As Murphy’s law would have it, the number of hindrances that come your way are directly proportional to the urgency of the task that your are taking up. As I have said before, there were bed bugs, and our smart-ass bus driver decided to bypass the expressway and got us stuck in the middle of nowhere for more than 3 hours. I was supposed to reach Mumbai at 7:00 am, but ended up reaching at 11:00 am and missing out on Haji Ali Dargah, which the rest of my west side buddies went to. They tell me it is not that great a place, n the sea around it stinks. But I am not sure whether they said that to console me or it was actually not that good. I met the gang at the Nehru Planetarium, not before visiting the Nehru Science centre and then walking up to Nehru planetarium, which is like 3 kms away. Tough to get directions when both the places have the same name, Nehru centre. L By the time I reached there I was totally drained out by the journey and the fact that I went directly to Nehru centre without having bath or even a change of clothes did not make it any more comfortable. A quick snack at the Nehru centre (where everything costs Rs. 10 more than the M.R.P for some unknown reason) recharged me completely and I was excited about seeing the rest of the place and not just the snack counter at the canteen.
The Nehru centre is situated in Worli and is a window to the entire order of events leading upto India’s independence. The men (and women), their thoughts and the means they adopted to make India what she is today, all of it depicted in chronological order. The main theme of the gallery-cum-museum though is the life of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, his life and his association with India, pre and post-Independence. There are numerous family photographs, including ones of Indira Gandhi as a young girl. One can’t help but stand in awe when one reads about the lives of the men and women who gave their entire lives in the only hope that their future generations may enjoy freedom. There is a small section on the human evolution too, a cave model with models of the tools used in those ages and all of this has been made that extra bit funky by the sounds that are played inside the cave. We got so engrossed in the photographs and the write-ups that we did not realize it was already around 2:00 PM. Couldn’t help but think that if history was taught in schools like the way we have experienced it on this trip, it would not end up as just another subject to study, blurt out on the answer paper and then be forgotten.
We took a taxi from the Nehru centre to Lower Parel and then a train to Mahim. I could see why the local trains are called the lifeline of Mumbai. What takes more than an hour on road takes about 15-20 minutes by the local train, the best way to travel in Mumbai if one wants to save on time and not care too much about personal comfort. Take care of your belongings and be nimble on your feet is the advice that I would like to give you in case you happen to board a local train in Mumbai. Reached Mahim in about 10 minutes and then walked up to the Mahim beach to see the Mahim fort.
Travel advisory: Mahim beach stinks and the fort has been taken over by slum dwellers.
(Guess I need not mention anymore about Mahim fort)
Though disappointed at the sad state of Mahim fort and the apathy of the administration towards it, the girls were excited to do more than a bit of shopping and hence we headed out to Linking Road in Bandra on a taxi. We had lunch at a nearby mall which had a weird payment system. Two suggestions to them:
Hungry people are angry people, don’t make them run around for food.
We are there to eat and not get a prepaid recharge. It would help if you guys modelled your payment system in line with the former instead of the latter.
Two observations about Linking Road:
If you’re a guy who doesn’t cross dress over the weekends, this place isn’t for you
If you’re a girl, then voila, you are in shopping haven.
Make that three:
If you’re a hungry guy with a girl, get yourself something to eat before you come here, lest you can feed yourself jus looking at spaghetti tops.
We ended up shopping till 6:00 PM. The girls managed to find quite a few bargains and me, I just bought myself a bottle of cool mineral water and cooler sugarcane juice..
We then took the train to Charni Road which is very close to Chowpatty. Chowpatty is a chilled out place by the beach with views of Marine drive and its well lit skyscrapers :) We posed in for a couple of pics but Lee’s cam was in Night shot mode, and it took ages for the shutter to open n close which did not make things any easier for us, and most of the pics came out blurred. After gobbling down on Bhelpuri and gulping down on sprite, we proceeded to get a dose of some rock at the Hard Rock Café, next to the Bombay Dyeing mill compound in Lower Parel. We landed there at the wrong day of the week. Since every Thursday the Hard Rock Café has a special show of sorts and they charge a premium for customers on Thursday. The entry fee in itself was Rs. 500 (cover charge not included) we decided to go ahead with it for kick sake. The food wasn’t that great but the ambience is mind blowing. All the rock star memorabilia over the ages have been nicely framed all over the walls of the Café. It was getting late already and since we had to set out for Daman at 5:00 the next morning, we decided to call it a day and reached our NEST in a taxi at around 11:00 PM
