June 1st and 2nd

June 1st and 2nd
A pleasant combination of events prevented this blog being updated over the last couple of days. I have decided to combine the entries for Friday and Saturday to make it easier for my readers. After speaking to Franny on Friday I left with my parents. I was going to spend the night with my cousins, Reshmi and Deep. I reached their place after our driver Milind had dropped off Baba at his office and Mum at her school. It was really hot, and very humid. Reshmi and Deep have both been goofing off this summer on top of this their parents were away. Their father was working in Singapore, and their mother was visiting her parents in Kolkata. Reshmi, Deep, and I made plans to go over to the Infinity Mall in the suburb of Andheri to watch Pirates of the Caribbean III. We caught an auto-rickshaw, a three wheeler motorized taxi. Unfortunately, auto-rickshaws tend to be quite small, and both Reshmi and Deep are rather generously built. So it was quite a struggle to fit in, particularly for a half hour ride on a very hot and humid morning. We met up with Resmi’s friend Sanjana at the mall. Sanaja’s headed to Boston this Fall as well. We liked the film, I grabbed a softie during the intermission, but felt that the film had just too many twists and as a result dragged a little towards the end. Poor Deep couldn’t join us for lunch, our cousin Ria was coming in from the neighboring city of Pune, and had to be received at Dadar station in the middle of Bombay city. Deep had to rush off to meet her. Meanwhile Reshmi, Sanjana, and I went over to the food court to get some lunch. I had chole bature (lentils with bread). We then strolled over to the mall bookstore, a chain called Landmark. While browsing through the books there we met our cousins Aniruddha and Rohini. Aniruddha is preparing to move to the U.S., he’s going to enroll in the University of Pennsylvania in the Fall. His sister Rohini is still in school. Their mother, my aunt, Dola Mashi was there as well, and it was nice meeting her again. After that Reshmi and I headed back to Bandra.
The action in Bandra was quite intense. We heard from Deep on our way back, he claimed that he had been able to receive Ria, and that after depositing her luggage at their apartment, Deep and Ria were at a café, Café Coffee Day, at Carter Road in Bandra. So Reshmi and I joined them there. It was very nice meeting Ria again, I was seeing her after at least three years, though I had had a lot chats with her online. After spending some time at Café Coffee Day we went back to Reshmi and Deep’s place and relaxed for a little bit. We left the house around seven in the evening. We first took autos to Mocha, a hookah chain on Hill Road, the most important shopping/hangout area in Bandra. Unfortunately Mocha was filled with customers, and the smoke was a little too much for both Ria and me. So instead, we walked over to Bandstand. Bandstand, like Carter Road is a long stretch along the coastline. It was a lovely promenade to walk on. At the end of Bandstand, the stretch becomes a peninsula jutting out into the sea, this, is called Land’s End. We walked up and down the promenade, sweating like nothing on earth. Finally around nine thirty we walked over to a restaurant called Kobe, they serve excellent sizzlers. I ordered a mix grill and enjoyed it thoroughly. On our way back we picked up a copy of The Da Vinci Code to watch. When we got back home we had quite a blast, pulling each others legs’ and finished watching the movie only by three thirty in the morning. I feel asleep then dead tired.
I woke up the earliest the next morning. I had to speak to Franny at seven thirty, so I also had to wake up Reshmi so that I could use her computer. The connection was really slow and I had to wait a solid half hour to download Skype. I actually had enough time to take a shower and freshen up in the meantime. Fortunately F was still online and I was able to talk to her. While everyone else was sleeping I got Reshmi and Deep’s maid to fix me a breakfast of toast, omlette, and sausages. Everyone, particularly Reshmi, woke up in a grumpy mood. I was able to get people to move out only around eleven thirty, and even then Deep refused to go out saying that it was too hot. Reshmi, Ria and I went over to Mocha, which fortunately was a lot less crowded. I ate a balti chicken crustini. I suspect balti stands for Baltistan, somewhere in north-west India, or maybe Pakistan, my sense of geography is a little limited. We then picked up some gelato ice cream from Cater road and then came home. I was amazed that by this time I had wiped out a cool one thousand four hundred rupees.
Baba picked me up around five thirty and we made it back home soon after. I went out again accompanying Mum and Pishomoshai to the Nirmal Lifestyles mall. It was jam packed with people. Shopright, the grocery store was particularly crowded. I was glad to get done. I was beginning to feel really tired and looking forward to a good night’s sleep.