13th April – Sunday: 6 AM to 6 PM

As usual I , the lazy bum woke up in the morning hearing the cacophony created by the crows perching on my hostel room window sills. Alarm has become redundant after coming here!!! . The fitness freak in me was off to the Marine drive, ready to jog from one end of the queen’s half necklace to the other. If someone has any doubts on how the people in Mumbai are able to keep up with the pace of the city, they can find a part solution to the question on the 4- 5 km stretch extending from chowpatty to Nariman point. The lazy bum could witness a fitness n health conscious mini – India warming themselves up for the hectic day ( and not so hectic for others ). Lazy bum calls it mini – india bcos, whatever be the classification u use to segment the joggers – state, age, gender, income – it’s a perfect representative sample . For someone like the lazy bum who has never come across more than 10 people during a jogging session back home in kozhikode, the scores and scores of joggers the lazy bum crossed, overtook and who overtook the lazy bum was a pleasant surprise. It was a celebration, a festival out there – A celebration of the well being of human bodies, a celebration of the spirit of Mumbai, a festival of the demographic, ethnographic n every –possible- graphic unity in diversity. The markers on the ground acts as a motivator for the tired legs to push further n cover that extra hundred meters.

After the lunch, The smiling Buddha n the lazy bum decided to hit Churchgate to visit a book exhibition whose exact location was unknown to the both. After alighting the train at the Church gate station, a well maintained one the lazy bum should say, we started our walkathon in search of the place. Churchgate was quite different from Chow patty. Though there were malls and other modern structures, the architecture of the buildings, the Parsis and the Parsi temples which were present in plenty, the layout of the roads etc gave the place a quaint n unique look and feel.

The smiling Budha jumped on to the middle of the road to get this picture right !!!

A parsi temple

After our legs started getting tired, n still with no signs of the book exhibition, we had to call up the Seemingly Sane Girl to look up on the internet to find out the location of the exhibition. The Seemingly Sane Girl, vindicated her name by not acting insane or not doing anything weird n promptly informed us the location. Though the collection of books weren’t outstanding, we could find a couple of books each; one of which The Smiling Budha predicted would become a collectors’ issue. ( “ Is it a bird…….superman” one ) The deal was a killer one - four books for Rs 130. The banner hung outside highlighted the cause for which the exhibition was held.

We reached back Chowpatty by dusk n joined The Don n the Seemingly sane girl to plan for the rest of the day. The gleam in the eyes of the seemingly sane girl when she saw the Superman comics, made me doubt if a better name for her wasThe seemingly sane kiddo girl . When we informed the Kiddo girl who was 21……….., who was put up at a far away Malad , were going to The Gateway of India, she replied with a tone which had a tinge of sadness n helplessness – “ I think i m going in search of The Gateway of Malad “...