Mumbai Meri Jaan

Parrots outside my windows

2011-03-14T06:41:00.000-07:00

In Bandra parrots still squat outside the windows. That used to happen in my Kandivli house (very close to the National park:) till the building activity and traffic roar chased them away. But in Bandra despite the horns-from-hell, the parrots still come to the large sprawling mango tree outside my window. This tree is old, soothing to watch -- bees, tiny sunny sun birds, red-tipped bulbuls, bats -- it is a home for a lot of life. Parrots love it too... The birds waited for that big mango to ripen patiently. it was hanging outside my window for several months and I used to think it was spoilt. Seems not:) Here u can see the parrots feeding on it. A baby parrot -- its feather ruffled and messed, his head larger than his body yet -- also tentatively bites into it very often.

There is a huge clan of parrots here. They don't seem to mind being stared at. The guys who do the Sparrows Homes (u know, they sell those Sparrow rests from which the birds can feed, the movement was written about quite a bit in the media because the thought behind it was that sparrows which were relevant to the city'e ecosystem where being driven away by the larger scavengers and these Sparrow rests would allow them safe places to roost:) ( I myself bought a sparrow rest for Rs 350 -- but no sparrow has not roosted there yet:( well, they told me I should place red chillis outside the windows. But the parrots don't seem to want it.. why will they, when there are ripe mangoes to dig into.

I learnt something watching these parrots. Unlike pigeons which will flutter if u say boo even mentally, parrots never shriek or quake if there is a loud noise. They are truly brave! At the construction site opposite, there used to be a huge bang each time the humongous multi-storey column was pushed into the ground. But while pigeons squawked and ducked, the parrots will continue doing whatever they were doing, with nary a feather out of place, nor a flutter! Amazing. I want to be like that:)
But the parrots will be gone soon. The old building, in whose compound this tree grows, is now being pulled down. Another compact eco-system will be destroyed. And Mumbai will grow at the expense of its less fortunate inhabitants, as usual!

And even the building where I am living is going to be brought down. Will the mango tree survive all that work?

Arzan Khambhatta's microworld

2011-02-23T09:49:00.000-08:00

At Arzan Khambhatta's show in the city: Micropolis and Microbilrium

I recall the first scrap sculpture I have seen in my life at Nariman Point. So, yes, I remembered the artist's name very well. So, when Arzan Khambhatta's show was announced, I wanted to wander in there too.. I like to see an artist's work if it throbs for me. Then I try to think of what he may have thought of when he created what he has. In abstract and modern art work that is quite a puzzle:) But if it clicks for me, and I have a Aha moment, I feel good. I don't know if my Aha moment coincides with that of the artist's moment of epiphany. But I like to pause before a work and wonder at the layers beyond the asymmetry, or symmetry within the lack of it. I like the connection that this gives me with the artist... It sounds too vague to be termed art appreciation... I recall how when the arty reviewers were let loose amongst us feature writers at Sunday Times we used to chuckle into our kerchiefs at how pompous some writers were.. They were only talking to themselves, excluding the rest of us crass humanity. That was something:) Then these writers were eclipsed when Times decided that art appreciation was not necessary for a money-making paper.. So, now I miss those writers and their use of words like palimpsest, damn!!!

Any case, for me Khambhatta's work was something. His creations scaled down from the monster size they assume, like bejewelled men, shining with chrome, swinging from steel. Microbilirium -- swinging from a finger... flying high, let loose, free. Mmmm, seems like yoga of the mind to me:)
The micropolis had different stories -- sometimes the man synergizing with the city, sometimes crushed by it, sometimes holding it back, sometimes being burdened by it. The disturbing one of one headless... ruthless control? Heavens, I was trying to guess, but it was great fun, to peek somewhere, into another mind, like unravelling a puzzle.
U can still catch that show at Museum Gallery, at Kala Ghoda, off Jehangir Art Gallery.

Visiting European art masters: did the city miss them or wat!!

2011-02-21T02:30:00.000-08:00

Rhapsody, by Michael Wilkinson

Typically, and shamefully enough, the media in Mumbai ignored this event, of contemporary European artists who also piggybacked on Auguste Rodin's statues for an exhibition at the Galleria at Trident, on till this week.

The reasoning behind such media blackout starts with the leader of the pack deciding to spend media ink only on events where the paper gets paid!! Thinking like a pauper, these sad sacks!

Since everybody copies the leader (he makes money, which helps him buy art, which he admires, but which he believes is not for the hoi polloi, that is u and I:) So that denies, me, the reader of a lot of things happening in the city.

Media is becoming a yawn -- between rapes, politicians, paid copies -- the reader's craving for something more -- art, science, events in the city, culture -- has to be buried. U can only hear the dirge between the sheets.

Barring Mid-day I don't know if others covered it, which just goes to how how sadly blind media is to their potential, but wasted, contribution towards a city's art consciousness. It is a collective shame that nothing happens in Mumbai -- or so the citizens believe - barring Bollywood and that trash consumes all over collective eyeballs...

Any case, it was a small exhibition... I recall in wonder Rhapsody by Michael Wilkinson, the hands that have become symbolic of Lorenzo Quinn's art (I am still reeling at the layers of love he got to portray with just two hands:), Auguste Rodin's statues, and Damien Hirst Butterflies and medical paraphernalia...

Quinn's art: depicting love -- from first love (bottom), trust (second last), eternum (third last)
Of the lot, I loved Wilkinson's rhapsody for its lyrical lines, the sense of fragility of love through the acrylic lit up cunningly from below. The Quinn hands still have me in thrall -- trust, eternum (lasting love), first love... so beautiful. Some images here are just representative since I wanted to convey some of the wonder, of what you may have missed, if u did not see this show:(

(Damien Hirst, butterflies, pills and medical paraphernalia)

On theater, spaces and seating

2010-08-31T02:06:00.000-07:00

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We were at the experimental theater of NCPA to watch Padmashri Leela Samson dance. This is not about the dance, which I would not dare review (One, I am arts illiterate, plus two, she is the principal of the college where my daughter is learning dance:)..This is a general letting off at how seating is organised in such spaces in Mumbai.
My husband swears he booked the seats after seeing the layout in their website (he booked online). And chose some good ones, giving front view. Yet, when we entered the auditorium, we were asked to walk up the steps and sit on the sides... I first thought, wow, I get such a wonderful bird's eye view of the dancer. Alas, and woe betide and the rest of the sad exclamations later, all I can say is that it was very bad place to be sitting. And even if Rs 200 is less than Rs 300 (were all sold out, no doubt to members at a discount), I felt like a pariah who had to twist her frame completely to get a decent view of the profile of the dancer:( It was physically taxing. Thank god I do kickboxing and am used to twisting from the hips and may actually think that sitting awkwardly for more than an hour is good exercise and will def make my future kicks better:)
These top side seats run along, and over the auditorium, along its side walls. Some seats, far down and ahead, must have been even worse... Seeing that the seats to our right were empty, we moved a few seats to better our experience. It still felt the same... :(

I recall once we were at a Shiamak Davar show (the annual thingie where students perform) we were given seats near the speakers(at Shanmukananda Hall, Matunga). I thought my heart would break, since the thud from the speakers (that too Bollywood remixed for high-energy dances) was something else altogether: hellish and if you know any biology you will that sort of proximity can be extremely dangerous. Can u imagine? Rs 300 for a seat and win a heart attack?!!!

Prithvi theater is getting by with it old fashioned style of having no numbers. This means when there is great play (like Chanakya, Manoj Joshi's, which I thrilled to, despite most of the shudd Hindi going over my head) there is a maha scrunch for space. I have seen stragglers coolly moving the early-comers to squeeze their butts into non-existing seats. Scrunch, scrunch, some hip-twists and everybody in chalta-hai Mumbai is happy. And cash-starved Prithvi Theater is ok with a few extra bucks. Does Sanjana have a ceiling on the number of tickets Prithvi sells? Is this based on any informed study on the size of Indian butts? Maybe some research to also indicate that certain plays attract the starving sorts (smaller butts) and some more popular plays attract the well-fed butts (big butts)? I would dearly like to know. Do journos who write flowery pieces on restaurants in the city ever think of looking at the city from this angle and churning up a story worth reading? Along the way get more flowery quotes from theater lovers. Here would be a sample: " we love theater and we don't mind the sweaty neighbour. We can even tolerate the deprived Indian male (oh, not many of them come to watch plays, maybe?) moving his elbow over our love handle and breasts."

And since the seats are not reserved, u don't pee during the interval. Some brazen ones, I have seen, can argue their right to more space or walk over from where they don't want to be sitting, to take over the space of some poor fellow with a weak, incontinent bladder. U can see really brazen behavior and nobody says anything... ushers try gently to tell people from sitting on the wooden steps...
So somehow we manage... in this city where space is such a problem, we are sooo happy we still have culture, what?

Commuters' strike: I am participating

2010-08-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

This Thursday commuters -- the ones who take auto regularly -- plan a strike. I plan to offer my moral support by not taking an auto too on that day.

Did u people read Quadros' interview in the Mumbai Mirror: (He is the auto-drivers union leader). He says auto drivers are not slaves and they are also human or other such sympathy-milking statement. I do not think at all, for one moment, any commuter treats an auto driver as a slave. On the contrary, most of these fellows, with the biggest chip on their shoulders about the rest of the world, treat commuters like shit. I believe union leaders, like political parties, must create the idea of `the evil other' against whom they will protect you. For long, political parties in India have thrived on dividing and ruling, and are still thriving on that unbeatable formula that they inherited from the British. So, I am not surprised Quadros is making out like commuters are the evil ones who are making unnatural demands (He says what if the poor auto driver must sign off, or may have a problem at home..It seems 99 per cent of the auto-drivers are suffering some such malaise day in and day out. 24 X7 ?) .

Though I hate the idea of contributing to global warming by taking an auto (does a gas-cylinder auto also contribute to that?) instead of the BEST bus or the sardine-can trains, I still do it because commuting by public transport is becoming hell in Mumbai (The Borivli station has become a knee-breaking maze for me) I have been resorting to autos to go to Kandivli for music classes. Fare comes to a whopping amount.. which I won't reveal..
But the last one month I have discovered the worst side of auto drivers:
On every route, to-and-fro -- and I am not exaggerating, they would agree to come, then mid-way, they will flag another auto down and tell me, some even acting with tears in t heir eyes(!!), that the brake is broken, something is cracked up, they are on reserve and whatever else they mumble ...
I realised the pattern: since the traffic police drive against auto-drivers has become strict, these fellows are making up this ruse, so somebody who looks militant like (note those muscles?) does not call the police control room to complain .. otherwise how come on six trips continuously I have been dropped midway and shoved into another auto?

So now, before getting into an auto I tell them that this trick has been played out before me and so to kindly spare me a repeat... Its been working, touchwood. I have gone in one auto for the entire trip ..

BRAKE BREAKS
However, before that, once, I had to change thrice!!! On the second leg of this eventful journey, this auto driver suddenly says he won't come to Pali because I said Linking Road before I said Pali. What!! I told him that some northern suburban auto-drivers do not know where Pali is, so when you board an auto you give them the destination broadly (Like Bandra West, Or Linking Road) then lead them more specificially to the exact location. And Pali Village is off Linking Road, it is two shops off KFC, yet this fellow says he won't turn right to take me to my home because I had said Linking Road first. He said I was doing a BIG WRONG!! (I think you can guess where this sort of behavior comes from -- the sort of propaganda which keeps drumming into their heads that they are the victims of the commuters and must be protected from them? Otherwise what would union leaders do for a living?) So I completely forgot that I am aspiring for monkhood and world peace, then bristled and told him to stop the auto. I told him:" Please stop. I rather walk then travel in the vehicle of an adharmic person like you... Here is your money." Then I walked a long long while in anger at my own anger, stomping to cool it off, before I flagged another auto driver.

FARE TOO:
And btw. If you are smart enough to buy your own auto meter fare card, you will catch on that it is very different from what they have. The auto fare on their meter is a round figure. For instance, if the meter comes to 178, it wil show 180 and so on... This is something Value Added Tax, I guess. If hotels do it, why not poor driven auto fellows who just want to say they are not slaves?
What happened to my beautiful Mumbai of yore, where auto drivers gave back money, or often told you to keep the change (if you did not have one buck, they will say, chalta hai!!). I used to love Mumbai for its auto drivers. But Chennai is worse, a nightmare .. Delhi as bad I suppose. So I guess I am destined to put up with autowallah's khunnas and forget I have any rights of my own...

