While the monstrosity is gone, we had a chance to take a gander last week:
Well one had to see it. Because it’s there. And the reports of how it didn’t miss the Bandra Worli Sea Link by much, relatively speaking. From the spot on Juhu beach where the damn thing is, you can easily see the taller pair of towers of the Sea Link.
But it’s big. Driving down Juhu Tara from Santacruz, near the Ramada curve, I told myself to Keep a Watch out; you don’t want to Miss It. I thought it’d be a hundred feet off the beach or suchlike. Watch out my ass. It’s like the Worli TV tower while coming off the BWSL – in your damn face. It’s on the sand. For something this massive to come this close to the shore it’d have to be not just crazy, but Charlie-Sheen-stark-raving-nuts-berserk-crazy. This helicopter shot is straight out of a disaster movie – the damn vessel-from-hell is headed straight for the Juhu Centaur:
So I pay-and-parked in front of the Ramada and walked towards it. Few analogies, really. Dinosaur? Gulliver? Space ship? None come close. It’s ancient. Filthy. Tired. Rusting. The last vestiges of dignity seeping out of it. And yet disinterested in its fate, just as long as there’s one in store. So there’s a massive loneliness, sadness around it:
And yet it utterly dominates the horizon around it. Standing close to it gives you a sense of creeping agoraphobia, until you just have to look away. It’s arguably smaller than the Centaur and the Ramada in front of it but unmatched in sheer presence. No shacks, palm groves, seafront bungalows, miscellaneous other construction and crumbling walls around it. It stands alone. Off to its left there’s nothing until Madh, far into the distance. On its right, the Sea-link,the only comparable superstructure, is obscured by the hump of land at Juhu Koliwada.
So it stands, despicable, unwelcome, but unchallenged as emperor of its stretch of sea-land.
So there.