Eventful Tuesday trip to A Wednesday

The title - a try to come up with something witty - seems a lost cause; so let's get on with it.

Yesterday, went to go watch the new movie - the movie's name is A Wednesday, in case you haven't guessed it already - with teammates A and P. Initial plan was to take an auto to the theater - the Cinemax in Andheri (E). However, at the last moment we decided to take P's car.
We didn't know where exactly the theater was; and it was raining bigtime outside.
Murphy's law dictated that we took the wrong turn from the main road; furthermore, we took a wrong turn in a desparate attempt to find a parking space. Finally, we managed to park the car in P's old office; thankful that she still had the old office sticker on the windscreen.
Next started the search for the theater. After walking for a couple of minutes, then taking a bus and heading out the next second, then taking an auto for 5 minutes and finally walking for another 5 minutes we reached the theater. Adding insult to injury, the theater staff and my ignorance made me join the wrong queue for getting the tickets that we had booked online. However, we made it finally made to the cinema hall, though after having made another wrong turn and opening the entrance to the cinema offices instead of the hall.

The movie was good; a fast paced drama/thriller - overall a great and recommended watch.

Halfway through the pre-interval part, I got a call from roommates requesting me to have dinner outside as those two had successfully managed to devour the food that the maid had cooked for them and me. The solace was that we had some maggi lying around, which I later confirmed with them.
More misadventure was waiting for us when the movie got over. It was raining even more mightily when we came out. Plan was that A would take an auto to his place; me and P would take another to her car and then I will head home. A small discussion for dinner plans died prematurely cause of all the rain. Seeing no autos outside the theater, we decided to brave the rains and venture on to the main road to get one.
That's when disaster hit us first. I stepped into a puddle, assuming it was just an inch deep and instead found a manhole waiting for me. Thankfully, the hole was not very wide, and my other leg hit the front edge and I managed to climb out without much injury. I assumed that A and P had seen me falling, as they were behind me. So not wanting to continue with embarrassment of having fallen into a manhole, and in the race to catch an auto, I shrugged the episode and went ahead with the auto search.
Success in the search came in the third try; and I went back a few meters to indicate to P that I had gotten an auto. At that point I saw A crossing the same spot; I yelled at him - "be careful". Now I know he didn't hear me; and he knows that he missed just by a few inches. I had pointed the spot to P before and now, seeing A getting through safely, I was very much sure that they knew the danger.
So, worried that the auto would take another passenger, I walked back to it and then turned towards A and P. And that's when disaster struck the second time. I saw P falling into the same hole. That was perhaps the biggest WTF and frightening moment of my life. I ran back, but by the time I reached, she had gotten out of the ditch safely.
But were we shocked!! When it happened to me I was just shocked, because it happened so fast. I fell in the hole and climbed outside within two seconds, max three. Seeing it happen to a friend was so damn frightening, apart from the immense shock factor. The only other moment I could remember when I was so shocked and frightened was years ago when I realized that I had taken a step and had landed not even an inch far away from a snake's mouth.

Thankfully neither of us were hurt seriously and we reached our places without any further misadventures.

When I finally regained complete control of my senses on the way back; I realised I had made two mistakes. I had forgotten my bag in P's car and I should have put a bamboo or something in that hole to warn others; but forgot both due to the shock. However, overall, the episode was nothing huge, in fact we high-fived the next day on an adventurous evening.

Lesson learnt - do not let such small things shock you so much for so long.

Bigger lesson learnt - watch before you step!!

By the way, the snake was dead!

lalbaugcha raja

That's the name of the Ganesh idol in Lalbaug area of Parel in Mumbai. That's the idol which is getting a Z-category security cover from the Mumbai police, or to be more precise, the whole festive organization centering around the idol, celebrating its platinum jubilee this year.

The question that comes is - what exactly is the fuss all about? So the inquisitive me got a very good opportunity of finding out when a friend, who is more religious than me, proposed that we go and visit it for a darshan .

The decision was made on the spur of the moment and we decided to go day before yesterday evening. Those who know Mumbai, would know that Saki Naka to Parel is a fare bit of distance, and trying to accomplish this commute by road in the evening traffic is one form of slow death. However, day before yesterday being Ganesh Chaturthi, there wasn't much traffic and we reached there in an hour.
I was joking that there seems to be no traffic and perhaps not that big a crowd would be there for the darshan. My friend said," tu dekh, puri mumbai ki bheed udhar hi hogi". And man, how correct was she. When we first reached the place, after having a very timely dinner - we would indeed have perished before the night was over hadn't we eaten then - we realised that there was a long queue. Long but not THAT long I said, from my past experiences of visiting religious places on such auspicious days.

So we did a small jugaad and entered the queue somewhat ahead saving us one hour. But still I expected a 3-4 hour queue. But then we were hit by a real life example of the "tip of the iceberg". The queue that we had seen on the road was just 1/5th of what was inside. First there was one room 25 by 25 meter square with 15 parallel rows and then another room 4 times that with similar serpentine queues. All the calculations said it would be a 7 hour queue in total.

Then my friend had a brilliant idea and we just skipped one half of the bigger room - bang - a save of atleast 2 hours. Another few minutes and we were in front of Ganesh ji; asking for all the things we had ample time to think about while standing in the queue. Though I didn't get any extraordinary bhakti-bhav near the idol - no offenses, afterall my friend was deep in prayers, so i guess the idol does have some effect - I guess the whole point was to go through such a tough routine and get to an objective. For me, that high would be as good as the high other people get after having a darshan. Once out from the pandaal, we shook hands on a mission successfully accomplished.

Isliye jor se bolo ganpat bappa morryaaa...lagbaucha rajacha jai jai kaar