Tuesday, 5 June 2007

I came home quite tired but I was able to talk to F. After taking a shower and eating my usual breakfast of toasts and egg I fell asleep. Mum woke me up around twelve or so. I had lunch around one thirty, rice, vegetables, lentils, and fish. I then took another nap, waking up at half past four. Mum had to run some errands and I decided to accompany her. We first took an auto rickshaw and went to the Hiranandani Gardens complex as my Mum had some bank work to do. We then caught another auto rickshaw and went over to the neighboring town of Ghatkopar. Mum had to buy a portable music system for her school, so we got off at a electronics chain Vijay Sales. Vijay Sales had purchased an entire apartment building for their store. It was very nice and they had good stuff. We settled on a Phillips system. I had a glance at the laptops kept on display and I got the impression that Indian designs were headed the Japanese route of tiny laptops rather than the American one of building gigantic ones. We went back home after that. I desperately needed to buy running shoes, a belt, and undershirts, so Pishomoshai, Mum and I went out. We walked down Lal Bahadur Shastri Road, the street on which our building is located, to the Huma mall. When my parents moved to Kanjurmarg in 2002 it was a decrepit cinema hall that inevitably put on blue films. But now Huma has become a swanky mall with a very high end cinema hall and fancy stores selling high end products. The transformation reflects the changing profile of Kanjurmarg itself, from a decaying industrial suburb to a high end residential neighborhood. The walk itself was far from pleasant as the sidewalk had turned into a bit of an obstacle course with debris and trees making it quite un-passable. On top of that it was very humid. When we reached Huma, much to our incredulity, we realized that the entire mall was without electricity, another victim of the state’s chronic power shortage. I promptly refused to do any shopping in candle light. By this time Baba had gotten back from his office and we coordinated and met up in front of the mall. We got into his car and decided to try our luck at the Nirmal Lifestyles mall in the neighboring town of Mulund. Fortunately for us there was electricity in Nirmal Lifestyles. We went into Shopper’s Stop, a famous clothing and home goods chain and bought our stuff from there. Baba was still in work mode and it didn’t take too long before a dim witted sales person had gotten him all worked up and demanding that the manager be called. Fortunately Mum was around to defuse the situation. Anyways, that’s the last time I go shopping with Baba on a workday. We got home around ten to a dinner of rotis, vegetables, and chicken. I fell asleep dog tired.