Night Riders

Hello readers, am posting this one from my Moothamma(masi)'s place at Saat Bangla, Andheri. Have come down here to meet my grandparents before the July deluge (more on this later). Anyway, as I've pointed out before, Parkinson hast blessed me. When I have limited access to a computer workstation, my creative juices flow copiously, ready to rival the impending floods in Andheri. Anyway, I have reverted to good old paper and ink writing to preserve those thoughts till I can have access to one. But those thoughts deserve time and patience to post online, so I shall post them once I'm back at home base with plenty of time on hand. For now, I'm out of pen and paper too, and have access to a comp anyway, and am rattled with insomnia as usual, so here I go...

After a breathtaking evening spent at ISKCON, Juhu with masi, ma and nanaji, I was tired and just wanted to hit the sack at nana's Chaar Bangla home (my childhood home). Shattering my dreams, along came my dear big bro A Bhaiyya says "Come to my place, I'll take you on my bike". I've been pestering him to give me a ride ever since he returned from his MBBS course last year. So there I was, torn between my desire to sleep and the desire to talk to the wind (hawaa se baatein karna :D) and me being me, obviously there was no question.

So, me being duely kidnapped, we went on a zippy night-ride to Juhu beach. Well, it was supposed to be zippy. It being Saturday night, roads at Juhu were more clogged than those at Thane station (that's a-saying something). Anyway, Bhaiyya's driving skills are better than most people that have taken me pillion. So the ride was relaxing and the wind blew away my grogginess. I must admit my mood had been pretty grouchy all day and heving to yell to make myself heard over the wind helped get it all out of my sytem. So when Bhaiyya proposed a paan at the beach, the frown of disgust that would've otherwise surfaced got blown away by the wind and my good mood. My experiences with paan at A Rama Nayak's Udipi hangouts until now have been pretty 'bitter', hence the apprehension. But I said to myself, "What the hell!" and quickly agreed.

Mishra Paan Shop is a small aankhda kept meticulously clean and exuding the intoxicating fragrance of gulkand and what not. Bang opposite The Ramada and flush with delItalia (hope I got the name right), the stall is an unlikely neighbour, but vies almost equally in its clientele with them. A constant crowd throngs the stall proclaiming its reputation. "He's the richest paanwallah in Mumbai", Bhaiyya gives his gyaan."He's richer than us man, earns in crores and all. And he's here since ages" as he hands me an outsize fragrant wrap.

Having refused (rather reluctantly) Bhaiyya's offer of a cigarette to go with the paan ("You're in college now and all, Kutti, so I'm offering you", Big Bro's gyaan). Munching the awesome sweet delicacy on the ride back home, I was in a state of bliss and was in just the right mood to blog. So the moment I got home, I logged onto their PC and here I am, fishing bits of paan from between my teeth and tippy-tappying away at the kleyboard.

Anyway, here I need to stop, cos' I've been smuggled out of Grandpa's place (Chaar Bangla to Saat Bangla, if you please!) and I have to get up early and go crash at nana's place before he realises I'd been gone overnight! So good night, readers!