Poha gone wrong: terribly wrong

2010-08-04T08:50:00.000-07:00

Ok, this does not qualify as a review. But I bought the ticket and went for the play and sat through it, so I have a right to an opinion, even if it is an unintellectual one.

The whole thing is about Sudama. As a concept my husband and I were excited: it wants to, in the beginning, explore the possibility of whether it would have changed the course of the big battle or of Indian philosophy if instead of Arjuna, it was Sudama who got the Gita's message. But though Sudama is made to sound like a left-out friend who keeps on resenting Arjuna, this idea, as the play unfolds, did not make any sense to me. Meaning, first a man who resents so much cannot understand the Gita. And if, as it is well-accepted that Sudama was intellectually and spiritually fine (he is said to have taught a mantra to Krishna, so you get the point) then he did not need the Gita: it makes more sense to give the message to someone who needs it (like Arjuna) rather than someone who already knows everything about it(like Sudama), so what is the point.

Then this Sudama who apparently is also That Sudama (Krishna's friend) gets rather rude I find. He is constantly calling people moorkh (maybe my spelling is wrong, but it sounds like a rude word) and laughing at people doing B.com (why, they are intellectually and spiritually less?) and in fact, I found that sad sack he kept calling moorkh was a rather chilled out guy who is actually one of the few people who finds some substance in Sudama when the whole world rejects him. So, that sort of loud, lunatic behaviour in the name spiritual advancement I found difficult to swallow. Not on, Makrandji.

The actors were all superb. But the script was lost. Suddenly, the spine of the story crumbles completely, and we find we are asked to believe in people who could be (maybe this Sudama is not, but so many tantric priests and Djinn-driven babas in this country who would love to have their halo certified by such a play) some quacks making a fast buck. To prop this silly ending, the story crackles with a `believe-it-or-not' superstitious finish (where u can sense the whole cast and Makrand in particular is getting goosebumps because he is so carried away by that idea) that shows the playwright had completely forgotten the original intellectual intention. It is essentially a showcase for Makrand Deshpande and his six-pack. The other actors are all superb. The whole audience stood up to clap, clearly having enjoyed the play. I resisted it. Then since it looks rude, I too stood up. But did not feel like it, really.

Did you know what happens in Virar trains?

2009-12-22T09:49:00.000-08:00

(Image of a crowded train from this site)

One of my acquaintances told me this amazing mumbai `item'. Suppose you were a tough cookie and managed to get a toehold in a virar local from Churchgate. Then, if you are a regular Mumbai warrior you even manage to get yourself a seat. Then, mid-way, usually at Borivli, somebody is going to tap you on your self-congratulating shoulder and tell you to stand up. The thing is, if you enjoyed the trip this long, then it is only `courteous' to give up your seat to the other poor sweltering, sweating fellow-commuter. So, whether you like it or not (who likes it!!!) you have to stand up at Borivli and give up seat. Since the virar passengers are travelling in gangs, woe betide any one who has the guts to refuse.
I remember even as a new-comer to Mumbai, over two decades ago how animalistic and violent the virar women would be. They are another tribe altogether, different from any human being you have met. They will actually maul you if you made the mistake of getting into a Virar local if you were going to Borivli. Their anger those days was that when you have so many Borivli trains why would you get into a virar? Even if you did by mistake, which you are bound too, if you are new to the city, there will be no mercy. They just manhandled you -- pregnant or not, child or not, teenager or not, even if you indicated that you did not understant what that was about, they were just sooooo angry!!!

Off the railway station, Bandra

2009-11-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

You will find this same pic in my yoga blog. But here I want to write about something else ...

My car disgorges me at this spot. It is 5. am. I tell the driver to park the car, alongside a few feet off. You don't feel strange here, being the lone woman -- the men are busy and incurious. They know I am not a pick-up and understand that I have come for pamphlet distribution. Mumbai is that sort of city. I am directed clinically to the youth handling the pamphlet distribution. He is a Maharashtrian and I am relieved. They are the sweetest men, generally, and very chivalrous... I find that the Maharashtrian men have the best respect for women in the whole world. I had written earlier: when I distributed the pamphlets the first time, I remember the vendor, a Maharashtrian, actually told me to keep ten bucks (that I had to pay him). It was his way of saying, I respect that you, a woman, are doing this on your own... It felt so lovely. I kept that ten bucks for long, because it is that sort of thing about this city that makes you love it... and it comes from the locals. Even my driver, a Maharashtrian, when I give him some small extra cash if some such mission (pamphlet distribution, or early morning workshop) went off well -- he will brush it aside with affectionate brusqueness.. That is also so nice... Tell me where else in India -- I mean in a city -- u will find that attitude?

Well, everybody says this of Mumbai -- that it is the outsiders who make it what it is (I am an `outsider' in that sense too). But actually, it is this Mahashtrian ethos that allows you to be who you are (an enterprising woman) without disturbing that enterprise you bring to your task with useless labels -- woman, alone, rich, poor, jeans-clad, saree-clad, old, young -- whatever else that the rest of India (try this in Delhi, for instance, and you know what I am talking of) assigns to a person and tries to suppress you from there -- that is not there in Mumbai. And that comes from the Maharashtrians. A staunch cleanliness of behavior. Whatever else the debate may be -- on who makes this city and the rest of the blah -- there is no doubt we can reach where we want -- reach right to the stars -- because the original locals have no quarrel with you doing that.. We must salute that laissez faire ...It is the soul of this city...

Zenzi -- a young place

2009-11-18T01:35:00.000-08:00

The Time-out magazine `insight' on the place was a bit out-dated. So we three, the family, (going by the review) -- sat waiting for the tables to clear for the dance to start. But the dance was happening inside and we did hear the music vaguely out. So we must say we overate, just waiting, thanks to the Time-out mag's misleading review:) But the food was sooo delicious -- I loved the calamari best. My kid ate a lot of exotic stuff too -- but she does not like to share so I don't quite know how it all was. But that she licked her plate clean -- which means it must have been good. She is fussy that way. Then the family shamelessly `washed' the whole thing down with a huge pile of French Fries. So gross, no?

Any case, Zenzi is a very young (This web site has NOT been updated since September!!). No board outside and while we, non-Bandraites, asked about to locate it:) Meaning of Zenzi and how to pronounce it? Go here

Very few women, wonder why. Fast-moving crowd. Since the lounge bar was sooo cold we wanted to come out to the tables outside and managed to get one pretty fast. People stand about nursing drinks too. That sort of chilled out place. And quite a few pick-ups. A old, white woman with a gigolo beef-cake. The reality show girls with a fellow with a lot of money, loose chest and belly and even more loose wallet with a white woman wanting a free India ride... Nice short clothes, taut legs, as far as women went. Why is that young Indian boys look so thin and without any body tone? My daughter has been cribbing for long that there are so few boys in her circle who like to physical activity, be it dance, a good work-out at the gym or even games. Sooo boring. You can see evidence of such sloppy physical fitness at places like Zenzi. Only the young boys from abroad look like they are into any sort of physical activity. My daughter looked archly at me and said, Mom, whom are you checking out. Hey, I told her, I am into this fitness business. (And I know for one, that our men simply hate working out. So it was my keen marketing eye that was trying to see if there was any potential here. No, there was not, I concluded:)

Not surprisingly, our boys don't even seem to have interesting women about them. The proportion man-to-woman was like ten to one here!! Maybe the girls crawl out later in the night. Even the dance floor the proportion was this low. DJ Amol was there. I did a Ranbir Kapoor act on the floor, but the music petered off, so we -- heavy with good food -- decided it was time to leave and go to bed. Yawn!!

Where and when?
12 pm – 3.30 pm (Sat, Sun only), 7 pm – 1 am
183, Waterfield Road,Near National College,
Bandra (W), Mumbai – 400 050price : 1000-2000

Tch! Tch! Toilets in Mumbai stink:(

2009-11-05T04:56:00.000-08:00

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First of course, the biggest problem in this city is that there are not enough toilets for its populations. So, the city stinks as a whole.
Then, last year or so I read the amazing news that builders were thinking of dispensing with providing toilets in low middle class homes and the flat-buyer will have to do it up himself. What a stupid suggestion. However, with the recession,that sort of clout the builders weild in the city (where they can say free parking and charge a bomb or say parking for all, and not provide space for cars) has been hit. So even if they wished they cannot carry off the devious plan of making Mumbai more dirty than it is -- because the market has shrunk so much they are giving away free furniture for the buyer who is not going to be too happy to get a house without a toilet.

Any case, all my years in Mumbai I have never visited a Churchgate or VT station loo just for the dread of it. When I came to city, and though I could see the gold beneath its crap-strewn pavements, I was overwhelmed by just how dirty it was. Spit and crap so much all over that its citizens had simply stopped reacting.

However, all this all of you already know. I am cribbing about the fact that toilets are so bad in established places.
Here is a list I recently visited:

Ravindra Natya Mandir --

* Absolute horror. We paid Rs 300 per person for the ticket. But paisa vasool only for the artist performance. The rest of what the center provided was pure crap: The flush was leaking, so water was all over the floor. There was no place / peg where one could hang a bag -- an essential for women who all carry handbags. So should we place it on the floor which is so leaky, wet and soiled over?
* Even more drastic: no lights in loos. Only central lights burning. The toilet door is high. So, if you shut it you cannot see anything, including where the toilet seat is!!
* No dust bins in loos. Where does a woman drop her sanitary napkin? If in the toilet, then it should flush. Since it was not flushing, then imagine how horrible for women who want to change sanitary pads.. Terrible... in the dark, not seeing a thing, holding on the bag, changing the pad -- Inhuman.

So, if using the toilet, u must keep the door open and struggle about

Nehru center: Nice and functional.

Tata Theater: Good, neat and has hooks, lights, and everything

In Orbit theater: Great loos. But the cleaning girls can be a bit aggressive: they will push the brush into where you stand. It is some atavistic anger-release for them I guess. But since the loos are clean, I normally suffer the indignity of such misdirected aggression.

Oberoi Mall: Same as above, including the cleaning girls. Its a tribe thing I guess:)

Gourmet City to shut down?

2009-10-28T02:43:00.000-07:00

Bad news guys. It seems Mumbai is still not a gourmet city... because the Hypercity's gourmet counter is likely to shut down. It has def me to mourn for its demise. How sad... I used to love the food there, the quiet, the pricing and everything about it that teased my tongue... Now it is going to go and we will have to hunt around in Nature's Basket or Foodland for those yummy things we need that makes us feel like food aesthetes.

Btw. I suppose we really don't have food sensitivity in the city. The fact that most restaurants are not stocking the desserts u want (tiramisu, cheesecake) but keep safe options (ice cream- yeow!) shows that we are very mundane when it comes to food. A Japanese food specialist we met at Kelva told us that the Sushi stuff u get, or the wasabi ready-made stuff u get, made from China have been spiked a lot with spices which is not the way they are meant to be. They have a subtle flavoring that only the Japanese get right. However, subtlety and Mumbaikars?? Never the twain shall meet:(

Shubha Mudgal and sponsorship and RJ gone berserk

2009-10-27T00:38:00.000-07:00

We went to Nehru Center for a powerful performance by Shubha Mudgal. I know I am no music critic, but as a student who struggles with musical notes daily I have some right to talk of enjoying her performance..Rushnai, meaning illumination.. A sufi word?

The RJ Rohini got booed for talking too much, with constant reference to herself and reciting Hindi poems... But RJs who try to become comperes are born with Duck's back I guess (Remember Sajjid Khan who did not like being criticised by Ashutosh for being cheap and demeaning and rationalised even... some people do things for fun, some for a living. ). This Rohini even wound up the show by saying 'I am Rohini' or some such nonsense!! Heavens..

The worst thing I saw was when the sponsors got shawls from the artiste. I have never seen such gross and cheap behavior from any sponsors till now. I wonder which sponsor's bright idea it was. As it is, what with the RJ's motormouth and these sponsors' lackey's wanting to be on the stage with the artiste and talking and strutting before the mike with a shaky, foolish voice (nobody had ANYTHING illumining to say) it was extremely irritating to the audience which got thoroughly restless at such lapse of grace. The sponsors also practically got booed with loud claps. But possibly, they also were born with duck's back (otherwise would they dare to make such social gaffe) and patted themselves on their duck's backs, thinking they were being honored.

