What Bollywood, Models, Fashion, TV, Actors, et al is to Mumbai similarly One Minute is to me! This One Minute is a principle which applies in the mornings of any working day.

The One Minute Principle:
You get up, and before you realise that you’ve taken a breath, your eyes dart towards the clock/watch. Shit! is how you react to it, with no fault being of the watch/clock. You rush to the washroom with your garments and towel and display the most proficient way of multitasking.

With a brush in your mouth, you still answer Nature’s call or if that’s not needed you take a shower and the brush still remains there! With the example explained in the best way possible you rush out, pick the newspaper and the packet of milk welcoming you at your doorstep, tear the pack and boil it in a utensil, meanwhile you get your shirt ironed. You rush back to the milk, pour it into your glass, and while it cools you get ready in your clothes, the cologne, hair, cream. Your eyes again search for the watch/clock.. SHIT! This time it’s bigger! The milk is gulped down (Guiness Book of records! Where are you? You’ve got work to do now.). Your shoes are in your respective feet but you’ve got the laces to tie. The lift is tied while you call the lace; oops, the lift is called while the laces are tied!

You walk it (though running is a better option) to the bus stop, determined to take the first bus in line, you run… and you run fast. The bus-pass is flashed to the bus-conductor. He nods his head. Relief! You finally breathe and smile briefly, until.. the watch! S H I T!! It got bigger and coloured! Anxiety and fear cross your mind. I might miss the train, you think.

Even before the bus has reached the stop, you get off letting Newton’s law prove itself. The station is the next destination, and at the entrance you search for your train. Platform No. 2 is how you direct yourself. Further directions include the over-bridge, jumping (read leaping) from one step to another (you have missed at least 2 of them in between), dodging the incoming and oncoming traffic (humans) with your beautiful cuts (Trinity of Matrix Revolution can surely learn something more from you). Your eyes catch a glimpse of the train moving.. SHIT!! It’s bigger, coloured and high octane! Can you make it? You made it in every “act” of yours, and this won’t let you down. This act too fulfills its promise. You are in the train, panting. Relief! You finally breathe and smile for quite sometime until you reach your station. You rush out like a spear tearing through the people who desperately want to get in. It’s do or die, you are either out or you are stuck in the train cribbing and thinking about the loss of time and the hassle that you have to face. But, you make it yet again. The dodging and leaping on the stairs continues.

You spot three auto rickshaw. And you also spot seven prospective passengers which includes you and weirdly they are ahead of you. SHIT!! It just got bigger, coloured, high octane, bolder and ‘parkoured‘ (Yeah that’s the French invented sport and it’s also the wrong usage of the word, grammatically).

Now you are number one in line and the odds are for you and the evens against! You hop in to your rick (auto rickshaw) and before you can say anything, he’s re-set the meter. Bewildered, you simply give him the address to your destination, your work place. Your final SHIT!! now involves him too. He tears through the traffic (imagine the same Trinity on an auto rickshaw and the key maker is me! The only difference is that I don’t have the key to the office.) You’ve made it to the office, not in the nick of time, but to your final relief, you are the only one to have reached the earliest aka the early bird gets the first worm. Here, the worm is equivalent to an end to your high octane, muscle pulsating, brain twitching (I wonder the number of calculations that your brain was put though) ordeal.

This ends my One Minute Principle, but before saying “my final goodbye”, are you a part of it too, the One Minute Principle?

My final goodbye!

Technorati Tags: mumbai, traffic in mumbai, traveling in mumbai, auto rickwhaw, indian autorickshaw, autorickshaw, rick, trinity, matrix revolution