Man From Matunga

I thought only actors got type­cast! After last week’s piece “The Namoral Dilemma”, I received emails, SMSes, blog com­ments and calls ask­ing why I had writ­ten a polit­i­cal piece and devi­ated from my usual focus on to day-to-day life in Matunga and Mum­bai. Seriously!

There is a top 5 list of “rea­sons to hate marathon run­ners” mak­ing the rounds. It basi­cally hits out at those who con­stantly brag and talk about run­ning as if noth­ing else mat­tered in this world. It reminded me of a con­ver­sa­tion I had last month with a col­league who runs. She had come to the office and we imme­di­ately got into the usual pat­ter related to run­ning times, train­ing sched­ules and injuries. Then she men­tioned that her hus­band (who doesn’t run) refuses to go with her to any party or func­tion where there are other run­ners from her run­ning group. He thinks they are big bores and talk only about run­ning, to the exclu­sion of all those who don’t and are not inter­ested. It’s like when doc­tors meet and gos­sip about other doc­tors and med­ical issues as if oth­ers around didn’t exist!

Each time I write about run­ning, I now get com­ments say­ing “one more piece on run­ning? Isn’t there any­thing else you can write about?” The same hap­pens when I write about Matunga. There are actu­ally peo­ple liv­ing in Mum­bai who don’t give a damn about this suburb.

So let me tell you a mod­ern story of the times we live in!

On Thurs­day, I took a taxi from the air­port to the new Park Hyatt in Chen­nai. The dri­ver was a wiz­ened, old Chen­nai­ite. As is my prac­tice these days, I set up Google Maps to show the route map. About a km from the hotel, the dri­ver took a left turn instead of a right. When I ques­tioned him, he said that the Hyatt was two kms down that road. I told him that we had left it behind. He didn’t agree because he had only heard of the Hyatt Regency, which was fur­ther ahead. When I insisted, he very reluc­tantly turned the car around. He kept ask­ing for nearby land­marks, but I told him to trust me. We fol­lowed the voice instruc­tions given by Maps and reached the hotel eas­ily. He then smugly turned around and accused, “Why didn’t you tell me it is oppo­site Lemon Tree?”

Google Maps has made travel really easy in India and works almost every­where. The prob­lem is that most peo­ple liv­ing in those cities and dri­vers in par­tic­u­lar, refuse to accept that Maps can be more accu­rate than their own knowl­edge, even though they may have never vis­ited that build­ing, hotel or area, ever in their life. You have to really bull­doze them into fol­low­ing the Maps’ instruc­tions and even then they will stop and ask for land­marks and directions.

And Maps helps plan run­ning routes. There…back to run­ning! This month, I have already done runs in Delhi, Kolkata, Coim­bat­ore and Chen­nai and have man­aged to find great run­ning routes just by study­ing Maps in advance. From the wide roads around Lodi Estate, to the 2.8 km loop around Salt Lake Sta­dium and the Kolkata Hyatt, to the Pudur lake area in Coim­bat­ore and the deer roam­ing freely in IIT Madras, I would never have been able to find all of these by just ask­ing the hotel staff or locals.

Being type­cast, non-runners’ woes, dis­in­ter­ested Matunga read­ers, Google Maps and run­ning routes! Echo­ing Seinfeld’s, “some­thing about noth­ing”, here’s a lit­tle of some­thing for every­one. Ha!