Column

This time of the year, it can’t be helped, so forgive me. The dying throes of an imaginary construct of dates and timings force you to look back, look forward, regret and resolve. It’s all pointless, especially regret and resolve. How does Mumbai spend New Year’s eve?

In traffic jams, for the fools who try to rush from one end of the city to another in order to be happening and more importantly seen in all the right places in some hideous shine-infested designer outfit. Or with any luck, some other people similarly stuck. Traffic jams sound like an ideal party spot for those who don’t wear seat belts because they don’t match their outfits (huh?).

Instead, there’s my life. In the 1970s in Mumbai , you were condemned to listen to George McCrae’s Rock Your Baby (aaaaarrrgh) with a bit of Carl Douglas going Kung Fu Fighting (with Biddu, desi, yaaaah) and so on every New Year’s eve and every Paris wedding. Plus where’s your mamma gone (mine had gone to a real party) and such.

Somewhere in the 1980s, I found myself living in a hostel in Colaba. None of my old friends from two Bombay schools wanted to have anything to do with me since I had returned after a gap. One very ceremoniously stood me up after promising a date. So, the highlight of December 31 was going to the terrace of the hostel where coffee was served at midnight for all the losers without dates.

A cool, bindaas (and dateless, heh heh) friend snuck in a quarter bottle of rum, which we poured surreptitiously into the coffee as we heard the ships hoot and the church bells ring at the stroke of the midnight hour. Woweeee. Share a quarter bottle between 25 tragic (dateless) hostel females and you know you’d have been better off with several bottles of cough syrup. No sneaking to be done there either.

The festivities done, the warden (dateless) packed us off the terrace and back to our rooms. The highlight of the experience was that instead of the usual margarine and gluck masquerading as jam, you got two eggs (choices - omelettes! boiled! fried!) and sausages. Minor victory here: The dateless got there before the hungover (dated). In a hostel, food is of paramount importance.

Since then, I’ve had my share of hangovers, traffic jams, assorted disasters, but somehow, there’s nothing like the terrace of a Colaba hostel. No?