….aa bail mujhe maar.
Remember that Amol Palekar serial on DD? I am a chalta phirta example of the kahavat. I had blogged about this incident in the past. Today’s post is about a big decision I made in haste, that haunted me for a long time.
The year was 2002 and I had just joined my first job in a HUGE IT company. All the new recruits were sent to a South Indian city for training. It was my first time ever being away from home, all by myself, and I expected that I would be homesick and miss my parents and sister a lot. But this training center was like a huge hostel, where I met some very interesting group of people and we made a nice big group that had a lot of fun. I would get up in the morning, get ready for ‘work’ (classes actually) and wait for one of the company buses to take us to the training center. I would sit outside on the hostel steps, with the day’s The Hindu in hand, trying to get a start on the daily crossword. Tell me, can a day that starts so wonderfully ever be bad?
After about 3 months of the training, I realized I really liked staying away from home, and even though I missed my family, I was still happy and having a good time. Little did I know that it was the ‘having a good time’ part that mattered. So after 3 months of training we were to take an exit exam, based on the results of which we would be assigned to one of the many locations in the country. As it turned out, I did pretty well in the exit exam and I was told that I could ‘choose’ wherever I wanted to go. Since I now felt like I could live happily(refer to the realization in the beginning of this paragraph) away from Hyderabad and away from family, and Mumbai sounded like a nice destination for a single girl, I wrote Mumbai as choice #1, Chennai as choice #2 and Hyderabad as choice#3 on my location form. A lot of well-meaning people told me to choose Hyderabad and go back to my parents, especially because I have the choice, and not suffer being all alone in a new city. I brushed them all off as chauvinistic and was happy that I chose to be independent.
Well, we(I and another friend of mine, who, like me, also chose Mumbai, while being offered Hyderabad) landed bright and cheerful at the Mumbai domestic terminal, and the heat and crowds outside hit us bad. We got into a cab and landed at the hotel that was supposed to be our ‘home’ for the next one week. This one was booked by a group of guys who reached a little earlier than us, and was in Dahisar, and was ‘budget mein’ according to them. In short, it was a HORRIBLE place. While the hotel itself was decent, the whole area seemed alien to me. When I think about Mumbai, I think about VT, Fort, Bandra etc. Not Dahisar! Well, we somehow stuck around for a few more days and signed up on a sublease with a girl in Andheri. Little did we know that this was in the worst part of Andheri, and it was rainy season and we had to navigate through questionable waters to get home every day. Needless to say, I used to meet my HR/Manpower Resources person every day and pester him/her to transfer me back to Hyderabad, with a new reason every day. And I used to call my parents every day to tell them I miss them, sigh, and that Mumbai sucks. It was not until I moved into a shiny, new, super awesome, marble floor, gated apartment in Kandivali did I feel at home in Mumbai. And then I never looked back again!
But for the first few months I definitely fit the bill of Aa Bail Mujhe Maar for having forfeited the wonderful opportunity to go back home to my family, rather than languish all by myself in an alien city. And having moved out of home then, I have never gone back home(to live forever) ever!
Made me laugh :).. When I first moved out of home to a hostel for my +2, it was my mom who was devastated. She kept hanging at the hostel gate while I couldn’t wait to check out my room, bed and roommates :).
Haha you couldn’t wait to be all by yourself! I started like that but would now kill to have my momma with me.
Life during Mumbai rain can be tough. but I really really miss commuting in Mumbai during rains.
I lived in Andheri E for 24 years btw 🙂
Wow that was a long time! Once I got used to Mumbai I loved it even in the rains!
LOL yeah Shilpa, that was ‘aa bail mujhe maar’ but you did choose well 🙂 Mumbai is a great city for girls on her own I think!
My daughter reacted like this when she first came to Delhi, one day she was excited, next day so depressed it broke my heart 😐
Gosh IHM the one day sad one day happy was my state and is now my sister’s. I talk to her everyday and she tells me she is missing mom and not to tell that to mom because she would be sad. Sometimes I wonder why we have to move on from our protected life!
I think I know the company you are talking about 😛 because I worked there.. I too got Mumbai first and was upset that I hadn’t got Bangalore. I wanted to be closer to home. But in the long run, I learnt a lot by staying away from home 🙂
I did too. Oh you worked there! Well, it employs more than a 100,000 people, so little wonder then that I find so many old mates everywhere.
I can so relate to it !! My first big move out of home was for my first job at Pune ! and the first initial days were so rosy !! company guest house, training at big hotel, lunches, dinner, everything seemed perfect.
But when apartment hunting, project deadlines and the reality of adjustment with new roommates sunk in, I started getting homesick.
But, I still cherish those days so much. Made me learn so many lessons of life 🙂
Once you get to finding your own apartment, and face the realities of crappy buildings in a big city, going back home seems like a good idea, doesn’t it?
ROFL!!! I have the same disease PLUS combine it with a severe problem of ‘foot in mouth’ disease in advanced stage 🙂 I am a total and complete mess. 🙂
Oh yeah, I sometimes say the wrong things at the wrong place, and the wrong time!
hehehe….I feel that going to Hyderabad would have been an easy decision but having stayed back in Mumbai was a decision of which I am sure you are proud till date 🙂
It is always easy easy to chose comfortable options but difficult to stick to the tough ones 😀
Enough gyann from me 😉
Yes I am, and I also joke about it with another girl who did the same thing as I did, and we talk about it even today and laugh at each other! I should confess that I went to Mumbai not because it was the tougher choice, but because it sounded like fun!
Mumbai is the best place girl. It teaches you a lot of things about life. It is easy to stay in comforts of the place you have known. But it is very very interesting to come to a city like Mumbai, compete with 100,000 other ‘just like you’ aspirants, battle the challenging weather and come out a winner.
I have spent last 5 and a half years in Mumbai and never did I feel like going back. Though I think I’ll help the Mumbai traffic a little bit if people like me decide to go back.
PS: Now I know you worked in *** and went to Coimbatore for a training 😛
Mumbai does teach you to life live to the fullest, and once you get over the hurdle of a crappy flat, in a crappy area, everything falls into place. I loved living there!
Identified the company correctly(although that probably wouldn’t have been too difficult given the hints I threw!) The training used to be in Thiruvananthapuram in those days!
everything happens for a good reason 🙂
Confession time: I’ve never lived away from home till I got married at 41! I wanted to move out but my work was in the same city…and moving out in the same city would have been a big statement. It wasn’t always easy for an independent woman…but I learnt to have my own life and have a family life too.
Wow! I would have loved to live with my parents for ever and ever, although the husband might not be too happy! Yes living with parents and being independent can become an interesting task.
Marble! All it took was marble flooring ?:P
Hehe what can I say, I am weird like that!
I have moved so often between places far and farther and near that cities don’t make much of a difference to me. In fact I can now relate how one gulli resembles another one in another city. All the same. I don’t know if I have out grown that home aka base feeling that we harbor towards one city or is it simply that in this global village concept I seem to move with the drift. Though one place and only one place I can identify with is the place where I grew up.(though practically I wont be staying there at all for practical purposes).
I like your article. It re-introduced me to this concept of city I can identify with.