Read Online The Nidhi Kapoor Story by Saurabh Garg - Free Book Online Page B

she was supposed to meet some of her friends in the evening.
    “I am so fucked!” she exclaimed out loud.
    “Did you say something ma’am?” Tambe asked.
    “No no, I was talking to myself. Just drop me here and I will come to the station in a bit.”
    Rujuta maintained a very chaotic social life and she liked it like that. Though she did not have a steady man in her life, she was happy making use of whatever was available to her. She was discerning in her choice and yet she always had someone to be with. Her success, social life and connections helped her make such plans easily.
    Tonight’s get-together was yet another opportunity where she could come back home with someone interesting. Someone like Prakash. Tonight her gang was welcoming one of her friends from college, Sonal, to Mumbai. Since this time the newcomer was Rujuta’s friend, she wanted to take lead and make all arrangements.
    Rujuta had decided long in advance that Sonal’s party would happen at the Vie Lounge. It was located bang on the Juhu beach. The beaches in Mumbai were nothing like those in other cities. Beaches here meant harassment by touts and photographers, persuasive pitches by self-proclaimedexpert masseurs, pestering salesmen peddling cheap trinkets and other such things. However, Vie lounge gave its patrons privacy from the peering eyes of Mumbaikars hanging out at the beach.
    Apart from being an ace photographer, Rujuta was an amateur ethnographer and in her opinion, there was no city like Mumbai to learn the craft. She would observe people, click pictures and try to cast them into stereotypes. She had created many such stereotypes and her favorite was about behavior of Mumbaikars on the beaches on Sundays. She had noticed that for some reason, every Sunday, people would get together in large groups and throng one of the numerous beaches that lined the western boundary of Mumbai. Each flock consisted of friends, families, distant cousins, neighbors, school friends, college friends and all other categories that people in Mumbai classified their acquaintances in. They may not have a lot of money but they always found something to be happy about. Maybe it was the togetherness. Maybe it was junk food. May be it was an escape from the rough test that Mumbai was every other day of their lives. Or maybe it merely was the healing powers of the sea winds that brought the songs and stories from the lands that lay afar.
    Rujuta was of the opinion that Mumbaikars have learned to make the most of whatever limited they had. On top of it, they had something that people in most other cities lacked. Empathy towards others, even if they were strangers. Mumbaikars also had this belief that anything is possible in Mumbai. Mumbai thus was a place where every dream, however large, however gregarious, could come true. People had seen these dreams come true. You couldchoose your dream and Mumbai gave you a platform to erect an empire for that dream. Mumbai was the proverbial city of dreams. There was always that someone, somewhere, who was an example to you that had lived your dream. And their lives added highly inflammable fuel to the fire of your dreams and make it burn brighter. And wilder.
    You want to get rich working on a legitimate business? You had Dhirubhai Ambani as an example. You wanted to win the world by hook or crook? You had Dawood and other underworld dons as examples. You wanted to rule the hearts? Nishant Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan and more recently, Nidhi Kapoor were examples. You wanted to excel at sports? There was Sachin Tendulkar. Politics? Sharad Pawar. Writing? Suketu Mehta. Journalism? Rajdeep Sardesai. Photography? Raghu Rai. You name it and there was a role model, however traditional or eccentric the profession you may choose. And if they’ve done it, there’s no reason why you couldn’t. It only took a strong will and maddening desire to get that dream off the ground. The one with the maddest desire and ravenous fire invariably got