Being Driven into Town

Had a brief respite from commuting when colleague Harjinder picked me up and drove me into town, as it was the company's annual conference. Harjinder and me are from the suburb of Chembur, where we grew up together, and must have, unknowingly, passed each other a hundred times. It is only now that we have met and, as coincidence would have it, got introduced.

So, as we drove through Chembur we reminisced the old haunts of the suburb, the RK studios where we (I) and our friend would go to see the stars, the Basant theatre where we would see movies such as MacKenna's Gold in 70 mm, the eateries of Sindhi Colony which had the best street food, the RCF colony, the factories that would give Chembur such a bad name, and countless other places where we had walked, which still bore our footprints (or, so we think).

We were in town in one hour from New Bombay as we took the private refinery road which is less crowded. From this road we could see the railway tracks on which we commute on a daily basis. The place has changed: swanky housing complexes, factories and slums dot the landscape in a rather higgledy-piggledy mien, totally without form or planning.

But then, that's Bombay.