Crossing the pipes

If you come up to the terrace of our hostel and look towards north, the first thing you will notice is a series of five parallel pipes. Those pipes lie just beside the wired fence of our hostel. Huge in size, those sky blue colored pipes carry water from Vihar lake and supply that to a huge portion of Mumbai population. Just behind those pipes there is this lively locality called Chancawalli.

Yes, it is the same place that reminded me of my hometown long ago. It is the same place where band parties practice each evening. It is the same place we visited for the Urus Festival. Although this place is just behind our hostel, to reach there the formal way is all the way around Powai lake. Why can't we just go there directly?

May be we can. Five of us started investigating. Finally we entered the beautifully kept and protected lawn of our hostel through a secret side passage. In a shabby and dark corner of this lavish green lawn there was the rabbit hole. We crept in.

And one by one, we were out. It was 6:30 in the evening. Fishermen in the Powai lake were packing up with fresh fishes in their collection. There was a narrow walking path running side by side insti fence. We went ahead. In five minutes we reached the pipes.

The pipes were huge; as tall as me. How to climb? We started walking forward. Then someone found the ladder to reach a manhole. We climbed up and started walking on the pipes towards Bhandup. I had seen localities jump from one pipe to another at ease. But for us it was unimaginable. Pipes were round and if by chance you slip, something or other in your body will break.

Night was falling in. Some part of our mind was telling us to go go back. We had heard people talking about this place. They say this is not a very safe place to be at night. All types of crimes are abundant. Although we saw no evidence, if someone kills you and throws between two pipes, nobody will find your body before next morning. Besides, we could not find any way to cross the pipes. And towards front as well as towards back, the pipes were endless. We came down at the next manhole.

But there was a portion of our brain, that kept telling us to move on and we did not stop. And after 10 minutes or so, we found a platform and a ladder. We went up and found that the platform joins the three of the pipes. But the fourth one had to be crossed some other way. Between the fourth and the fifth pipe, there is pipeline road. And I had seen an underpass to cross the fifth one. Hence, our final hurdle was this fourth pipe. We reached the third pipe using the platform and then again started going forward until we found a ladder in the fourth one. We dropped down and one by one climbed the ladder. Finally we were in the pipeline road. It was 8:00 pm in the night. And it was still not a safe place to be. We had decided not to go back in the same route. Hence the only way forward was through the pipeline road towards Renaissance Hotel.

The pipeline road ends near the entrance of NITIE. And there is a check post of Mumbai Corporation there. Should we really be here. We must have better excuses. Thankfully they did not ask anything from us. Finally we reached the spot of the Urus Festival, by foot.

And our journey continued. This time we took the road (public road this time) beside NITIE hostels and then Vihar Lake Road. When we looked down, we could see the locality beside Aarey Powai Road. Then we reached the bus depot. Just after the Bus Depot, there is the entrance of Vihar Lake.

Did we reach Vihar Lake? Wow! We could not believe this. But sadly enough, the entry to the park was restricted by the Mumbai Corporation. After all Vihar Lake supplies drinking water to a large portion of Mumbai. The guard stopped us. But we kept requesting. I don't know what worked finally, but after a lot of persuasion he allowed us to go inside on condition that we will not go beyond his eyesight.

Then we came face to face with the vast beauty. Vihar Lake at night. Deep jungles of Sanjay Gandhi National Park were in the opposite side. Evening breeze was curving patterns in the dark water. We stood still in the mesmerizing vastness for a long time. On the other side of where we were standing, there was a cliff and below there was jungle. Deep jungle.

We took a bus from the depot to come back.

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Disclaimer: Although the places mentioned in this post is real, the event not necessarily. Trying to correlate this post with reality is simply a waste of time.

Mirch - Movie review

While writing the review of this latest movie by Vinay Shukla, one word that comes in my mind first is: “weird”. This movie is really weird. It's a collection of four short stories that are loosely connected by a wannabe director who narrates his script to a probable producer and how they can identify themselves within the story. All the four stories share a common theme. It's about how women can fool men if they want and how they can cheat with the man knowing nothing. Well its woman who cheats in this movie and at times their tricks catches the Z-level. All the stories are simple yet catchy. Although at times the men look like more fool than they really are.

There are plenty of talented actors scattered in this movie. Rajpal Jadav, Prem Chopra, Shreyas Talpade, Boman Irani, Konkona Sensharma all are great. Especially Konkona and Boman – you look stupendous on screen. Really. And of course Sahana! Sahana Goswami is really a talented actress. Although I liked her performance in Rock On more, she really needs a mention here. Arunodoy Sing tries to act, but when compared to others, he performs rather badly. But the most charming performance was definitely by Illa Arun. Wow.... I love her accent.

Pitobash Tripathy can be seen in many key roles in this movie. I have to say, this man is going to create his own genre of acting in Hindi Cinema. He is in all the four short stories here and also in the outside connecting story. In the first one he is the friend of Rajpal Yadav, second story makes him the prime servant of the king, in the third one he actually plays himself: Pitobash and in the fourth one he is the room service person. For those who does not know, Pitobash Da is an engineer and we studied in the same college. He is three years senior to me. Wow... it does make me proud.

The editing of this movie did not look impressive to me. The sequences between the films (the outside/ connecting story) is often too long and boring. In fact, the connecting story only annoys ourself except one scene near the end of the film. I think it would be far better if the film would be presented as just a sequence of four stories. The outside story only bored me.

The music is far from being impressive. The lyrics written by Javed Akhtar Ji failed to put a dent on me probably because of the music. It's the same Kamasutra type music. Just bored me.

I would rate the movie in the bucket of Above Average or a BB. This translates to a 8 out of 10. It is definitely not in the league of Life in a Metro, Veja Fry, Rang De Basanti, Taare Zameen Par etc which the movie itself mentions. But it's not too bad either. At least this one is... what's the word... Hatke.

Eatables, Drinkables etc.

This post is more like a teaser. A log. Or an index. Don't be confused.. I wrote this post because I was bored and had to kill some time. Do expect some weird grammar here...

After the Urus mela at Chansawalli, we went to Mahabaleswar. Cameras were unable to catch the beauty hence I am skipping the pics this time. But the trip was awesome (especially the chorus in the whole night bus travel energized with some doses of WM). The initialization of the next day was blocked for a while because the other group were taking bath. Can u imagine! They can not even skip it once. Contrast this with us. We skip bathing out of no reason. For example, I skipped bath today. The corn butter, the ice-gola were among the other things that are hard to forget. And did I forget to mention the STRAWBERRIES???

Then came Saraswati puja. To summerize, mesmerizing environment, a good cultural program, great Bengali food for two days and one visit to Sunny (BP this time, two stipends in one month has some externally observable signals).

Today is, well, so called St. Valentines day (who cares... real people can make each day one). Yesterday we had a full chicken dinner at Nirmal Lifestyle mall. Literally, a chicken dinner.