Union bank, Reader's Digest were amongst the five sponsors I recall.. Terrible. I can imagine the plight of the artiste reduced to pampering clerical egos (actually these Johnnies are just signing cheques for their managements. The real aesthete or patron will never do that!!) . Apparently they love music, somebody said. I wonder at that really! If they did, they will never treat an artiste like that...

Lotus eating at Kelwa beach

2009-10-20T05:45:00.001-07:00

We decided to travel out once more, now that the kid is not at home. Lately, as a Mumbai kid she was beginning to have shudders at quiet spots that pleased us village types. So we had sort of stopped going out -- the sacrifices of parenthood. Now that she is not there to fuss any more, we decided to revive our enthusiasm for gadding about. Even though I otherwise lead an enviably lazy life (do I?), I find that I am unable to relax at home simply because I have so many things to do. Apart from the chores, all those things from my deprived childhood (beadmaking, jewellery making, fabric painting, etc). So, a holiday out helps me shut that clamour in my head.

At Kelva we mananged to finally wind down the Mumbaikar clockwork mechanism. Hammocks, beer, cooked food at the right time, unobstrusive staff, sprawling banyan tree, lovely and aesthetic touches by somebody who loves the place and loves beautiful things and loves Buddha:)Log huts, clean toilets, continuous water supply, and power supply, kid's play pen, a pleasant manager, a tiny swimming pool with clear water, a beach just across (and since the beach alongside this stretch is messy and the crowd thereabout rowdy, we just ate lotus at the resort:) Am giving you the link which gives u the general, high-end rates. Tents (Rs 1000 odd, a large dorm like hut, with equally cheaper rates, smaller log huts, concrete huts with different rates and more).

So, if you wish to chill and not have to drive to far off to do that, here is where you want to go. Beautiful.

Also, Kelva Beach Resort is available for the dates :http://kelwabeachresort.com/

Non Ac Eco Log Hut : Rs.7000/- for 2 persons for 2 nights.

Extra Child (5-12) : Rs.2500/- per child for 2 nights.

Extra person (above 12) : Rs.3500/- per person for 2 nights.

And if the page does not display (they are reviewing their rates, plus remember rates are different for different seasons, holidays) write to them /or contact them at

91.022.6631 0581
91.022.3292 2038
info@kelvabeachresort.com

Lemon Grass restaurant

2009-10-16T05:02:00.000-07:00

I am partial to people from the north-east because of Biki, my Muay Thai instructor. Very smiley, sweet people, child-like. This restaurant is full of them, to serve you, so already I am biased.

Jahnavi, my daughter, whose taste is simple -- she likes Thai food, pizzas, French Fries, Mughlai and not always in this order -- and whose appetite is huge -- loved the food here. The starters we ordered were just so lovely -- and I must confess to something terrible, I cannot remember the names!! It was a few weeks back and I was confident that standing on my head as well as my pampered taste-buds will combine to help me recall the list of stuff we ordered. But there it is, I cannot remember anything except that I enjoyed my food and we were giggling a lot and felt a bit sad that the place was so empty and the bamboos waving about added to the sense of isolation. . My kid licked her fingers. And we lliked the serving size. Plus they did not have the dessert I wanted (always happens only to me). But the ambience was good (so quiet in that area), and of course, my smiley waiters. If you are partial to Thai and Chinese food then this is the place... Rates are reasonable. I liked the low mid section: but difficult to snuggle into that if you are wearing skirt or shorts:)

Lemon Grass Cafe

106, First Floor, Palm Spring Mall, Link Road, Malad West, Mumbai
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

28817444, 28817888
(Above Croma).

Watching Malavika Sarukkai, revisiting NCPA

2009-10-13T00:33:00.000-07:00

My husband and I were revisiting NCPA's Tata theater after a long, long while. I remember going there for a play with my kid, Othello, a few years back.
It remains unchanged. The chandeliars. The uniformed boys (at the food counters), looking a bit harried at the thought of having to serve celebs -- possibly because they recognise them. I love that crowd, having interviewed a few during my journalistic days. It is a closed, tightly guarded celeb I-scratch-your-back-your-scratch-mine sort of set, but I like it because they are so non-pretentious despite that halo they have given each other.... U could dial-a-quote with them and they made my feature-writing that way a cake-walk, though I recall Alyque Padamsee made me wait for an hour for a long column he should have written but only had time to dictate to a rookie and after the garrulous man spoke I had reams (on my recorder) and I had to give it some structure... This was immediately after Sunday Times was launched:)

Any case Dolly Thakore hopped in, while we were nervously waiting at the ticket counter (the laptop from where the tickets were being issued, had first shut down, then was slow and there did not seem to be a system of Q and the fellow was feeling too hassled to remember to be polite:) and told that harried fellow the seats she wanted for herself.. Sigh. The 300-rupee seats were all sold out, we managed to get some seats off the aisle in the Rs 200-range, and were thankful that we could see the full beauty of the dancer perfectly from that perch.

The cold coffee is quite a filler. And I munched on a cheese sandwich before the dance drama (Kashi Yatra). What a stupendous performance. The reason I am back to doing these things in the city is because my kid is now training at the classy Kalakshetra and I don't want to be a mom who does not know of Malavika Sarukkai's style when she discusses it with me. So despite this silly reason for returning to my `culture vulture' days, I was glad I was doing it. The dancer glowed, every movement of her perfect. Her expressions lucid. And for the first time I felt I could follow the story in the dance. Such poesy... One day perhaps my kid too will do that?? And I will be in NCPA, watching her... after a sip of cold coffee to settle my nerves:)

Prithvi Irish coffee, a tradition

2009-10-12T08:51:00.000-07:00

I went to Manoj Joshi's superb play Chanakya this Sunday. It was playing in south Mumbai and just when I was bemoaning the fact that things don't seem to move up north, to our forsaken suburbs (though we have recliner seats in cinema near home:)the play was announced in Prithvi. We booked online, such a smooth operation. And after years nearly, we went to Prithvi. Got the tickets also immediately, though I wondered how the delivery will happen. The last time I went, was a few years ago, to attend an experimental play and having foolishly ordered pasta and waiting eternally for it as the Q to enter the theater grew (No seat numbers in Prithvi, so this ancient, out-of-sync with modern times practice).
Any case, we managed to float in eventlessly, and were amused to see funny incidents of Mumbaikarbrazenness -- squeezing one extra person into somebody's lap, trooping in late and squeezing out the rest of early comers; and during loo break try to take over somebody's else seats (if that is possible, since there are no numbers). Sitting on the steps, though the usherers keep pleading to leave it for the actor's passage. And then, of course, the brazenness of letting your mobile ring loudly in this tiny theater, so poor Joshi had to restart the act. But Mumbaikars are very game and such brazenness is attempted because they don't mind that squeeze, that elbow, that jostling sense of being in a crowd, even to watch a classy play.

The Cafe: Like I said, the last time, a few years I was there, I had ordered a pasta plate for my ever-hungry, cribbing daughter and was still waiting as the Q grew. So that was an annoying experience.
This time we had a slightly more irritating experience, when the waiter boy (Nandu something, since I was irritated enough to ask his name) took the Rs 500 we gave, took down the order and said he will give change and items to our table... but when another waiter went to enquire, this boy was standing in front the guy at the counter who was saying no such order had been placed and he did not know anything about it (or some such nonsense which happens when we do these silly trusting things that should not be done at such public spots). Any case, my body language was aggressive as I wagged my hand at the boy who I recognised (and my husband, that trusting fellow who never takes receipts and always then sends me out to salvage the situation, did not remember his face)... (If anybody at Prithvi is reading it and wants to contact me, u may email me at sama_yama@yahoo.co.in and next time I come I will point the boy out to you)... Any case, he readily handed over the change, despite having acted as if he knew nothing of the altercation happening.. Irritating...

Any case, the irish coffee at Prithvi is a Mumbai tradition by now! I have always had it. This time I pigged on a blueberry cheesecake (which just last week I attempted at potpourrie too). The latter is more grainy, and I always vote for that texture. The Prithvi one is smoother.. and quite delicious in its own right. Lovely.

The heavy-duty stuff was not available -- pasta, eggs and such items because the menu is apparently going through an overhaul. But otherwise, despite the old chairs that have not been changed since I saw them years ago, despite the sense of something patchy and tatty at Prithvi, it still rocks. And is a nice place to hang out with friends, if you get a seat:)

The play was superb. And is running housefull:) Thank god the city has it culture spots still...

Contact details? Log in here...

Sea Link, dreamy though delayed

2009-10-08T21:50:00.000-07:00

The sea link that connects us humble Suburbanites to South Mumbai looks rather dreamy. Yes. But it took a looooooong while to materialise. I remember as a rookie journalist being asked by Darryl D'Monte, one of my fav editors, to do a story on why it took so long, for the Times of India, no less. That was over 15/16 years ago!! Imagine... It has materialised only now -- which only shows that though Mumbai has the mostest money, its city fathers have the leastest intention and love in working for its good. Every time we go over the sea link (it cuts down on traffic mela and saves a lot of time) my husband, also a journo then and sadly even now:), gets apoplectic about how Mumbai is slow on its projects while back home, Chennai, despite its overtly goonda politics, is so fast with such projects which display the city positively.

Another sore point with him, where the Sea Link winds off in Worli, we have to take long U-turn to swing into the city. It, according to him, is a clear case of different departments not thinking together to give a common solution to the city. And throwing up problems that ruins a grand gesture like the sea link ... Apparently in the mornings there is a huge traffic pile-up here... After so many years, this is how we wind up a project? Messily?? I see journos don't write about such stuff any more. I had one journo student who was so thrilled about being given a pack of Arundhuti Roy books by her agent while releasing her latest book This journo called it a `miracle gift'. Is she naive? So you know the cadre of journalism nowadays:(
--

Link is named after Rajiv Gandhi. Oh, btw. while swinging on the Bandra flyover I was amused to see Mt Mary Church described as Mt Merry Church!! Such a typo in a city announcement... Cannot be rectified?

Sea Link Cost:
One way, Rs 50
Return, Rs 75.

I think there is some pass facility also.
Btw. Bullock carts, two-wheelers not allowed on the link:) Though the way Mumbai is progressing, we should all give up our cars and go back to carts... best way to travel in this city...

The day Meru let me down

2009-10-08T00:55:00.000-07:00

The Meru cabs have a proud slogan: Rely on Us. However, last month while going to Chennai and boarding an early morning Kingfisher flight for it, the cab company let me down. At 5.30 am (the sort of time when such things can make you nail-bitingly, intensely nervous), the cab did not come as scheduled, though I got an ack the night before and an sms around 5 am that very morning. My husband called up the helpline and was told the driver, a Dubey, was not taking the call, so they will despatch another cab soon... Again, the sort of time when the clock ticks and with the way the lines overflow at the airport these days, this can only make the would-be passenger intensely nervous. My part of town it is tough getting an auto ordinarily and to hunt one down at that unearthly hour!! Heavens, I was so nervous because I was keen to get to Chennai, to bring back my daughter, coming home for the first time since her hostel life began this year.

Then, we waited, yet after five mins. no call, no cab. I told my husband we must ditch Meru and find my own auto, or he must drive me to airport. We did not know what to do? What if the cab came when I went down ? That is the sort of confusion such letdowns can inflict, which can make the situation even worse due to lack of communication. Then, luckily I spotted an auto just pulling and managed it to the airport... No call from Meru till date, let alone 30 seconds after complaint.

My ref numbber is AE1A26273 -- in case anyone from Meru is reading this and wants to mop up failed reputation:(

Machaan, why I like this restaurant

2009-09-21T22:35:00.000-07:00

First time we went to Machan, we were ordering a la carte. But the waiter insisted on giving us lots of stuff from the buffet table as well: pakodas, finger foods. It felt royal:)

Next time again, we went we had a great time. The place is dimly lit, has a jungle motif and a softly rustling waterfall. But that is not why we go there. The food is truly excellent. The price reasonable.

