Disgrace Down Under

This weekend I made a lot of trips to South Mumbai, or as we the poor cousins in Suburban Mumbai call it, “Town”. If you are from Mumbai, you would know that this is no mean feat and can only be compared to India’s current sojourn Down Under.

To begin with, anybody who had jostled against smelly armpits in a crowded second class compartment would know that the experience is as harrowing as watching Gautam Gambhir face an Australian fast bowler with the new ball. You may be the king at your own backyard, but when exposed to an alien environment, you are bound to be humiliated. So when I am navigating through the crowd at Ghatkopar or Mulund, I feel good about myself: confident, successful and quite an achiever, pretty much like MS Dhoni, after beating a weak and below-par West Indies team. However, as soon as I travel down south, I see genetically superior, better-looking, better-dressed and effortlessly sophisticated people who inevitably end up making me feel like Team India getting thrashed by Ponting and Clarke. If that isn’t enough to humiliate me, you have this constant reminder of the horror story that will follow shortly: like the green top at Perth awaits the Boys in Blue, I shudder to explore the sheer embarrassment of walking inside the Palladium Mall which reduces me to a worm in front of the well-heeled ladies from Malabar Hills.

Otherwise it was a good weekend… clothes-wise and rupee-foolish.

Also, for the first time, I held a 10-day old baby in my arms… it was scary: not the baby, but the fact that it belonged to my college roommate.