The Colaba Diaries : Ep1-Avoiding Diarrhea
When I saw that email in my inbox at around 8:30 PM, almost a month ago, I actually shot out of my chair and jumped around my room. The office I had applied to had said yes. I'm definitely not one to be defined by my job, but when its a company you really want to work with, doing what you want, and would like to keep doing, I'd say its a moment worthy of that reaction.
There was one, small, catch. I had to change cities. To my regular readers, this may not seem like a problem considering how I had come back to Delhi after a 10-month stint in Bengaluru, but I would like to add that I was being hosted by my relatives, which meant I never really had to deal with any of the grown up stuff. I was basically living with family and all was taken care of. But for this job, I was going to have to move to Mumbai and this time, I don't have those advantages. Sure, I do have a family friend and a cousin staying here, but in a city where living space comes at a ridiculous premium, there was no option but to find accommodations of my own.
Now, I won't tell you how much its costing my parents to let me live and work in Mumbai as a trainee, but lets just say it is unreasonably expensive. And this is how it will be for the next 6 months or so. So the Loon from Delhi who places personal space quite high in the list of priorities would have to live in dormitory sort of conditions, sharing a medium-sized flat with a total of SEVEN people. This, will be educational.
At the time of writing up this post, I have completed one week of living like this. The other six people in this flat are ignorably decent. I still don't know the names of two of them, and I have been on the bare-minimum level of polite acknowledgement with most of the others, ie, a nod and a flash of a smile. There is a bloke who has lived in Bengaluru too so we do get along well, which is a level of comfort that seems adequate at this point of time.
My first weekend was spent on arranging for bedding such as sheets and pillows. I spent the rest of it pretty much just in the room watching videos and playing WRC on my laptop. Piss off, there are worse ways to spend a weekend. Anyway, the weekdays since have passed rather smoothly as I have been occupied for most of my day at work. The area I have found shelter in, is within walking distance from office, which is one of the reasons I picked it, and is located in a rather active area of the city called 'Colaba'.
There are plenty of eating joints littered along the main road, so each supper has been an adventure. Trying a new place every night, and as long as it doesn't make me significantly sick, I'd figure I can consider it as a valid option for another meal later on. So far, I have successfully managed to avoid diarrhea, but not all of them would be an ideal pick for repeat visits.
Also, this Colaba area, is near the touristy spots like Marine Drive and Gateway, and the like. Those are the areas where interesting things would happen, especially in the context of special cars, so I might muster the motivation to explore that in the weeks to come. But I will maintain an observation that I had from my first trip to Mumbai, it's not the city for solo adventures, and if I am to maintain my (in)sanity, it would be better to identify some sort of social circle for myself.
That's all from week one, and more will follow in this series of posts as the weeks roll on, so stay tuned. I'm gonna go back to my current culinary adventure tonight, avoiding diarrhea.
There was one, small, catch. I had to change cities. To my regular readers, this may not seem like a problem considering how I had come back to Delhi after a 10-month stint in Bengaluru, but I would like to add that I was being hosted by my relatives, which meant I never really had to deal with any of the grown up stuff. I was basically living with family and all was taken care of. But for this job, I was going to have to move to Mumbai and this time, I don't have those advantages. Sure, I do have a family friend and a cousin staying here, but in a city where living space comes at a ridiculous premium, there was no option but to find accommodations of my own.
Now, I won't tell you how much its costing my parents to let me live and work in Mumbai as a trainee, but lets just say it is unreasonably expensive. And this is how it will be for the next 6 months or so. So the Loon from Delhi who places personal space quite high in the list of priorities would have to live in dormitory sort of conditions, sharing a medium-sized flat with a total of SEVEN people. This, will be educational.
At the time of writing up this post, I have completed one week of living like this. The other six people in this flat are ignorably decent. I still don't know the names of two of them, and I have been on the bare-minimum level of polite acknowledgement with most of the others, ie, a nod and a flash of a smile. There is a bloke who has lived in Bengaluru too so we do get along well, which is a level of comfort that seems adequate at this point of time.
My first weekend was spent on arranging for bedding such as sheets and pillows. I spent the rest of it pretty much just in the room watching videos and playing WRC on my laptop. Piss off, there are worse ways to spend a weekend. Anyway, the weekdays since have passed rather smoothly as I have been occupied for most of my day at work. The area I have found shelter in, is within walking distance from office, which is one of the reasons I picked it, and is located in a rather active area of the city called 'Colaba'.
There are plenty of eating joints littered along the main road, so each supper has been an adventure. Trying a new place every night, and as long as it doesn't make me significantly sick, I'd figure I can consider it as a valid option for another meal later on. So far, I have successfully managed to avoid diarrhea, but not all of them would be an ideal pick for repeat visits.
Also, this Colaba area, is near the touristy spots like Marine Drive and Gateway, and the like. Those are the areas where interesting things would happen, especially in the context of special cars, so I might muster the motivation to explore that in the weeks to come. But I will maintain an observation that I had from my first trip to Mumbai, it's not the city for solo adventures, and if I am to maintain my (in)sanity, it would be better to identify some sort of social circle for myself.
That's all from week one, and more will follow in this series of posts as the weeks roll on, so stay tuned. I'm gonna go back to my current culinary adventure tonight, avoiding diarrhea.
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