This time we ordered some non-veg and vegetarian stuff. The food is non-greasy. Done just right. Tastes yummy. Options for regular and large are offered. I loved the Pattewali roti, with leaf pressed into rotis, while the malpua (with sugar syrup and crispy) and rabdi to pour over it/dip into as dessert was truly sinful. The appetizers are really non-greasy -- and that, in my opinion, is truly artful. The green vegetable patties (sorry, I forget the name) was cooked on tawa and was filled with nuts yet retained its shape and texture. For me, food is so much about texture. And while I must say the recession means some restaurants cut out the stylistic stuff like tasty mukhwas, here we got some amazing sweet mouth freshener that I kept popping in my mouth. Tandoori Table in Kandilvi east used to have a mint-flavored til-ka mukhwa that has now disappeared. But I loved that Machan is not cutting out such stuff.

Actually if you want to go budget you should try their Buffet: About Rs 399/ taxes. It is a gourmet spread man!

Address:

Palm Spring Bldg
Unit No 812, 8th Floor, Kanchpadha
Malad (W), Mumbai

Phone 28818844, 32687147, 28806668

The animals in my backyard

2009-09-12T09:12:00.000-07:00

The little bird has gone now. I was lucky enough to spot him and then click him before he flew away. For two days for a few minutes he would leave his nest to hang about in the sun. He actually entered the tiny netting in my computer room to sit and watch me type. Then he flew out and sat on the grill in the garden, sunning himself and allowing generously to be clicked despite my nervous fingers trying to zoom before he decided to disappear. I saw him early the next morning, his alert parents fluttering about. He was always alone in the nest and I am glad his parents thought he was safe in our balcony. But now that he is independent he can be at risk -- flying about adventurously into some larger bird's mouth -- a nice morsel or a dessert!! So now his parents have taken him to where they normally roost and I have his empty nest hanging in the balcony. The ravens have been curiously visiting it, hanging at my grill like some dark creatures... I like ravens -- they reek of intelligence and seem to be rather useful about this city. Where would we be without scavengers?

A large monarch butterfly has been fluttering about my lemon bush. It is not just the white flowers that seem to lure it but even the leaves. Perhaps it will also lay its eggs here? Who knows.. If you have seen monarch pupae, they are very exotic and colourful and then when the butterfly emerges, its wings still wet and sits under a soft morning sun to dry its wings, it can be a beautiful moment...So I will wait:)

Other bird visitors are the bulbul, examining my flowers and sparrows. The one you see has been worrying my foot mat in the garden, tearing some fluff from it for lining its nest.

We had decided, my husband and I, that once the birds leave the nest, we will put the pigeon netting -- to keep off the marauding pigeons which squat fatly on my plants, or shred them. And not mention the tonnes of crap I daily have to clean. So I wonder if the netting will keep off the other visitors or maybe the holes will be big enough to let them through. But will they trust and come in?

This fat little chick!

2009-09-08T03:13:00.001-07:00

This plump little chick is now out of the nest. It fluttered through the grill to my computer room, through a hole one-inch in height... then while I worried about it rushing into my fan, as I shut the windows, he fluttered out through the one-inch hole happily...

Now he comes out of his dirt-bag nest occasionally and sits on my balcony grill, as his parents flutter about him. Does he not look so divine...
He cheeps loudly, is quite active and seems to be eating the whole time, if you watch his anxious parents carry food for him non-stop. Parenting can be so tough!

We did not put a pigeon protecting wire netting just so he won't be disturbed. Once he is gone, we will have to put up the wiring since the pigeons otherwise trash my flowering shrubs... Then such birds won't come. The other day, a bulbul was there, examining my pink flowers curiously... Even he won't come. Nor the rascally Mynah who plucks my palm leaves with a vicious venegeance...

Political posters: big farce

2009-09-02T04:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was very happy to see the BMC van go along the highway and even in Samta Nagar, nearby where I live, plucking off the political posters off from the roadside. I felt good that the ruling that all such posters defacing the city may be pulled down. But I realised that the whole attempt was rather farcical. It was on the tenth day of Ganpati immersion -- which meant the posters were allowed to stay on the entire course. The whole tamasha yesterday, with police vans, etc was just hogwash then!!

Oh btw. a blog visitor later came along and sent me this email which explains why the whole farce was carried out:
Actually, they were being removed that day because the Maharashtra elections had just been announced earlier in the day and the model code of conduct, under which hoardings etc are banned, came into force. Not being pulled down because they were defacing the skyline or any such thing…

Lottery racket on the roads:)

2009-08-24T03:32:00.000-07:00

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Did you know the lottery sellers are now trying to get u to buy at traffic signals? Apart from selling strawberries (while in season), or umbrellas, little masks, plastic helicopters, car screens and car cushions, they are now also selling lottery tickets.

The Maharashtra state lottery ticket, one fellow told me. Some fantastic amount, that seemed to be too fantastic to be part of my karma:) So I shooed him away. He deliberately dropped a ticket inside my auto. While I tried to wave him back to pick it right back (he had danced a few steps away, this urchin) he came back, acting bemused. "Memsaheb," he looked at me, as if I had already won the lotto, "you must now buy it for sure. It is your luck which has made this ticket drop off my hand. It means your fate is now written on it." !!!!

I wonder who coaches them in such alluring language:) It must be our Bollywood films...

More on the sunbirds roosting in my home:)

2009-08-22T08:07:00.000-07:00

I will let these delightful pictures speak for themselves. Sunbirds, roosting in my balcony. See that little fellow inside. One is always seated in, so I assume the eggs are there now. The nesting bird looks always in a daze... some hormone that must be stunning it that way (vasopression, for late-comers) since otherwise they are, by nature, extremely restless.
One day when my Muay Thai instructor walked looking lovingly at them, the seated bird screamed in a violated and scared fashion and flung away... I could imagine its tiny heart beating madly:(
So, now we try not to disturb them too much.... And though Biki suggested we could feed them something I fear the big birds will be more interested in such grains and disturb these little fellows. Best way to keep them around is to be non-interfering...

Rhythm House: a tradition that really rocks:)

2009-08-19T03:46:00.000-07:00

This is the new release (I think) called Nagore Sessions -- a compilation of Sufi type of songs from the famous dargah of Nagore, in Tamil Nadu. I read an interview with the singers and wanted to desperately to get my hands on it... being from the south and exploring Sufism also. I tried Landmark ... but u know, it is difficult to deal with the sales staff there -- some know their stuff, some don't. But at Rhythm House I know I will always find it. I ran into Rhythm House and looked out for that boy I always ask for such stuff (last time I wanted the Siddhar Cave music -- a Tantric, exotic compilation) and he knew where I will find it. I also found Vyas' fabulous Sattwa that way... another superb Satsangy music compilation... And this time asked him (his label reads AJAY:) and he asked another one, who seemed to know more... This one is Athik -- and he knew exactly which shelf I will find the Nagore Sessions in.. Wow, na?
I love Rhythm House. It rocks, man:)!!!

For details, go here...

Karma T-shirts: I lov m

2009-08-14T20:40:00.001-07:00

I got a T-shirt with this mind-blowing image. It is a Karma T-shirt. I just lovvv it... It sort of sums up a lot of things about this country... The Karma T-shirt slogan says," Crazy about India." That too... sort of T-shirt that gets a lot of eye-balls (Tantra Tees can also be that way, though some of their PJs I find OTT... The sex ones particularly, and I am not even the moral police....

Where did I get it?
At Colaba Causeway... It is nearabouts the Bank of Baroda, a female clothes shop (called LOTUS, near Mc Donalds) that has been there for over a decade(I had got an expensive lengha for my daughter when she was just a toddler) It is manned (can u say that of a woman? ) by a lady who seems more keen on counting her stocks of embroidered clothes than selling this T-shirt. I had to practically wrench it from her (Poloma, are u reading this?:) before I could get the shop girls to hunt out the size of this T-shirt... they like the Tees soo much they don't want to sell it? They would not look up at all, from their precious stock. I had to keep pointing to this great sadhu hanging outside, on the glass, to get them to dig out a small sized for me. Already people are asking me for it. I intend to trek over to Colaba next week and buy a few more of these Karma Tees. Provided the lady obliges... What an idea, Sirji:) U can check out more on the Karma Tees on net, created by Madan Chhabria I think.

I will put up the photos of some more I just could resist picking up later on.
Contact number: 9320425272

Masks and more

2009-08-14T11:54:00.000-07:00

My nephew clicked this picture for me, since I tried to click so many times and only caught the tip of my foot or big toe in the frame..Off Churchgate this man, stands selling mask. I picked up one, just for the heck of it (Some pompous TV journalist will come along and call me a sickness touris or some such thing?) It smelt of some vinyl -e thing, u know, that I could not imagine every wearing it. It cost me Rs 20. When half-hour later I walked past this guy, he was surrounded by a hoard of commuters who were all trying to make him rich:) by buying what all he had to offer. He had another mask for Rs 40.

Any case, the thougth that occured to me was that if we were health conscious as a nation (which we are not at all, despite Swami Ramdev) then we would not be in such a flutter about this flu. Our kids hardly get once a week PT (sports class). What sort of sick (I hate to say that cliche, pun intended) education system that excludes health-building activity. Once they come to tenth, this nonsense gets even more virulent, because the kids hardly get to think of doing any of the kiddie things -- even dancing, when u are a teen, they cannot.. We are terribly flaccid as a nation, where health is concerned. And we should feel guilty that the kids succumb when such virulent epidemics unleash, because we have, collectively, wrong priorities when we send them to school.
Lecture over. Feel strongly about such things. Or they will remain just the way they are. Drag us all down...

Temple jewellery

2009-08-06T00:40:00.000-07:00

My daughter has the habit of asking for something very important (like some costume for an important performance, or a notebook for a particular test) in the last minute. Now that she is into boarding this trait is becoming more pronounced. This time she suddenly tells me she needs temple jewellery for her internal exams in her dance college. So I sort of panic and scout about and find a fake gold-plated costume jewellery shop near my complex. I splurge on some necklace, bangles, ear drops and then, since I cannot resist it, buy some myself. After which, commonsense dawns on me and I decide to go the south Indian and staid and reasonably priced Giri's for some temple jewellery. I remember the Goregaon Giri's proprietor Sharada telling me about her stocking such stuff. I decide to go to Matunga's Giri, but some thing makes me change my mind and I go to the Goregoan one and pick up a pile of beautiful, gold-tinted, jewellery that looks so much like the original stuff and made in the typical south Indian style -- of deep reds, round curves (like their women), and starkly set against pearls and clustered about in simple, unassuming way -- each one looking like the other. You won't find this simplicity in Gujarati jewellery which revels in extravagance. It is amazing the styles of jewellery in this country. I like all the styles and each has their own mood and I def think suggests the temperament of the people. A certain uniformity runs through most things south indian, which makes them more conservative than most.
It can grate that, if you don't belong. Otherwise, it can be a haven. It is matter of orientation I guess. I myself, I prefer, to be out of all that and observe and be neither this or that. Even in the matter of choice of jewellery...
But if you want to use fake gold jewellery for performances or even for your outings, south Indian temple jewellery are nice rich choices:)

At the gold-plated costume jewellery shop I picked four pieces for Rs 2200. At Giri's I got 12 pieces (bangles, necklace, neckpiece, head pins, nose pins and rings, waist band, arm bands, etc) for Rs 2650.

Giri Trading Agency Private Lts.
At Bangur nagar, Goragaon West, 28767298
They also have units at Dombivli, Matunga (Big one, in two sections -- book and Cd and one of temple and pooja items near the Matunga post office) , Nerul. They also have centers in other cities like Secunderabad, Coimbatore, Kanchipuram and Chennai.
For further details check out their website www.giritrading.com

It is also a great place to scout for spiritual/religious books:)

Sun birds, actually, in my balcony

2009-08-04T23:28:00.000-07:00

(The small pile of dirty looking leaves and twigs, a perfectly camflouged nest of the sunbirds, handing from a dried money plant vine in my balcony:)

My student Sabrina pointed out that the birds nesting in my tiny balcony are not tailor birds after all. They are sun birds. Possibly called that for the dash of pale yellow on their breasts. These ones are technically called Purple rumped sunbirds. The female, as with the animal species, is duller, greyish where the male has a dark, blackish attractive overcoat. The nest, over which the two birds have been fussing, has taken over a week now. And they are still at it. My husband made a video of their effort. It was done with his mobile, which explains the quality.(Click on the line, to watch it).

