My final presentation was yesterday.The CIO was happy with the presentation and as a reward,i get to work till the end of my contract(which happens rarely in the summers,u fin it 7-10 days b4 the scheduled date):( Upon that i was forced to attend the bday party and since i turned up last,i was forced to sing a song.......thoroughly rotten day....Yesterday's was a technical presentation.Now i hafta make another presentation to an audience which has zilch knowledge abt this.And since the audience aint available till 6th,i wait for them till then!!!!!!!!!Minor changes in the data.So im staying here for another 6 days for a total work output worth 6 hrs!!!!Overall,life is chill but the painful part is the travelling in mumbai...

There is no concept of personal space in mumbai.After travelling in the trains,ppl here have forgotten this concept.If they want you to move,they will get hold of ur back,shoulder or waist(whichever they can get hold of) and move you!!!!The next few lines are in brief about my travel travails here in mumbai

Trains

If you are lucky,you mite get a seat but you usually have to fight for it.And after that,if you get the aisle seat,you will have to accomodate a 4th person who usually ensures that he either 1.Sticks his sweaty back against ya or 2.Sits so comfortably that you almost fall of the seat.And if you are the 4th guy, it is like russian army training where you place ur Bu!! on the smallest piece of wood as possible.......And if you get to stand, you will be subject to a good round of tenderising where you are subjected to the P force(people force)from all possible directions except the soles!!!!It gets to be an amazing bone crunching experience and so i have started taking in more calcium and phosphorus since ive realised it.Standing is a bad experience especially if you have someone short in front of you.You get to smell their hair.And it is no Angelina jolie but a 40yr old who is there so it aint fun by any standard.The funda is to go with the flow........But it happens even at times you dont want to and you almost end up getting down at a station you dont want to!!!!This is the time when you are hanging onto the handles with ur lower body being stretched to the hilt with ur feet in air almost all the time.And then you get a magical feeling.The feeling of having lost a lot of weight,the feeling of freedom...;) And if you thought that it is over,it isnt.Getting down is another wonderful experience if ur in the middle.You just move.The entire feeling can be summed up as that of a water molecule subject to conventional currents.And here,people use all sortsa tactics.They will place their palm on ur back and push you as if you were a disabled person.Not a day passes without me giving a angry stare to some idiot who has dared to do that.It isn’t happening frequently nowadays though.And this is the reason I use a bag so that I do not have sweaty palms on my back but my friend says ppl do it all the more as it is a bag.But I will tell you when it becomes useful.Pot-bellied ppl are few in Bombay(what with all the traveling) but they take complete advantage of their assets.They bump into you when they have to get down and you are in front of them.Sometimes they cant help it.And this is when the bag is useful.Not only do you not have the uncomfortable feeling of having someone thrust his extended zone into you but you can also jab them back!!!

Buses

In major stops,ppl form queues to get into buses but it is one of the most inefficient but fair ways to get into buses with 4 other similar buses right behind.And after that,if you are lucky enough you get a seat.I always wondered why Mumbai ppl are obsessed with window seats.Now I know.If you have the aisle seat,”Teri to lag gayi”!!!!You will have ppl thrust their groin against ur shoulder almost all the time(remember that there is no concept of personal space)Upon that,you will have bags shoved in your face and coupla jabs if you are unlucky enough.And if you are standing,you will feel sealed.And sometimes,you get to travel in one of those buses where the driver is taking it out on the bus and thus you.He will brake hard come what may.While this is what ppl pray for if there are lotsa good looking gals standing around you,it sure is a pain if you have a 5 feet tall corpulent lady who carries enormous momentum such that if you are standing in front of her, “teri to lag gayi”.Y?She will strike you down like the bowling ball strikes down the pin.And sometimes,when the bus is empty,you get to see instances of ppl hurtling down almost 1.5 metres.And while this is the moment that you have to feel sorry for the homo sapien who let down his guard, you cant help laughing at the sight.Everyone has a hearty laugh(just to mask the embarrassment).

11th is the alum meet after which I shall be leaving for home………Till then……..peace(whats that)