19th October : Mumbai

We left our rooms by 5am so that we cud skip any kind of traffic on our way to shooting Mumabi.

After sleepin for hardly four hours, I had to get up as we had to leave for an early morning shoot in Mumbai. Shows on my face, doesnt it. Shot outside Gateway of India sometime after the sun came out.

With the NDTV guys, outside John's place

With John, at his place, over looking the sea. Left to right - John, Me, Noor, Ashish, Sunil

19th October : Mumbai

Not all human-beings are born superstars. And not all superstars are human-beings. When human-beings get fame, get popular, they tend to start living in a world of their own, dying for media publicity, acting pricey and forgetting the real world, from where they originally came. But there are always exceptions. What Sachin is to cricket fans in India, John Abraham is to Indian bikers. It was planned that we would be heading to John’s place in Bandra but suddenly from nowhere, while we were waiting at the CCD and Barista outlets, John appeared and before we knew, we could hear screams around and the whole media swarming like bees around him. He does have presence and the way he interacts with people is too good. He headed straight for us and the warmth with which he met all of us was too good, so good, I don’t have words right now. I, personally, am a big fan of him and seeing him in real life today, just upped my respect for this superstar, who is down to earth and humble. And a real biker too! Media surrounded us, cameras clicking non-stop, reporters asking a million questions but John made sure we four were always in the picture, around him, and he didn’t mind if we kept our arms around him. Was he for real? I wanted to pinch myself!
Before starting with the interviews, he interacted with us to get details about the ride and in every interview; he made sure we weren’t left behind. I mean, John is John but the way he talked to the media showed why he is probably the most loved Indian film-star amongst the youth after Shahrukh. And biking does matter to him big time, and it was evident when a reporter went onto ask a cricket related question and how John shup him! Kudos…
After we were done with the interviews, he invited us all to his place. I may be pushing this too much, but being at his place, away from the fans and media meant too much. And I was lucky enough to sit next to him with the laptop on, showing him some vids and pics related to the GIR. His place was on the 8th floor, overlooking the sea with a fabulous surround system and a real big plasma, on which he showed us some clips from the “Glory of dust” , an English flick, based on which a movie will be coming next year starring John and Abhishek Bachan. We were with him for close to half hour but before leaving I wanted a favour from him, which I really doubted if he would do. I passed on my phone to him, on which my fiancée was holding on the other side and asked if he could just say hi to her. John ended up talking to her for a minute! I am telling you, if you want to meet a real humble down to earth personality, John it is! No doubt. Till date I had seen him in reel life, but today I saw him in real life. We spoke to him about so many things, from bikes to biking and its scene in India and nothing else.
Earlier in the day, we had a presentation at Castrol’s head office, where again it was pleasant to see so many people actually taking interest in what we were doing and also came down to see the bikes and click photographs with us. And it was a very sweet gesture by them to wish us Diwali with sweets. But we had to hurry up so as to catch up with John. Riding was as usual a shitty experience in Mumbai’s traffic and on top of that
After we left his house, we headed back to Barista as the press was still waiting for us patiently for our interviews and once we were done with them, we all, the four of us, the two officials from Castrol, two representatives from Ipan, sat together and discussed out the day’s happenings. One thing I wish to add is that these two representatives really went outta the way to make sure everything went as smoothly as possible, specially Archana. There are tens of instances where she did too much like when I was sweating in the heat and she got me an ice tea, or her constant calls and smses to keep us updated on the plans ahead. She, Archana Thomas, seemed like a god sent angel in the middle of so many unknown faces. Ofcourse knowing her from my days at Next Gen (BIKE INDIA and CAR INDIA) did help but then I never expected her to deliver so much. If you are reading this Archana, then thanks a lot!
After Barista, we were too tired to do anything and left back to the hotel. As it is, we had a lot of catching up to do with the blogs and website updates and the rest of the evening and night was spent doing the same. Today had been an awesome day for us and tomorrow we leave for the biking capital of India – Pune.