Mission: Nightlife

"We're more interested in the dark side of life, the evil thing, the night time." – Jim Morrison

Duration: 42 days
Nightspots DONE: 24

Party days: 32
Dry days: 9 (Would’ve been let down if I’d reached double digits!)

Team: Me & Her
Budget: What was that, again?!

When I set out on a quest to cover most, if not all, of South Mumbai's nightspots, little did I know of the extent to which I would be successful. An expedition of this subject matter was something that wasn’t too commonplace for any B-school students.

Yet, I found someone who echoed my interests. And equaled me in every endeveor, often challenging her own 'concepts'. We made ourselves a nightspot manual, copied brazenly from extensive Googleing. And set out, with an intention to explore every nightspot we could, with an intention never to repeat a place, unless especially required to. With each passing day, we got better at finding places that existed only on paper.

We found over-hyped ‘heritage places’ that were so pitiable that ‘heritage’ started denoting anything below a tolerable threshold level. We stumbled upon little known places that left us amazed at their matchless décor and ambiance. We found places where the cost of a bottle of water was more than what we’d spend on an average night. We hit upon places where we were astonished that a drink cost us less than our cab-journey back. We found places in which the crowd made us realize how far away we really were from those Page-3 people. We went to places where we realized that we really didn’t fit in, and wished we would a few years and paychecks down the line. And among all these places we visited, we found ourselves. The people we truly were. Not the face that we put up for others, but the ones that we were truly happy with.

Brickbats from our significant others’ did never stop us. Only our awe-inspiring appetite for endless partying made us tread on this path. It left us weary, hung-over and exhausted many nights, but it never seemed dull. Never did we have a moment when we felt that we had done enough, partied enough.

A journey of self-discovery, an illusion that felt more real than anything else, a journey where some dreams were made, some shattered and some realized. A journey like never before. A journey like never again.