Second Chances

Don’t you simply loathe those people who simply can’t stay at home on a weekend and HAVE to throng all the popular places in Mumbai, irrespective of increasing auto fares, alcohol prices and obnoxious Bandra crowd? Of course you don’t, because you are one of them!

But I am one of those hypocritical people who claim that they are too cool to follow the crowd, that they love their own company and that for them, the weekend is all about cleaning/washing/doing laundry/paying bills, but secretly dress up and travel halfway across the city to try new places/things.

Like this weekend: we had this marvelous idea to go to Gateway of India, hire a yatch and sail for two hours. But it seemed the rest of Bombay had already beaten us to it, and after fighting off the crowd, we did manage to get onboard the Blue Whale and the next couple of hours were simply out of this world, literally. We managed to cruise across the sea, admiring the private yatchs of the Who is Who of Bombay, the light breeze playing havoc with my already messy curls, but the alcohol smuggled into the boat making sure that I no longer cared about it. The sunset itself was straight out of the Kerala Tourism brochures, and suddenly, I was miles away, lost in the memory of cruising through the backwaters of Alleppey and Kumarakom. And while I was living in the pseudo dream, one of my closest friends was actually getting married in God’s Own Country: a traditional Mallu Christian wedding which I so badly wanted to attend, but thanks to circumstances, had to pull out of. We wound up the night with a beautiful view of the Queen’s Necklace from the Hanging Gardens and pigging out on Chinese food. Life was almost perfect, but not quite.

I also read Lance Armstrong’s autobiography, “It’s not about the bike”, and given the recent state of events, I was not quite sure what to make of it. Irrespective of where things stand, he would always remain a hero. You can strip him off his accolades/medals, but you can never take away his place in history.

Life does give you a second chance, but at times, you are too scared to take it or you simply make a mess of it…