The other day I saw a sparrow, which looked large compared to these tiny fellows, peck harshly on the male seated on my tiny neem tree. The male sun bird was holding a fluffy feather in his curved beak, to line the nest. The sparrow kept pecking till the poor fellow had to drop it. Only then would the sparrow fly off. What wickedness, meaningless too:) Amazing how this world goes... And I remember singing as a child "It is Love, it is love, it is love that makes the world go around.." So innocent, so foolish, then. And now!

The dried Money plant vine is what the sunbirds had chosen, deliberately flimsy and frail so that other wicked ones of the animal kingdom, more keen on things other than the pecking order, could not climb over it. I can imagine snakes, crows loving to gobble up either those eggs or the nestlings. Let's see how it goes. As of now, the female makes foolish forays against my French windows, either imaging another rival female flapping into her, or seeing foliage where none is. So much like humans:)

So funny, so silly: what some people say...

2009-08-01T21:07:00.000-07:00

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Yesterday I read a compilation in HT Cafe about beads. And read this amazingly silly statement: "Research says people who wear beads have more fun."

(My take and why I find it silly-funny? Do u need a research to say THAT!! Only people who have fun in their mind and body also have the guts to wear beads... Rest just dream about it(the bead-wearer admirers) or sniff at it (the sour grapes) ... It is a right brain orientation!)

HIV test a must now for operations

2009-07-31T04:50:00.000-07:00

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I had to get a minor op op done recently. And interestingly, for the first time in my experience with hospitals, I was asked to do an HIV test. First I thought something about my demeanour had prodded the doctor into suggesting it!! She had also marked blood test for Hepatitis A, which is a common and a highly infectious liver infection. The sonographer-cum-lab owner, however, assured me that this was now a standard procedure since in any such eventuality the entire operation theater and all the stuff used will have to be intensely fumigated. I was relieved. But the new, young assistants at the lab were curious. Why are you doing all these tests, they worriedly asked me. My husband and I always have a good laugh about how I look guilty as a a matter of rule and when such pointed questions are asked I look even more guilty!! That way, the situation was funny in an ironic way.
I must have imagined that, but the grins by the lab assistants and sonographer were wide and accepting after the results came out. It seemed they were relieved to see that I had got the all-clear! Even I felt that: because it is something to do with such tests that you dread their outcome!! But I am glad to know that clinics and hospitals are taking studied and scientific precautions....

Make-up artists in Mumbai

2009-07-29T20:53:00.000-07:00

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Fortunately I am not famous. But occasionally I have to don some make-up for a shoot. It happens with New Woman magazine and had to, simply had to, do it for the TV series on Body and Soul. Ah, I remember the time, when I had to do that with for Harmony. Of the lot, the last had the most pro make-up artiste, possibly because the Ambani name kept the make-up artist well-behaved. No, actually, I think because Harmony also must have used an artist from other than the common pool.Whatever it was, it was not the intimidating, or nerve-wracking encounter that can happen commonly.

I remember the first sour experience happened during a shoot for Body and Soul. The make-up artist, first not so impressed that I was not famous (they get the same amount whether person is famous or not:) started looking at his watch pointedly several times after lunch. Though he was booked for the full shift (they work on shifts) he was keen on doing another one for which he wished to leave. Unprofessional. And trying to cover up by turning nasty and mean with the general body language and going on cribbing about the time, about everything in general. Sicko.

Then there was an interesting, quirky character who, the minute he landed at my doorstep, asked pointedly at me," Where is the model?" (This was for a New Woman shoot) I told him, there was no model, only poor I. Looking arch, he told me (he really really did), "You look like a boot (monster!)". To be kind to him (and myself) I think he meant my wild tresses, because next I knew my hair was bound with a big hair band he was carrying. (The journalist looked shocked and cringed; and later, when she came for another assignment remembered this incidence with great embarrassment. She told me that she was amazed that I did not react with anger to his jibe:) He did a great job and being a yoga teacher and understanding where that was coming from (a gay not allowed to be open his sexuality; from a lower middle class background dealing with snooty, cranky star types; being excellent in his job and yet being treated on par with the other mediocrities). Then, he kept a monologue about how awful some of the superstars, whom he had (all make-up artists will boast that they do superstars:) to salvage drastically. That petite dark-skinned star, such dark circles. And that beauty? Make-up artists hands quake when they are assigned to her, they have to do so much damage control. It will be great to write some features, based on interviews with these guys...Such colourful gossip!
But when he left, he kindly promised to get me a similar hair band to tie up my curls:)

Last time, I had a sweet fellow. But his make-up kit and brushes looked so unkempt that the minute the shoot got over, I ran and washed off my face since I was scared I will get some infection! And even he, despite his sweetness, when told not to use such a loud pink shade on my lips, cribbed: "She has two skin shades on her lips." God, you could be a mutant, the way these guys bitch!

Oh,my visitors are tailorbirds

2009-07-29T01:05:00.000-07:00

I thought they were humming birds. But realised they don't display the `helicopter' like ability to hang, quivering, before a flower. The mistake I made was due to the long, curved beak. However, these beaks are still are not long as humming bird beaks, which need to be really long, to reach right into a flower's breast:)
So, yes, the tailor birds are still regularly visiting my balcony. They quiver, though not as intensely as humming birds, over some of my creepers. That may be, I wonder, if they want to build a nest here...
Let me see... Have brought more flowering plants now. That could attract even humming birds. Did you know, real gardeners plant gardens to attract butterflies or humming birds:) ? So nice.
In Mumbai there are always some mad gardeners. And equal number of people who are mad at them, for ruining the building facade with drippy, muddy water. There has been intense lobbying here, in our complex, to ban plants from balconies. That is also the norm in certain European cities. However, we have managed to fight it off... I think there could be insistence on ensuring that your plants don't drip over the wall, or your neighbours balcony. Fine those who mess up, do not keep plates under pots, or water them so much that they drip over your balcony and fall over somebody else's.
But come on, a bit of green could save this urban mess... If people can feed pigeons so they become pests, and resist street dog culling so that the city has several hundred dog bites daily, what harm can a few plants cause?

A restaurant shuts down?

2009-07-28T02:47:00.000-07:00

I hope this blog is wrong -- but I passed Kutty's on the Link Road and saw that the shutter is down. No message either as to what is wrong. I had blogged on how great the food was, the ambience too, despite the squalid location -- but then, most of Mumbai is squalid and we eat our pavs over which flies have shat and which have, in their turn, sat on some shit...
But to leave those fulminations aside, am just saddened to see the shutter down on Kutty's -- great food at great prices. And nice shiny-faced Keralite receptionist. Felt was almost in Kerala.
Sigh Sigh...

Botox, I, and a big bad city:)

2009-07-26T22:12:00.000-07:00

Free MySpace Animations!

Yesterday, having nothing else in life to do now that the daughter is away at boarding, I wandered into a cosmetic clinic for a facial (see the recent Kailash Kher song, exclusive on V channel and u know why I empathize with the bandit queen). The consultation with the dermatologist was free: recession and festive season contributing to this sort of bonanza. (Some shops are enticing with this line: Buy one, get seven free!!)..
Any case, I was asking about products, and the lady told me to give her a frown. Though my normal frown is rather intimidating (ask my quaking husband:) she said it won't do, and I must frown harder. Then she said to smile. While I smiled, my usual wide-mouthed grin (that embarrasses my kid, being so open, wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve sort of smile) she said I must smile harder -- the sort of Mr Bean mimic-the-clown-trying-to-get-out-of-dour-you grin. It made me foolish. I told myself I deserved this and more for having ventured here. Then she made me crinkle my face. Then she told me something -- and thank god it was a free consultation or I would have told her to give my money back -- she said that these gestures created deep lines. Helloww!! I know that already. If I frown and did not get a line on my forehead how the heck will the fellow whom I am intimidating know I am frowning? Or if I grin and people did not think I was smiling? The sheer effort, to make up for all that failed communication, would kill me!! But she sort of waved the proverbial syringe at me: I mouthed that dreaded word for her: Botox? I asked her astonished. I was asking for a facial and this lady says botox! Does she not know I do yoga, for heaven's sake!
She nods wisely and say, "Yes, it will make you look younger". Dead, was more like it. Have you seen those illiterate sad sacks in the entertainment industry who do botox and forget to smile and frown? Me, there? I, who thinks freedom means to frown and smile at will??

I walked out of the clinic, glad to have gotten out, smile and frown intact. This sort of nonsense, they call aggressive marketting. Watch out...
I even know a yoga student of mine who proudly told me that she has done training with a firm for such injections and she is not even a cosmetologist. Apparently in Mumbai, long before this post was even fretting to happen, socialites where having botox parties, giving each other shots to look younger....
Easy youth:)

Humming birds in my balcony

2009-07-23T08:39:00.000-07:00

A pair of humming birds have been regular visitors to that strip of balcony for which we paid some neat amount(according to the civic rules the builder should not charge anything for this, so technically this belongs to the whole world! There is some nonsensical rule about balconies in Mumbai absolutely outdated about which, come to think of it, I will blog sometime this week:)
Earlier, parrots used to land here, gloriously screeching, brilliant and spanking green, a colour so brightly fresh that I always felt that they had just hatched out of eggs (that is dumb, since they were fully grown with gloriously long tails that dangled tantalisingly over my window sill) but they so looked green and fresh, untainted by this dirty, smoggy city.
But that was when we were new to this place which was rather empty, with buildings yet happening, the Dream Park had not dented the Thakur village's image,transforming it into encroachers' den (food stalls, the messiest encroachers). The parrots do not visit us anymore. Other urban dwellers do -- crows which are being fed by a stubborn old man in the opposite flat (though I have not seen him for some time now, is he dead?) and which drop some weird things on my balcony since there is a fish market in the direction they fly:) The fellow who lives below my flat is constantly seeking to fight with me... I wonder if he thinks I drop half-eated, raw chicken legs deliberately on his balcony?!! He does not know I am vegetarian.
I used to think pigeons are villains -- oh, these kabootharkhanas and their trusts mint a lot of money, did you know, in this city?? Which may explain why they keep sprouting about all over the city, messing it up so enormously despite some civic law that warns of a heft fine if you are found feeding such creatures in public places.. Abnd they are the ones who pluck out my flowering plants right out of the pot, nest on my cactus, shit on my drying clothes, and even, amazingly shit through mesh... I tell u, they fly and aim deliberately so the goo lands on my freshly cleaned window pane. Who said they are dumb?
Since pigeons are around, their enemies hawks /eagles also lurk. I have seen some heart-stoppingly large ones preening on the building opposite. But they are a common sight in this urban jungle. I remember while a wide-eyed feature writer with the Sunday Times, I had heralded the arrival of the Lemon yellow butterflies with a feature. I also wrote on these animals in the urban jungle -- cranes preening over their nests along railway tracks... All my articles, filed and bound neatly, got burnt in the fire at my home.. Time to put away some things....
Frank Moraes, the ad guru, once wrote a nice letter with a few lines, complimenting me on my choice of topics... Later when I met him, on some other assignment he, on a alcoholic high, did not remember the compliment at all..Which just goes to prove the transience of all things:)

Why watching Harry Potter in Mumbai is so bleh-blahh!

2009-07-20T04:24:00.000-07:00

Part of watching a game in the stadium or doing yoga in a group or sitting in a satsang or watching a play at the theater or sitting in a music concert or going to a movie is the contributing factor of the group energy. The group, its collective appreciation, adds something to the whole experience. Comparable to or even better than having popcorn while watching an entertainer or wearing a good swimsuit when the body is toned:) It sort of completes the experience in a subtle but definite and powerful way.

Which is why it is always, for me, extremely disappointing to watch good films in Mumbai. Perhaps it is because of where I live -- Thakur village -- a place where English is really a foreign language. Where even teachers make the gaffe of calling kids, "ChildrenS!". Or perhaps, it is because the collective attention span of the average Mumbaikar is so limited that they cannot watch a film whose main strength may be its lines. Visual films make a bit hit here, I notice. However, if while attending a great visually strong film which also has super lines and you desperately wish for someone else to cackle along with you -- as while watching Shrek or Ice Age -- then you are a wishing for the impossible.

