Book Excerpt: Side Please

Madan Mohan

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Side Please – Eight Days of Mumbai Madness is a novel about what life in Maximum City is like, captured through a look at eight days in the life of our protagonist.  The expression Side Please is itself a very authentically Mumbai one.  The slim length of the book is intended to capture the frenetic pace and intensity of life in the city and the generous helpings of humour (captured in the artwork) reflect the city’s can-do spirit which, more than anything, helps the citizenry stay sane in the face of daily obstacles en route to getting to their workplace (or on the way back).  

It is available on Amazon India at the below link:

On Amazon.com below:

On Amazon.co.uk below:

For the esteemed audience of this blog, I am sharing an excerpt that is more nostalgic/poignant and which is maybe the biggest slab of pure prose (as opposed to conversations/interactions) in the book.

EXCERPT

Ah, he had an idea.  If he left right away, he could get there before sunset.  There was time.  It was a clear day too. And he hoped it would flush out the negativity around the failed home deal from his system.

And so, as he hopped onto the elevator, he put in a request on the aggregators for a cab ride to Marine Drive.  He gave NCPA as the landmark…you couldn’t very well say ‘Marine Drive’ on Ola!

By some good fortune, a cab was available and just a minute away.  In fact, as he got out of the office block, a spanking new Dzire Tour lay in wait for him.  He hopped on merrily.

There wasn’t much traffic, being that he was heading down South precisely when people would be beginning the long and painful trek up North to get home. 

In ten minutes, they were ascending the Bandra Worli Sealink.  The driver excitedly informed him that once the Coastal Road was inaugurated, he would be able to speed across from Bandra to Princess Street Flyover. 

True, thought Shailesh, but he wondered too.  He remembered when there had been no flyover over Maheshwari Udyan (or King’s Circle as the old timers called it).  He knew there hadn’t been over the head of Khodadad Circle either.  If you went far back enough in time, there used to be a roundabout at Heera Panna junction too.  The view along the Haji Ali seaface had already changed beyond recognition and the Coastal Road was yet to be inaugurated.

This was supposed to the linear march of progress but were they all simply going round and round the island with ever increasing intensity but with no destination in sight?

Lost as he was in his thoughts, he didn’t realize that he was just ten minutes away from Marine Drive. 

(…)

He got down and started walking along to NCPA.

It was always a beautiful day when it was evening at Marine Drive.  He would never stop loving every moment he spent there.  He couldn’t explain it.  It was a feeling he knew many other Mumbaiites shared and most likely, they too wouldn’t be able to explain it.  It was the place itself, yes, but also the memories it held for so many of the city’s denizens.

He had been here on at least four separate occasions with his college friends.  Sumedh, Vineet, Pradeep and Ashutosh.  They were not only collegemates but classmates.  They had all had other friends too in college but somehow, this band of five had stuck together tighter and cohered into a clique.

(…)

Golly, it had been a long time since they had met.  The last time had been just before the pandemic and that one had happened a year after the previous.  They had vowed to keep in touch after getting out of college but it was a promise that had become harder and harder to keep.  They did keep in touch, still, in a manner of speaking – on a whatsapp group called ‘College Masti’.

He also had a very specific and vivid memory associated with Marine Drive and NCPA.  Quite a few years back, he, who didn’t know the first thing about Western classical music, had gone on a lark to attend a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the NCPA and enjoyed it so much that he had walked out onto Marine Drive and taken in the breeze for a few minutes.

He looked to his left and there he was, right across the road from NCPA.  He hadn’t even noticed! Maybe it was because there was hardly any breeze.  Here he was, standing right by the sea, with only the promenade wall and the tetrapods in the way.  And yet, Marine Drive, even at nearly 6 PM felt just as hot as anywhere else in the city. 

He looked wistfully out to the horizon and then, he saw what he had come all the way for.  The sight of the sun gently setting.  A sight that brought forth another visual from the memory bank.

He had come here more times than he could remember back in his articleship days when visiting the offices of an audit client in Nariman Point.

There had been days when he had come to their office from his firm’s office in Dadar and taken the train to Churchgate to do so.  Knowing that he needed to get there ASAP, he had still eschewed the long queues for bus or shared taxi rides to Nariman Point from Churchgate or even the shortcut via Eros.  He had instead gone past Ambassador Hotel and turned left to walk on to Nariman Point…via Marine Drive.

There had been days during the audit when he had not been in the best of moods.  And he had wandered down to Marine Drive on the pretext of fetching something to eat from the sandwich stalls in Nariman Point.  Sitting there silently for ten to fifteen minutes, staring at the sea, at the horizon of blue nothingness, had made him at least momentarily forget whatever had got him down. 

But he had never been able to see the sun setting on the Arabian Sea at Marine Drive.  And he would today.

He watched silently for the next fifteen minutes as the sun approached closer and closer to the frontier of the sea on the horizon.  The sight of the sun seemingly melting away into the water, illusory as it was, could only be savoured here at Marine Drive. 

Which is why so many people gathered here.  And the place was getting crowded now. 

It was time to move on.  Time seemed to stand still at Marine Drive.  Or at….

Yes, he thought.  He would go there too.

He hailed another cab for a ride to the other end of the Southern tip of the city.

Twenty minutes later, he got down at Apollo Bunder and beheld the majestic monument that is the Gateway of India. 

In a city where almost every landmark of note had been renamed, nobody had bothered with the idea of renaming Gateway of India.  It was in some ways unaccountable, this strange love Mumbaiites had for the city’s British legacy.  The fact that they had left behind these lovely buildings as well as laid the foundations for the railway network that had become the city’s lifeline surely didn’t excuse all the looting they had gleefully carried out.  And yet, nothing matched the affection he, like so many other of his fellow Mumbaiites, had for the city’s British era relics. 

Perhaps, like Marine Drive, the timelessness of Gateway served as an anchor.  As something to hold onto for those who had spent a long time, maybe too long of a time, in the city.  As everything around you changed, you could still stand right next to Gateway and turn the pages of the photo album in your mind as the memories came flooding back.

He remembered the time he had gone along with his grandfather on a trip around South Mumbai. The trip had encompassed every corner of South Mumbai, from Nariman Point to Cuffe Parade to Gateway and everything en route.  It was his grandfather who had told him that the specific style of architecture seen on the buildings along Marine Drive was called Art Deco. While the CSMT building was apparently in Italian Gothic style.

It had only been a couple of years since grandfather had passed away.  The memories came flooding back indeed and so did the tears. 

As he stood there silently, tears streaming down his eyes, the phone rang.

Mother asked, “Have you started, dear?”

He shook his head and said, “I am at Gateway.”

She was astonished. “What are you doing there?  Did you have some meeting with bankers?”

“No, I just…never mind.  I am starting back for home now.”