April A-Z Challenge: A Tale of Four Cities [W]

Blog entry #23

We found Dove in a soapless place | W kaun hai | West Mambalam | WFH

We found Dove in a soapless place (Mumbai)
Grades 11 and 12 were the phase of parodies. Parodies of songs What makes you beautiful by One Direction and When I look at you by Miley Cyrus were popular in my group of friends. So one day, the creative juices flowed and an original was made. Rihanna sung a song called "We found love in a hopeless place", and it was shamelessly turned into "We found Dove in a soapless place!" Those were the times we were juggling between displaying the maturity of a college-level student while overcoming the school-days silliness.

W kaun hai (Hyderabad)
Most weekends on campus were reserved for movies. Usually new ones, but once in a while, I like to re-watch one from my favourites. Dhamaal, a remake of 'It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World', is one such movie. There’s a scene in which when everyone is searching for 'The Big W', Sanjay Mishra is unaware that W is a letter of the alphabet. He keeps roaming around the garden, repeating 'W kaun hai?' (Who is W?), more like 'Dabloo kaun hai?' My friends (who are Bollywood buffs like me) and I enact such commonly known dialogues to turn serious conversations into a giggling episode. I am slowly catching up on funny Tamil movie references with my husband these days.

West Mambalam
Finally, a place we could call 'home' in Chennai. A huge shift from Thoraipakkam, where we were living in a studio apartment that was a hundred degrees and was part of a huge complex where people barely knew anyone else. People were friendlier here, and the apartments divided into separate buildings, each with 2 or 3 stories at the most. As Taylor Swift rightly puts it: "Busy streets and busy lives; all we know is touch and go." Step out into Arya Gowda Road (the main road) and you name it and you have it - banks, stationery shops, medical shops, post office, flour shops, flower shops, electrical store, bedding store, utensils store, supermarket, and even a temple! Folks briskly walking with a sense of purpose, to get their work done, people on the road at 5 in the morning and beyond midnight, all this reminds me of Mumbai. Guess that’s also why I like it here :) 

WFH
Before the days of COVID, being in Bangalore on a weekday meant WFH aka Working From Home. It also meant: barely WFH. Internet connectivity issues, reluctance to actually work when I could be spending more time with Mom and Dad, helping Mom with cooking, I should say "helping", in quotes - because a one-woman army doesn’t need any. Moreover, wanting to rummage through my shelves and clean, declutter, organise, go KonMari on all my old things, then realising that all of them "spark joy", so simply putting them back in a different order; flipping through pages of old albums, taking a picture with my phone and sending them on the WhatsApp group - so many things to do when you’re at home. How do I compensate for all this? I book a Shatabdi back to Chennai and work in the train!

Image courtesy: Google ©