For instance, the latest Ice Age had so many great one-liners, what you may even call `Adult' jokes. However, the only time I caught even the teenagers laughing was at those slapstick moments intended to tickle the toddlers. When the toddlers laugh at those clownish pranks, everybody else is laughing!! But when those great one-liners intended to explode your funny bone roll off the screen, no one is laughing!! I remember the same thing at Shakespeare in Love -- feeling somehow of being in the minority appreciating those marvellous ageless lines as they rolled off the lips of the actors....

During Harry Potter, mid-way, you could hear most people talking loudly amongst themselves. Or making loud calls on their cell-phones.

Even the luxurious scenes of the film could not hold them, because most seemed not to follow or understand or bother to follow the film. The film had lost them. But since it was in the rave, must-see list people are going to say they saw it and how great it was.

Though this blog does sound snobbish about that sort of behavior, that is not the intention. It is just an expression of disappointment, that as a rule, since I have known it in Mumbai, only slapstick, or loud films seem to make an impact. That way, if you long for group enthusiasm in a cinema hall -- forget it. You might as well be the only one munching popcorn and having a great time watching a great film. But you cannot even make-believe that way, to shut out the rest of crowd. Because everybody else is determindedly ruining that for you, by walking about, desperately ordering samosas, or mobile-phoning away as if they were in an open park ....

Borivli National Park, on a wet Sunday

2009-07-13T08:49:00.000-07:00

We were at the national park this Sunday. It was drippy green, brilliantly green, wet and looked like an overgrown jungle it was. I remember when we had first visited it we had spotted feeding deer, and were very charmed. In the monsoon too, on the several times we'd been there, we saw exotic mushrooms looking webbed white against dark, mossy trunks. Overgrown bamboos,burdened with their own extravagance, slumping elegantly. Groups from all over the city, all classes, trekking safely along the tarred roads, or eating their packed lunches, and guzzling booze from ill-concealed plastic bottles with deliberately misleading labels like Pepsi (instead of Old Monk:).
Kids, adults, groups of men -- loud, boisterous, drunk but jovial -- keeping within the limits of social good behavior since police vans are patrolling to ensure that there is no drunken mishap...

The monsoon this season has been weak, half-hearted, so the water levels in the otherwise dry rivulets did not surge abundantly as in the previous years. Only ankle level.There were no fishes yet, nibbling at our toes,in those little pools these temporary rivers form. We sat on the gushing water, as crickets chirped over the water's soft sweet rush. We ate our food and felt child-like. The men got drunk, but that is another story...

A visit to the Borivli National Park is a must. Ideally you must take a vehicle. Keep to the tarred roads. Going too deep or off the trails can be risky if you have a boisterous group that cannot contain itself. The rocks can get slippery. The rivulets can turn treacherously fast. The rocks are moving with the water, and walking barefoot in them could mean cut feet.. and when u walk with sandals you cannot quite gauge where to place your feet in that shifting surface.

Also, groups of men can get annoyingly boisterous(Middle-aged Indian men can act like teenagers in such occasions that it can be quite a kill-joy), so keeping to sides where people are, can ensure safety if you have women with you. Not all people immediately rush to your aid if there is a problem, but I remember once, here, when our car tyres got stuck in the mud and the men with us did not know to manoever the vehicle, some boys gamely lifted it out to safety....

All in all, only one of those few ways you can get back to nature in this concrete jungle -- a wet day in the monsoons, at the Borivli National Park...

Handwriting hassles in heartbreak city

2009-07-09T05:19:00.000-07:00

Free MySpace Animations!My handwriting keeps changing. My Lic agent always says that when I sign a chq ... However, I know that a handwriting specialist will be able to decipher that it is the same person signing it. So I am not too bothered about that: I know I can get away with that shaky signature of a person who has not made up her mind what to be.
But this can be a tough one. I remember at my bank locker, the bank staffer looked oddly at me and with concealed irritation and archness asked me if I remember my full signature:) She must have thought, with the increasing prejudice my community draws, that I was just another illiterate in western clothes...
Any case, I am teaching a young boy to read and write English. At 26 and not having attended school as a kid, he is rather vulnerable though full of dreams. He signs his name with capital letters and small ones all jumbled up, but painfully separate. It looks like that of a four-year-old. Before I started him on cursive writing, which has not advanced further than `f', I warned him that he must remember his current signature clearly.Otherwise he will have problems at the bank or with other official stuff he has signed, using that childish scrawl. He grinned. He said he knows that already, how important it is to stick to his signature. One of his friends, also uneducated has had a problem at his bank. His account his now locked since his current signature is not matching his earlier one!!
Life...

This city is so full of people who come like that ... from small towns with big dreams...If that ever changes this would not be the Mumbai that is so beloved to all of us...If we could -- all of us who love it -- keep it clean, warm and safe it would be our tribute to this beautiful city ..

Leaking blankets, rain and a weird dampness

2009-07-07T01:25:00.000-07:00

I picked up these blankets at D'Mart a few months back. New and wrapped and unused, I finally unravelled them for the monsoon when I need over four-five thick blankets to keep me from the dampness and chill. However, something peculiar about these bed-sheet-cum-blanket. They are oozing moisture. First time, feeling lazy and sluggish, before going to bed, about two hours ahead I spread all the blankets the way I liked them, layered, so that when I felt like hitting the sack, I could just slide in underneath them. It felt damp that night. I did not pay much heed since I thought it was the weather. Feeling quite sick for the next day or so, I shivered through two nights till I realised that the bed also was feeling distinctly wet and not just damp. Amazingly, there were wet patches on the mattresses. Since I am not not (yet) incontinent I wondered at that, and put a yoga mat on top of it, thinking I may have inadvertently left a window open that day when the monsoon descended... But the wet patch kept spreading.And with the other bed sheets feeling damp I was distinctly uncomfortable. I put all of them on my clothes drier, to dry them out. And amazingly found dribbles of a brownish sticky water oozing from the ends of each of these blankets.
Seems something in the blanket was trapping moisture from the atmosphere. Both blankets continued to leak this way while they hung up... and left an unmistakeable trail of water on the floor. Strange. I was glad I had not kept these blankets with expensive clothes, since they could have stained them... I have now dumped both blankets ...
Anybody has any explanation to this strange behavior of my blankets? I am all ears:)

Elpehantine garlands, only from Tamil Nadu

2009-07-06T07:57:00.000-07:00

My husband and I got married here Matunga). Apart from the register marriage (where the registrar HAD to be given a box of sweets:) we had several ceremonies, simple, often just the two of us and two stragglers, either family or friends... because we were Muslim and Hindu. I was cooking for the friends and families, so it was not a wedding in the usual fairy tale fashion -- but it felt right:)

Any case, we bought garlands hereabouts I remember, at Matunga's flower stalls. Those were small garlands unlike the usual big, elephantine ones that are on sale here... Tamils, it seems, like their women, and their garlands, big!

I remember in Tamil Nadu, my father, a government official, would often be felicitated at speechifying functions with these enormous garlands. For days the house would reek of mogra,jasmine, roses, and the intoxicating lilies. We little girls used to try to retrieve some of those golden threads, complete flowers ... but that was always an effort. It bothered me that so many flowers could be cut off for a momentary felicitation where the man, burdened by the garland, would keep it aside, not to look at it again. We human beings.
But at least at Matunga the garlands are being made for god. And for marrying couples.
For couples, somehow, that makes sense... some moments to be remembered in a flush of floral bouquet... moments that reek of jasmine, roses and sticky sweet lilies whose fragrance lasts and lasts...
But that day, this year, last month Matunga's flower stalls were smelling of roses. Hey, if there is a floral association to be made that with Tamil Nadu, then it has to be jasmine. That way Matunga has changed -- from mogra to roses:(

Lying back to watch a film: cinema in style!!

2009-07-05T09:51:00.000-07:00

Oh we were at the new cinema hall, Kulraj broadway (Kandivli East, Thakur village, off the western expressway). To watch Kambhakt Ishq. And see what we got for Rs 175 per ticket. Recliners. Amazing. At button push you are lying on your back and watching films,with a snack table attached to your chair, and waiters taking orders (heavens, that means I don’t have to stand in Queues where Indians have made it an art to jump) , and popcorn for Rs 55 and Iced tea for Rs 50 ( a tall glass) and samosas (WARMMM!!!) for Rs 30 only.
The recliners are an event clearly. At In Orbit cinema we pay Rs 180, but no recliners. The recliners – called Gold something – is around Rs 400 I think… I am being vague because it was so expensive that after asking once we have not even thought of it, with our middle class wallets and deprived class mentality. At PVR, which my tight-fisted husband cribs is very high, is Rs 200, no recliners etc. A fantastic theater, he concedes while clutching on to that wallet…
I liked the crowd too… something clean, not grabbing as I felt at the Shivam Vishnu hall, also closeby in Thakur village. Interestingly that is the experience all the women acquaintances who have been there and who have not wanted to go back. Not many like the Thakur Cinema too… smelly, now, with rats and the airconditioning sometimes flowing late if the crowd is thin… Suburban theaters each have their own personality. Some have become seedy… and I hope the Kulraj broadway does not go that way…

Ayyappan Tiffin Center: Madras food in Mumbai

2009-07-02T02:29:00.000-07:00

Told u, was at Matunga -- generally to get a Chennai-feel, since my kid is there now:)
And at the Ayyappan Tiffin Center, at Telang Road, at Sankara Matam, had quite a feel of it, with all those South-Indian snacks. With some strange Mumbai concoctions: Pizza dosa (yuck!), Pickle dosa (tickles that tongue), and the usual suspects like Paneer dosa. But when you are nostalgic you don't want to experiment and settle for that simple good old food that your mother made and at which you turned your nose.. Can U imagine? Sometimes when I salivate over the stuff which I rejected as a kid, I wonder what perverse twist of fate makes me yearn for it now? My kid does/did the same thing with me. Karmic backlash. I tell her too:)

So yes, Pongal with sambar dripping over it, and some coconut chutney. My husband has his fav vada -- that lentil variation which you do not get anywhere except in a pure South Indian spot (another snacks joint that serves that up is the Dosa counter at the food court of Inorbit). I became greedy,and overordered (the excuses of pining women worldwide) and ordered an unending Ayyappan Special dosa which was filled with all sorts of spicy things and which made me feel very bloated... Avoidable experience -- though the dosa may be shared by four sparse eaters.

Palak dosa too! Though I mercifully resisted the urge for that one.

The center also caters apparently.

A cute appeal: To park the vehicles elsewhere before coming over to eat here!
The waiters, at this roadside stall, have their own uniform (See image!!).
We managed to overeat, two of us, at Rs 60 for both. If you ate wisely (which I did not) you can finish a good meal for half that price!

Roadside food - I missed that at Chennai definitely though they have their stalls all over the place which seem, at the outset, to be male-dominated. Chennai-in-Mumbai is my style really:)

Matunga: eating out Chennai style, Chennai price:)

2009-06-30T21:51:00.000-07:00

This weekend, the drown the maternal pining I felt at having left the kid at the boarding, I trekked off to Matunga (which is so like Chennai where the kid is now) to buy her things which she does not need. (After I fondly bought them, I got a very firm, irritated message from her saying that I must not courier her any more stuff:) And to perk up the flagging spirit had chai off the Shree Ayyappan Tiffin Center, at Telang Road, outside Sankara Matam. The tea stall had boards that said, Praise the Lord.

I saw the price first and thought a tea for Rs 51(in Mumbai, off the road, even that seems reasonable because each one has a pricing and we all know these poor fellows have to grease palms to stay put on their encroached territory). So I thought Rs 51 was fine. My husband pointed out that the double-digit that I had mistaken for was actually a stroke, after a single-digit. Meaning Tea for Rs 5!! I had a full tea, I could not finish (I had just then overeaten at the Ayyappan stall (overeating under the guise of sorrow, shameless). And my husband had soemthing special for which he always palpitates: filter coffee!! Original. His thirst and longing was well asssauged. I, feeling bloated, but pleased at having made a reasonable meal at such low rates that was also topped off with a Full Tea, sauntered off. Matunga feels like Chennai. Even the crowds. Not all are Chennaites here. But even in Chennai, that is so, it is pretty pan-Indian that way despite impressions to the contrary...
Here you also get bournvita and boost!! Horlicks, hugely favored in Chennai as a health drink, and for convalescents...
Matunga you get hot food, Chennai style, with Mumbai innovations .... pizza dosa, pickle dosa but will save that up for tomorrow -- when I will go further on that amazing Ayyappan stall...

Strange things u notice...

