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

Blog entry #3. What could it be? We shall C.

Cheese pav bhaji | Campus life | Central Railway Station | Commercial Street

Cheese Pav Bhaji
My mouth is literally watering as I write this out. Every time Mom and I took a train back to Chembur (in Mumbai) in the evenings around 6:30, we’d stop at Sadguru right outside the station and I would gorge on a plate of cheese pav bhaji and a glass of watermelon juice. Although there was another Sadguru outlet right in the next lane, this guy served the best Pav Bhaji ever, and I’m not the only saying this - proofs here and here.
Being a poor eater those days, it was an achievement for me to finish a full plate all by myself. And as my tolerance for spicy food slowly increased, I relished eating the bhaji that would be spread across the biggest section in the three-partition plate (picture below). That’s one of the things I love about Mumbai - a lot more bhaji served generously as compared to other cities - which serve Pav in the bigger section and a small portion of the bhaji in the side. If KFC is finger licking good, then this is utterly butterly finger licking scrumplicious! (scrumptious + delicious: as coined by Enid Blyton in one of the Famous Five books)

Campus life
Four years of living in the hostel in Hyderabad was probably the best of a lot of things - best friendships, best adjustments and compromises, best learnings, best times spent with different groups of people. (As I write this, I am reminded of Pretentious Reviews - sample video here).
So anyway, if I had to recommend between being a day scholar anywhere versus living in the campus, I’d pick the latter every day of the week and twice on Sunday! (fans of A Few Good Men would know what I’m talking about)
It takes a lot of self-discipline and time and priority management skills to come out shining, since living in the hostel means you can easily get carried away or succumb into going in the wrong direction under peer pressure. But campus life also means you get to participate in a variety of extra-curricular activities, and there’s a different kind of learning in those too - collaboration skills, organization skills, negotiation and persuasion skills, and more. Like Shah Rukh says in Chak De India: "Woh sattar minute tumse koi nahi chheen sakta", I’ll say: "Woh chaar saal tumse koi nahi chheen sakta" - no one can take those 4 years away from you!

Central Railway Station
From the time I shifted to Chennai in January of 2017, I’ve made several trips to Bangalore via Shatabdi Express. I can jot down all the amazing food they used to keep giving from 5:30pm all the way till dinner at 8:30 and vanilla ice cream for dessert at 9pm; until recently, where the way tea and coffee is served changed due to the vendor no longer serving them, and you now being an option to choose between rice and chapathi for dinner. Moreover, even the platform on Chennai Central changed from 2A to 2 for the train. 
Central Railway Station from the outside looks amazing - it gives an archaic feeling, one you might feel when you travel to VT or Fort in Mumbai. Since I’ve travelled by Shatabdi multiple times, I’ve experimented reaching the station at different times by different modes of transportation - local train, metro, cab, and auto. It’s fun to time myself and see which route takes the longest and which the shortest, and I also recall the one time I had to run to catch my train at 5:26 while carrying a big, heavy bag. Note to self - buy smaller suitcases with four wheels and give yourself a break :)

Commercial Street (Bangalore)
Wedding shopping on the streets - I loved it! Exploring the famous koskii, other gown stores, and in general scouring with a purpose, (something which my parents and I love going shopping for), ’twas all a wonderful experience. Shopping for wedding jewellery at the nearby KC store, looking for accessories in Safina Plaza, also near Commercial street, fighting for parking space, not allowing anyone else to park while we were reverse parking, it’s all part of the fun!

Image courtesy: Google ©