Bhawana Somaaya

We have just had the first showers and the city is in a mess. Once again the civic body has let down the city. All traffic has come to a stand still and there are clogged drains every where. It took me one hour drive to JW Mariott in Juhu and another hour back to Andheri.

Going to Hotel Mariott has become a nightmare. There are three levels of security checking at different gates which includes machines and dogs sniffing at you. By the time you finish with the final process and charge towards the elevator for the fourth floor lounge, there is always a mess up of messages. The reception always delays you and then apologises profusely. They do this again and again.

The Western Railway has been saying again and again that it is dangerous for commuters to travel on the rooftop but travelers don’t pay heed. Now a commuter traveling on top of a local has suffered an electric shock and hospitalized for sustaining severe burns. Hopefully this will scare other commuters and they will in future not be so reckless.

Traffic cops are always alert to catch drivers on mobile while on road but this time they missed the culprit because he was in a truck. It was a normal day for a happy family of Raghumanth Nagar. The mother had dropped her son to the school and was returning with the younger one home. Four year old Shubham was crossing the street with his mother in the afternoon when a speeding truck heading from Mulund Check Naka hit the child. The driver didn’t even realize that he had killed the child. He was busy talking on the cell phone but for an innocent family it was the end of a dream.

A few weeks ago before the IPL when Shashi Tharoor announced his engagement to Bangalore’s socialite Pushkar, he broke many hearts. The marriage was to be sometime this season but now apparently there is a change in plans. This is great news for Tharoor lovers. He was recently visiting his mother in Kerala and talking about eating onion chutneys with aapams in an interview. He said there was no time for leisure in his life unlike olden days when he read a hundred books a year. I think it is time Tharoor gets ready to read a film script. His friend Pritish Nandy whose book he released recently should offer him a role in films. He will make a perfect father for Aishwarya Rai since both have the same colour of eyes. If Amar Singh can be in films why not a good looking Tharoor!

British author Jeffery Archer is in the news again and for all the right reasons. Technology may have taken over the world but Archer still writes his novels by long hand. He says it makes him feel that he has done a thorough job of his craft. His secretary punches the copy for him on computer. Rumours have it many filmmakers are considering his books for a Hindi film but Archer is not unduly excited. He feels that filmmakers exclude authors who have conceived the book in the creative process which is not the right way to do it.

A struggling writer in films died in his rented home in the suburbs. He was addicted to alcohol and in a habit of falling asleep with a cigarette in his hand. The house erupted with smoke and the door had to be broken by the neighbors. It is a sad story of innumerable strugglers who come to the city in search of a dream. Most of them don’t make it and are ashamed to return home so carry on with a struggle that carries on sometimes for a lifetime. They live alone and some like in this case die alone.

Three decades ago a super hit film Aashiqui introduced a newcomer Anu Agarwal to Hindi cinema. She was sensational and then one day she just disappeared. Now suddenly 15 years later she has come back to tell her story. Anu met with a fatal car accident which broke every limb, bone and joint in her body. She was comatose for 29 days and when she woke up half paralyzed she had lost all memory. She has said in an interview that she did not understand words, could not understand language or even the fact that she was a woman.

When we read such things in a book or watch it in films we call it an exaggeration but life is stranger than fiction!

Bhawana Somaaya
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