2009-06-19T04:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, at the entrance of the D'Mart at Kandivli I noticed this strange request: Not to carry a laptop inside the store, for security reasons. I wonder who does that, and what they fear also!
Amazing this city!

Water water everywhere?

2009-06-17T22:25:00.000-07:00

(Image actually of an oil truck, but just modified it to show you the sort of trucks that lug water about in Mumbai and its suburbs)

As I said, there has been an acute water problem in the city that has been grossly neglected by the newspapers here!! Amazing journalism... I mean, what the heck...

Any case, most of suburbs depends on water tankers as a matter of rule.. There is so much potential for racketing and mismanagement here that this itself requires scrutiny.. Investigative journalists, where are u:)

Some interesting aspects about this:

If water tankers can provide water, why cannot the civic department.
Where is this water coming from? Some sort of licensing has to be in place, otherwise anybody could buy a couple of tankers and fill up water from public water spots?
Is this coming from inside the city or outside?
Which deparment gives out licences?
Does this have anything to do with water cuts? I mean, if I was running a water tanker `company' would I tell someone who matters to cut water so that I could mint money through artificial scarcity? Could that be done? In this country, anything...
And if licences are being issued, is there any monitoring of water quality. Some of the water we get from tankers are deep brown in colour and dangerous for anything, including even washing clothes.
Often tanker water gets mixed with civic water even in posh complexes due to shortage of water storage spaces. This means even good water is ruined!!
Often the water tankers enter complexes at nights -- the ones who keep track of how much water/tanker enters the complex are usually two departments -- security and the plumbing. Imagine the scope of funds mismanagement here: because residents do not know how many tankers come in (more can be shown on paper by either or both deparments ) or if the tankers are fully emptying their load (this could happen if the tanker driver and plumbers collude).

Oh, for your information, in certain parts of Kandivli and Borivli even tanker water (anywhere from Rs 800 to Rs 1200 depending on quality etc) are not available. The tanker water suppliers say that they must first favor their regular customers and after that, nothing remains.

So, while we are all reeling and suffering some people are doing well for themselves.
And nobody who could care, cares:(

Mumbai T-shirts, and how famous are u?

2009-06-09T22:08:00.000-07:00

(Gandhi shares space with SRK, Salman and rocking Mumbai)

(Different ways, different colours, to say `I love my city, my Mumbai'.
(The unbranded T-shirt that is becoming quite iconic:)
To know if you are relevant historically or culturally, if you are curious about such things, then you would def walk along Colaba Causeway and see if your face grins back at you from the T-shirts at those pavement shops.

You can see that terror and violence around the world has made Gandhi even more relevant today. He rocks, amongst tourists. He must be the most easily recognisable Indian around the world. And thank god the association with him is something elevating, like peace and non-violence.

The others who matter, typically enough, for Mumbai are from Bollywood: SRK and Salman... equally relevant, in that they seem to share equal status. Though amongst posters you will usually find Salman rules -- those steroidal muscles is a big draw among fron-benchers even today...

The next most rocking `face' you see is that of Mumbai. Since my last visit and this, definitely Mumbai-centric T-shirts have increased. All the beloved places, some touristy that I have not visited for centuries (like Gateway) are all there... and of course that I-Love_Mumbai which seemed to have got an iconic status since the terrorist attack, has the pride of place. These cost Rs 100 each... priceless, though:)

Japan in Mumbai: sushi makes perfect sense to me

2009-06-08T04:03:00.000-07:00

It is a nice combo: elegant Japanese food and elegant Gourmet city restaurant. I had been drooling over that for the last one week and finally gathered the family to the spot this Sunday. I starved, refused to allow my kid her addictive trek to Food Court at InOrbit, and gave my husband just two dosas for breakfast so that we were all, from gut onwards, prepared for the visit.

I have, in the manner of the uninitiated, never tried Japanese food and always believed, in the manner of those illiterate in such sophisticated stuff, it to be bland. One tiny, green demonic wasabi at the Gourmet City changed my opinion for ever and ever. It was potent, hit the underside of my nose with a wham that would not be soothed by chilled water and was it hot??!! Not spicy as much as tart, and I later found, it is made with horse radish.. What a kick that little ball of green has!!!
We did some Sushi... the boys tried Crab/ Prawn/ Chicken and there was also cucumber and asparagus cream ones. Neat, within a reasonable price range. Since I am broke these days, and I was footing the bill, we scrimped a bit, and had just sushi and main course -- Japanese curry and rice...
And four of us ate satisfactorily for under Rs 1000 which was great price for a new and perfect experience. The Chef was sweet and even gave us some more sushi -- and my daughter did the unthinkable and remove the cucumber piece before popping hers in the mouth....
The Japanese food festival was held by maidoindia -- who deal with Japanese food products. The chef was telling us about a curry packet, where a cube would yield the half-liter curry... and thick and spicy. They also hold quite a few events, like cooking classes, Sake festival etc. Check out their range and events at their site. Also, if you wish to be kept informed of these food festivals at Gourmet city, you can ask to be on their mailing list: GC_InorbitSM@hypercityindia.com

Happy eating:)

Muddy water, media collapse

2009-06-04T22:53:00.001-07:00

The muddy concoction u see is of water from my tap. Yes, BMC water. It is fantastic is this not? The media, most of whose offices are located a breath away from where the crisis seems to be manifesting, are not reporting on this. Look at that water!!! Brown, seemingly full of some defecation, moss and mud particles.
Today I threw out the entire set of chappatis my cook made from this water. I simply could not bring myself to eat it. Have bought a 20-liter Bisleri bottle (more like a tub) for Rs 220, of which a large proportion would be given back once I return the bottle. The way things are looking, I will be living off such bottled water. Reminds me of Chennai, where my sister manages with green or red coloured water when the bottled water supply does not happen.

Some of my students sent me this genuine excuse for not coming: water scarcity...

The most annoying thing is that journalists are not reporting about this: which leads me to following conclusions:

they don't take bath
they have a direct connection from bmc.
they are blind.
they are living off five-star freebies and do not cook at home.
they are using five-star toilets and are not going back home to dry taps and unflushed toilets.
they are not journalists anymore!!

Arrghh!! Not a single report on the front page for the last two days when the entire city seems to be reeling. And nobody knows when the next brown muddy drop is going to come. The tankers, my property manager's office, says are not delivering any more since there is no water to supply.
This is a mega crisis and nobody is bothered!!! The media, the government --no statements. Put your head into the mud: it is called the ostrich syndrome. Pretend there is no problem, and the problem goes away?... the city has been running on that logic for so long...

An epidemic is about to happen --

I will start stocking on Readymade thandai, badam kheer, apple juice etc next. Just like the royalty suggested in France to the starving folk: eat cake!

Muddy water, drink thandai!!

Tamil Superstar Kamalahasan in Colaba?

2009-06-04T04:58:00.000-07:00

Unbelievably, I saw this T-shirt/Shirt in an old, still-there, still-rocking clothes shop in Colaba Causeway (where my daughter picked up satisfactorily prices dressy clothes that charmed her little girly heart:). It was hung high up on the wall. The brown and yellow ones are what I am talking of: they each have Kamalahasan in his role as Abhay. My husband, a diehard Kamal fan, (I don't much care for the actor in his recent roles) poked fun at me, saying, "See you may not think much of him, but here he is, clearly relevant to the tourists'. So there he was indeed, glaring down at us, from his perch on the wall. Who picks up those shirts, I wondered!!! Next time, I ask. This time, I just clicked, my mouth agape....

Old world ice-cream parlour: K. Rustomji

2009-06-01T23:30:00.000-07:00

(K. Rustomji Ice Cream parlour at Churchgate obviously does not need a board)

My daughter was not impressed with that ice-crea or the smoky, non-a/c parlour. Especially, because those biscuit slivers did not quite hold that creamy slab and dripped over her cute white dress. But then she is a suburban Mumbaikar, born in the suburbs for whom the southern tip is not an aspirational hang-up as it is for her migrant parents:) She looks down on south Mumbai as a rule -- the lack of space, the crush of people and traffic even though most times she has been protectively taken there only on Sundays. She sees only tourists and does not know what makes that part of city throb with a life all its own. You have to be an awed-out-of-Mumbai migrant for that perspective...
Any case, K. Rustomji ice-cream was where my husband, then my fiance, had taken me when he was showing off this city to me a quarter century ago. Like most men, he associates love with good food, so most joints we went to in our courting days where food joints, the must-eat Mumbai joints, iconic though a bit people-worn and down-at-mouth even those days... K. Rustomji also looks a bit sad...
No board, but there is a huge and steady crowd, including of tourists who have been lovingly directed here by some Mumbai-freak...
The ice-cream, big slabs, are so low-priced.
The plastic chairs, the reluctantly given paper napkins, the grimy dust-bin, the not-so-cool fans, the sense of something decrepit... Yet, those some fabulous mixes and flavors. Mint, for instance? I had peaches, my husband had mango, my kid toffee. We paid Rs 120 for three, can u imagine? And juices, for Rs 15 each? In this day and age!

Next time we go to south Mumbai, we must do Rustomji's again, my husband decided. My kid arched her eyebrows... Different strokes:)
. We oldies, we like it that in a world of gelatos and international brands, an old ice-cream parlour is holding its own...

Contact details:

		+(91)-(22)-22821768

		87 Stadium House, Opp Ambassador Hotel, Veer Nariman Road, Churchgate, Mumbai - 400020

Visiting Leopold Cafe

2009-06-01T09:07:00.000-07:00

(A painting by Indian artists on the terrorist attack, on one of the walls of Leopold cafe where terrorists had killed several)

We were back at Colaba. It is always my favorite haunt. Everybody here minds their own business largely and the terrorist attack has not dented that Mumbai-spirit that this particular part of town sports so proudly.

We were at Leopold Cafe this Sunday afternoon. Those of you not from this city may not remember, but the terrorists had shot down many here on that terrible night...

After the terrorist attack
We had, my husband and I, hardcore Mumbaikars who love this city with the passion of migrants for whom Mumbai has meant freedom from so many things -- we had been at Colaba the Sunday after the terrible attack too. Journalists who were not from the city (both Sai and I started our journalistic career on the streets of Mumbai) made silly sounds about terrorism tourism and stuff like that about those of us who went out. We went out to tell those who listened to such things and those who don't, loud and clear, that we as a city will not be cowed down... And that Sunday it seemed as if the whole city was there -- saying the same thing ...
Leopold cafe still has the bullet marks -- big ones. Overwhelmed tourists come. Waiters understand and appreciate their interest and point out the marks. One hidden under a picture is also shown from where it is not visible. Around the bullet marks, huge and gaping, are age old smoke-dust tinted posters from the 60s : posters of a grinning Elvis and others from his Era, punctuated by Parsi symbols. That Sunday after the attack when the owners announced that they were reopening it, there was a virtual stampede, with media and onlookers creating a tremendous crush. We looked at that from a distance, deeply moved at how this city will never cow down to anything...

Cafes and their souvenirs:
Like Cafe Mondegar which has its T-shirts (hey, you have not done Mumbai if you have not been to either of these joints -- both have been tourist draw for generations of tourists with Mondegar having Mario Miranda cartoons on the walls and a juke box ) as souvenirs (had blogged on it earlier), Leopold has its own souvenir T-shirt. Unlike Mondegar's which has famous cartoonist Mario Miranda's tippling Salaam Mumbai cartoon (see the sidebar for a frame) and other one-liners that will go straight to a tippler's heart, this one proudly black just says `Leopold ...

Food here:
At Mondegar's we had some divine onion rings and fluffy cheesy garlic bread. At Leopold we just sat and nibbled some finger food and guzzled some beer. But what is about Indian omlettes, even double omelettes, that they come so flat and stringy and rubbery...
But then, who cares, it is the spirit that counts:)

Some things I spotted in town....

