The Roundabout in Nariman Point and a couple of hours in the sun

My stark ignorance as regards the city in which I’ve been born and bred hit newer lows today. I can say that I know a fair bit about Mumbai - notwithstanding its history – but there are plenty of grey areas and today’s adventure added another one.

So ever since I gave my final year mass media exams earlier this month, I’ve been without a job. Of course, that’s a normal situation for any individual freshly freed from the shackles of worthless education. But it’s not a good feeling to count yourself among the millions of unemployed Indians, to be reduced to just another stat and importantly, to add to it. But that was as inevitable as Suresh Kalmadi’s conviction the other day. (Cheers to the CBI)

So I had an interview at Times Ascent at 2 pm, which means I had to enter the Times of India building, located opposite Victoria Terminus Railway Station. Now that building has never appeared in my dreams, for until last summer I didn’t know what its front entrance looked like. But ever since then, it held promise. It’s as art deco-y as those high society chumps keep saying, vintage and modern at the same time. It’s a shame they’ll be shifting to a nondescript high-rise in Lower Parel real soon.

The minute I got in, I couldn’t keep my eyes fixed to one spot for more than two seconds, I had to take in every inch and I knew I wouldn’t be waiting at the reception too long. Anyone standing beside me would call me shifty to say the least.

The 2nd floor (my destination) is like something out of a colourful medieval Indian dream, the interiors are a cross between the fantastic Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur and an art gallery. It made the cubicles resemble a hedge maze bang in the middle of the Diwan-i-khas in Fatehpur Sikri Fort. It looked the sort of place where a tiger could erupt out of a flowerpot and you could expect to find drunken cobras slithering around the minimally carpeted floor. There was a magic about the place that I just didn’t have enough time to explore.

The interview was cakewalk, the customary written test even simpler, but I was too focused on surveying the office to concentrate completely. I’m not sure if I’ll hear from them, it’s not like writing about HR, and professional opportunities and playing soothsayer to jobseekers in print and on a website isn’t something I can’t handle, I just don’t see myself doing it too long, I need to be out on the streets all the time, dishing up the story of the century every week or twice or thrice a week whatever.

I crossed Azad, Oval and Cross Maidans to get to Marine Drive where the crazily expensive towers looked like imposing slabs of concrete in the gritty summer sun. I still had time to kill before my appointment at The Indian Express so I said to myself, ‘kill it nicely’. Five minutes later I was sitting on the promenade gazing mindlessly out at sea when I realized I hadn’t checked my mail all day. Over the past week, I’ve never missed my date with hotmail – nothing useful on yahoo, just spam from Suzanne Mubarak – and I sure wasn’t going to miss it today. Five minutes of internet on my phone would surely zap me off all my credit so I set off towards finding an internet cafe.      

The second I crossed the street, a million diamonds were glittering on the surface of the filthy Arabian Sea, shouldn't have turned to look back. Now Nariman point is the biggest commercial district in the country and if you emptied up the coffers of all the ritzy corporations contained in it and even the Mantralaya and Vidhan Sabha for good measure, Sierra Leone’s financial future would be secured for the at least a decade and there’d still be money left to buy a couple of islands in the Pacific Ocean off French Polynesia. Ten minutes into my quest and I figured that it’s impossible for a seedy internet cafe to exist among the stately premises of the State Bank of India, the Oberoi Trident Hotel, the Union bank of India and countless other boring 101-storeyed structures. While I passed Vada Pav stalls, a sandwich-maker operating out of what looked like an improvised pigsty, chaat vendors and numerous other lowlifes selling food to the workforce and lifeline of the country’s financial nerve-centre, I still hadn’t found my frigging cafe.

I had to eventually settle for a dingy print shop that extorted Rs. 10 for a 10 minute session interrupted by a creaking door, the mood swings of dial-up internet and a bucktoothed girl looking over my shoulder as I instinctively deleted Facebook notifications. By the time I walked out of there, rounded freedom Fighter Ramnath Goenka street twice, said hello to Free Press House, flirted with the possibility of returning to the sit next to the water and finally pushed out that thought to enter the spidery Express Towers one thing was clear – I’d scared off Yuva by mailing them the posts from The Rotten Egg and been completely ignored by Time Out Mumbai. The journalist I finally met at Express told me offhand that I had the rest of my life to work and there really isn’t any rush. Wish she had something slightly more cheerful to say about what I’m going to do in the meantime.