Yi net SJMSOM organises Mumbai Darshan

This year YI net SJMSOM (Young Indians net is an integral part of CII and has over 1288 members in 25 city chapters)  conducted a Mumbai Darshan batch trip for SJMSOM students on the eve of Republic Day. 22 people turned up for the trip. Though we expected a larger number, it was a good number considering it was conducted for the first time.

The trip started at 9 am on 26^th morning with all of us gathering at the IIT main gate to catch the bus. We booked a bus for a day ,so we had a day’s time to go anywhere in Mumbai.

Our first stop was Juhu beach. On the way, we glimpsed Amitabh Bachchan’s (Big B) house Jalsa and Pratiksha. Our expectation about the beach was quite high as we get to hear about it all the time in movies or in Hindi soaps but Juhu beach was not as clean as we expected it to be. We walked along the beach enjoying the fresh morning air and watching football games.

A kilometre away from the beach was the ISKON Radha Krishna temple. On the way to the temple, we saw a vintage Ford Mustang! None of us could have missed this opportunity to get a snap with the lady. We entered the temple and offered our prayers. At the temple we found a student from IIT Bombay who is also one of the members of the temple. He explained us about the temple and its founder, Srila Prabhupada and also took us to the place where Srila Prabhupada used to stay. It was an honor to witness the living room of his holiness. 

Our next stop was the Haji Ali Dargah at Worli, South Mumbai. Haji Ali Dargah is located 500 meters from the coast, in the middle of Worli Bay and is connected to the city by a narrow causeway. We reached Worli at around 12:30pm. Since it was already lunch time and many of us had not eaten breakfast, we had some snacks at the famous Haji Ali Juice centre and also celebrated Sanchit Singhal’s (Singam) pre birthday celebration. After eating till our bellies were full, we made a decision that instead of walking a km to visit a dargah in this hot weather, it would be wiser to visit it the next time.

We then headed for the Gateway of India at around 2: 30pm. Thereafter we were left on our own- some of us went out for shopping, some went out to get some pics of the Taj Hotel.

After meeting back at the Gateway of India after a couple of hours, we headed for Bandra. There we saw some of the giant homes of our Bollywood celebrities like Shahrukh, John and Salman. We spent some time at Band stand and posed for quite a few photos there.  At around 7pm, we decided that it was time to get back to campus. We had lot of fun in the bus. We played Antakshari at the bus with Shashi initiating all the songs that included the keyword “love” or “pyar”. In the mean time we guys minus Sanchit planned a surprised birthday party for the (to be) Birthday boy. As Boro had the contact number of the cake shopkeeper, we ordered the cake from the bus itself.

We impulsively stopped the bus at Powai Lake and decided to walk along the lake back to campus. There Sanchit got his birthday bumps from all of us. After the birthday bumps we took autos and headed towards SOM rock. At SOM rock we threw a surprise party for Sanchit and wished him all the best for years ahead.

That brought us to the end of our memorable Mumbai Darshan trip. We really had a great time together. We had lot of fun and fun and fun. I am positive that YI will definitely conduct a few more trips again. Thanks Prashant and Vishal for organizing this wonderful trip.

Ankur Basumatary

M.Mgmt

Batch of 2011-2013

SJMSOM