping and went to Veena’s home. Veena’s elder sister’s son was playing with other kids there. My brother is a good friend of him and they were playing combat games there. Veena’s mom served some sweets which i think i ate the whole stuff. They were very friendly and Veena was introducingme to her dad and Sis. We went some time there and we left there with her Sis and son. We dropped them at their house where we met Veena’s Jeeju. Then all the way back to home i was enjoying the drive and there was a place where we had to take an “U turn” to got out apartment. I was waiting in the traffic to take it and i remember i took the right most place in that junction to make sure that no body else can take the right space,making it easy for me to immediately take U -Turn. When the traffic was less after around 20 secs i took the right turn and immediately saw something on my right near to my side mirror. Breaaaakkkk…. Oh it was an auto. It took the U turn keeping a distance with our car within inches. Oops. i was sure that nothing happened to the car , but Veena and Santu got scared, thinking about the after effects of that. And i did a mistake there by asking veena who was sitting behind me ,the question”did you see that auto-rickshaw?”. Gone, y i asked that stupid question, which in turn dig my own grave till the date i came back. Santu was always making fun of me with that dialogue. When we reached the flat i checked the car and made sure that not even a small scratch was there.
Valiamma was preparing chicken curry and after sometime Santu’s friends came. I should say common friends of seema,veena and santu. I didn’tknow them that much and i was little busy with booking flight tickets for my parents and sister to come to mumbai for my sister’s to join TCS. After that we had a dinner and after a eventful night we went to bed.
Next day(26-Dec-2008 ) the day we planned to go for movie. Veena cancelled her plan to come for movie as Vihaan was not feeling well. Morning me and Valiachan went to market by bike and he bought some fish and vegetables. On the way he showed me their old house in vartak nagar.We came back and I took bath and when i got ready lunch was ready with fish fry. Perfect timing and Superbdish!!!.We had our lunch and took the car to goto PVR cinema’s. We, means Me,Vishnu,Santu and Seema. It was a little long trip and i enjoyed it very well. We reached Nirmal Lifestyle mall and went straight to PVR and took the tickets by quoting my bro’s friend’s sister’s name. But we got front seats. Afterwards he met her and whe adjusted the seats so that we got the back row. Special thanks for her help. Sorry i don’t remember here name now. Movie was good also the ice cream which me and santu bought from Basking and Robbins and we returned back to home. Bro ordered some food from outside and to be honest it was not good. Veena’s parent’s visited the house along with Abhishek and we all had the supper together. We had a nice time even though sometimes for me it was difficult to understand when they switch the language from hindi to marathi. Not much events happened that day but the time I spent with them was cherishing moments for me.That night we came to know that there wont electricity supply next morning to the flat as there is some electrical maintenance work planned. That time itself we planned to go outside and Veena wanted to stay with her parents. We planned for some shopping.
Morning(27-Dec-2008 ) we got early since the planned time for power off was 8.30AM. We got ready and left Valiamma and valiachan alone at home.Before we left Seema gifted me the Digital Photo frame that she bough for me after seeing my craze towards taking pictures.i couldn’t explore it that time as we were getting ready to go outside.We went to Nirmal lifestyle again for shopping and it was mainly planned for santu to take some clothes for himself, but it ultimately turned that me and bro took jeans which santu payed. We didn’t buy anything much and went to Mcdonald’s to take our lunch. We had a nice time sitting there and chatting having some Burger and finger cheips. Some nostalgic moments about our childhood while santu was commenting that he didnt expect all of us to be there at Mumbai and driving and sitting like that in a restaurant. We spent some good time there and went to pick veena from her home. Meanwhile Santu wanted to play cricket( he is having a son and he want to play cricket now in Mumbai roads..). Anyway we got Abhishek to play with us and immediately santu bought a Cricket bat and ball from near by shop. We started playing in one of the lane opposite to veena’s house. Only crap rule which made my game difficult. you have to bowl underarm.It was difficult for me to do that, since i was playing after a long time and it was difficult for me to trace the ball when its thrown underarm. Me and santu a team and my bro and abhishek in the other team. Me and santu terribly lost all the game except one, where in all the matches Santu played well and i got out with either one run or most of the times duck.
It was all sweating and me and brother had plans to goto my Dad’s younger brother staying soe 5kms away from Valiachan’s house. After the game me and he went there and spend around half an hour at their house, since they were planning to goto temple. We came back to Veena’s house, by that time veena prepared the Mutton curry that we were planning to prepare at Valiachan’s home after getting back there. As it was getting late, she prepared it at her house and we took the whole pressure cooker and other item’s in the car to Valiachan’s house. Cool we had a very good supper, but santuwas not there as he had a get together with his friends. I took out my gift and checked it. It was too good and i liked it very much. Thanks Seema for gifting me the photo frame.After the supper we watched a malayalam movie “Katha Parayumbol”(Telling the story) which was nice film with a good story and good touchy scenes and dialogues. We went to our bed.
Net day me and bro was planning to goto my Dad’s elder brother at Andheri and catch the bus to bangalore from there. So i packed everything and got ready by around 10Am. It is the toughest time when you have to say bye to everyone and leave them. Veena took the camera and started taking snaps. Vihaanwas one my hand as he liked to go out with anyone. After taking all the pics, he vomited. Poor guy he controlled it till we took all the snaps. It was too touching and i felt more bad when i left him.My brother took valiachan’s bike and we started travelling towards andheri. After around 1 and half hour we reached there spent some time with them had a good lunch and left home. Brother was there with me till the bus came and my Mumbai trip was over.
Very short duration but enjoyed each and every minute in those 3 days, enjoyed being the Driver with name “Ramu”, enjoyed having homely food, enjoyed having a good time with Vihaan, enjoyed playing cricket, watching movie, slipping into some nostalgic moments and getting embarrassed thinking about childhood behaviour. Over all it was a good time which i spend with all the people i met and i hope I’ll get a chance to meet all of them again with the same mood of vacation.