2009-05-30T05:29:00.000-07:00

There is an old man who lives off the Carter Road promenade --nothing strange about that, but while we were doing our yoga, I remember that he would sit there for the entire hour washing a piece of clothing. He was very very busy the entire time. There would be puddles of water there, and he would wash, do his ablutions, soap himself (or did he use soap) and have a bath -- that sort of thing... I used to see that man every day we did your yoga there, over weekends, for those few crazy months when I decided to teach along the promenade:) He will be there, if you go there tomorrow, around seven am...
While going towards Mira Road, heading to Gorai, at noon, I saw an youngish woman standing on top of a high rise, off the highway, looking through her binoculors. What was she looking? How did she go up (usually sensible complexes do lock the terrace)...That too when a summer sun was directly overhead!
There is a bag shop that calls itself Gold coins bag. I really thought there was something there, intrigued, thinking the bags were for storing gold coins.. But it was selling prosaic old bags for us aunties:(
Have u seen that Kulfi wallah? A little dhabba unit, mounted on a tricycle, selling "Maharashtra's Mashoor Kulfi"...

More, as I get further lost in this maze of a city:)

I am in love with this peanut wallah:)

2009-05-29T01:28:00.000-07:00

I am in love with this guy who sells peanuts on the highway. I really am. He is nice, clean-looking. He is there walking amidst the crush of highway jam, honking cars and trucks and autos and motorbikes and not so affected by all that, almost a yogi, cool! His hands hold those paper cones with just a handful of peanuts, each cone costing Rs 2. On days I manage to catch him (he is always running off towards other cars, just like in the movies:) I feel a great sense of achievement and love the feel of warm peanuts all the more (Oh, there are other guys too selling it, but there is something about this fellow, so earnest, so hardworking). Btw. how they manage to keep the nuts so warm? I have tried to click him several times and always failed. One time he was there, with our windows rolled down (on all sides) and my husband managed to buy a set of five cones from him, but as I lifted my mobile camera (with my five thumbs, all with no cognitive ability) he shied off from the frame, standing just so behind so that I could not click him (for this blog)..And I felt very bad, at having offended his sense of privacy and decided against attempting such shots later... We Indians, so rude!!

But I love him because he embodies what this city stands for...hard, clean work... Oh, there are also the beggars here. But more than them, we cannot fail to see those clean, hardworking folks, walking sometimes in the hot sun (selling ice-chilled bisleri bottles) or these peanuts. I remember this right from when I came to Mumbai over 20 years ago. and still they are here, these hardworking souls from around the country, making a tough living, in the cleanest way they know how... My soul feels touched and I love this city, its muck nothwithstanding. The `timepass peanuts' they were called those days. I remember also how as soon as my train from Chennai pulled in, the urchins will leap into the train to collect the newspapers (so they can earn their money by selling it at the raddiwallah:) .. That too, that stunt of running into the monster of the train, would amaze me. I also loved the enterprise which the city represented. The coolies in Mumbai would not cheat or argue or irritate you as they did, definitely in Chennai (the worst of the lot those days)... I used to love that also about the city.
I still love those boys who sell those books in the heat of the city -- most of them are pirated books, but I don't love them for that reason. But that they are choosing to work over begging or stealing. I love that, I really do! And the magazines off the city's signals... them too. And those strawberry wallahs, those flowerwallahs, and those mangowallahs off the signals. They are not encroaching but doing something in the best way they can... Clean, hard work....
If ever all that changes too much, I will leave this city. As will most others. And those of you looting it, you would have lost your golden goose... and there will be no more golden eggs, lo!

Tezz: an alternative to Falafel

2009-05-23T00:44:00.000-07:00

At In Orbit food court ( I prefer this to the PVR one, though finding a place to sit during peak hour can be the very hell for a `gentle' yoga teacher) we discovered happily that there was an alternative to Falafel (the Lebanese food chain in the city). While the staff, new to the chaos and lack of Q-etiquette amongs us Indians and Mumbaikars in particular) were a bit slow, the menu sort of made up for it. It offers non-veg, which though I do not myself eat, is still good for those who believe in Lebanese food being what it is -- the kebab speciality...
The shawarma meat loaf hanging reminded me of Germany where the only Indian type of food could be got at the small Lebanese or Pakistani joints...
The hummus also had a gritty, grainy flavor, different from the one I often pack up from Falafel. I liked the one here too...Here is a list of items available at Tezz: onion rings, veg-chicken shawarma, seafood kebabs, moutabal or hummus, flafel... For some reason there was also a lot of Mexican food available -- nachos of various hues and flavors.
They have not given a phone number on their pamphlet, so I don't think they will deliver on demand. That keeps them one step behind Falafel, which delivers all over the city...
Happy eating:)

Why we stink

2009-05-20T03:22:00.000-07:00

I was crossing the highway, in the dangerous fashion of Mumbaikars who are too tired to take the walkway if there is one and/or who don't know how to negotiate a way across to the other side when there is no walkway. Btw. my student dropped me off at the airport flyover -- at 8.30 am -- and imagine one fellow in the motorbike kept circling me like I was some you-know-what (I was chastely dressed in white, with full armed sleeve so don't say I was provoking him, as most people do in defence of sad Indian men) and another fellow kept hooting with a war hoop from a long way off. This is the city I love and chose? What is happening to it!! The first fellow was well-heeled and middle aged, the other fellow was a laborer and young. Really odd city, it is turning into..

Anyway if that was stinky I also actually saw piles of shit -- freshly laid, human excreta -- over that stretch of concrete separators that runs in the middle of the highway, where there is a valiant attempt to grow plants. Fresh crap?? Slum dwellers actually are using that entire stretch as a toilet... No I am not taking off against them. They have a tough life and if there are no clean toilets and no sea which will wash it off (have you walked the beaches in the morning and felt something gooey sticking to you -- it is human excreta, fresh and still to be washed away:( I am bothered that we as a city have ignored this for so long and continue to ignore it.
I wonder sometimes ...Why superstar Amitabh Bachchan feels that Slumdog millionaire `showcased' the poor. We like to live in denial that is why. If you have forgotten the toilet scene... that is the way most people live.
I wonder sometimes why SRK often says he feels at home even in the poverty and muck of this city etc .Otherwise who will he sell his dreams to?
I wonder sometimes why they donate crores to gods but don't think of building simple toilets -- more punya here, really.
I wonder sometimes why they want to buy immortality for their family members by renaming BMC roads after them.. A toilet would mean more for everybody -- More good def. there really..

We stink, as a city. Let's feel ashamed about a few things -- Otherwise we feel continue the way we are we will be left with nothing to showcase except our poor...and all that crap...

Mumbai maids' chutti, voting and low voter turn-out

2009-05-14T09:39:00.000-07:00

Lately, inclined towards self-pampering I decided to have a maid for cleaning the house, one to wash the vessels, and another to make chappatis. Suddenly, all three, as if preplanned, decided to go their village. The driver too. I wondered what was special about this time.

I realised that they had waited for the election to get over and had booked their train tickets accordingly. That is why it seemed as if all had taken off together. I was rather amazed at how much voting meant to them.

On the other, you will see that the upper class (barring a rare Amir Khan who broke journey to be in Mumbai to vote) had happily planned their holidays during that weekend. Even the ones who did not go out of town or abroad, chose that weekend to jet off, since it was a long weekend.

It is surprising to note several things about Indian voting patterns:
* That the upper class is pretty indifferent to the process. They know that they get what they want through other means. I believe part of the high corruption in our country is to do with this attitude. It is not the vote that gets them what they want, but that they can pay to get it.. Though at some point, which they possibly don't quite realise it, they have painted themselves into a corner. Because a rich industrialist may get some key things twisted to get his business some benefit. But the overall rot -- bad roads, the terrible traffic, the horrible facilities are a direct result of the fact that you did not vote.
* In developed countries, the pattern of voting is apparently different. The upper class is very conscious of voting. Poll anlysers say that may explain why the rich are pampered there, in terms of what they get from their elected representative. In India, even though this will invite the wrath of `socialists', the poor often manage to get away with a lot of things within the urban set up, whether it is encroachments, or illegal water supply or electricity etc because they vote. Which may explain why in certain parts of this city it is simply impossible to dislodge encroachers -- they are the ones who matter.
* Interestingly, a lot of middle class women simply do not vote. It is rather strange. They seem pretty dead to their rights that way...Why, you wonder? Is it because they are not politically savvy? Then, you cannot wonder women's rights does not figure much in anybody's agenda. Middle class women are not a consituency anywhere.
Voting is where we can change certain things...

Did you know you can donate your cycle?

2009-05-11T01:02:00.000-07:00

I got this info from the Life Positive mag where I write.
And felt I may use it myself: just as soon as I locate my rusting-rotting bicycle, bought very lovingly a few years ago but discarded once I realised that the number of dogs around the complex was growing and they are nervous about people on bicycles early mornings -- they don't mind later in the day, but early mornings with the night's adrenaline still growling through them (in the suburbs the dog packs are like some feral creatures and can be very intimidating as night falls because there are constant changes in the number of canines that wander into such spots and this agitates the existing groups, plus shop-keepers who hope to keep of robbers (quite a few break-ins happen apparently on Fridays -- a day before the money gets transported from the shops to banks) encourage the stray population by feeding them. So my husband, who a few weeks ago got dropped off on the road after a night show, said how eerie it was to be walked back home by growling packs, their throat rumbling with a soft growl, their ears down menacingly, lips drawn over sharp teeth, following him. A group will follow him for a short distance in this fashion. Then lope off, just as soon as another group takes over. He said that he had a feeling that any wrong move from him, and he would have been mauled ruthlessly. He thought that he should not look them in the eye, not show fear but maintain a steady and slow walk that did not threaten or intrigue them. It was difficult to act normal, he said, with the growling pack walking in a circle around him...
So u can imagine that I do not take the cycle out? You never know what provokes a dog to jump you...
So, just as soon as I find my cycle I will donate it to this group which collects cycles to give tribal and village kids who walk miles to attend school. It is called the Bicycle project, organised by Sangeeta and Hemant Chabra and they are also into another similar project at Jhadpoli village. For more details on how you can help, contact them at 65701730/9820149022
sangi2007@hotmail.com

You can also visit the kids to see how your cycle is helping them. I think this is such a cool thing to do... More power to the Chabra couple:)

Roadblocks or speed breakers

2009-05-07T09:56:00.000-07:00

(Circled in red, the white-painted boulders, making do as illegal, temporary speed breakers. )

When we went to Gorai the other day, to visit the Dhamma meditation center there, we passed interesting things that make country so unique. A political party, off Mira Road, had blocked off one full lane, on the left, and so the to-fro lanes were allocated to the right lane. Everybody seemed to know where to go, except us. Which shows that the rest of the world is used to chaos caused by such self-willed parties..
Then, as we were moving into the rustic villages off Mira Road we saw a marriage party happening and at two spots, bang in the middle of the road, this private party had set up huge boulders, to act as speed breakers! Amazing... Such behavior. `Private' speed breakers (earlier di rigeur along the village roads and had been declared illegal) are now being replaced by such temporary boulders.
Any case, if politicians can block roads, why not the public?
Or if the public can block roads like this, why not the politicians?
It is the chicken and egg question. But we deserve what we get...

Playing ball and Gandhigiri

2009-05-06T09:55:00.000-07:00

At 6.45 am yesterday, I was minding my own business, in my own complex with huge park and running track etc, and dribbling my ball. Earlier, after enthusiastically buying it, I had kept it aside till it automatically deflated (out of disuse). But determined to recapture my youth, I refilled it -- after trying the car tyre fellow (who said he could not) and then the bicycle fellow who charged just Rs 2 (the lady at the sports shop said she would charge me Rs 5:) So feeling pleased with this bargain and my intention, I did two laps around the huge complex and feeling very proud of my disciple and started dribbling. After I completed a few rounds, the security guard from a building opposite the park gently comes and says playing ball is not allowed. I said who says? He says a resident is complaining of the noise I was creating!!
I mean, during Diwali, in my own complex I have myself several times gone down to chide people for bursting crackers post the deadline. These Charlies who are now picking on me (the fat husband and his fatter wife can see me clearly where I am happily playing ball in the complex) and feeling threatened at their own lack of discipline immediately try to puncture mine!!
I called the family and asked what was distressing them so much?
The noise the lady says... I can only play after 10 am, when the summer sun has peaked and her darling children have woken up. I suggested that if she was a good mother she should wake up her kids. In fact, she should send them down to where I was playing so they could join in such sattvic activity. She calmly said she did not need any lessons from me. But that I should go walking instead of playing ball??!!!
Intolerance can have such sad hues.. Humanity is sad. Instead of seeing that this city is rotting primarily because there are no sports activities, no physical discipline which can channelise our children's energies more positively, there are people who will try to subvert any attempt in that direction.
This city will have no hope unless there are more places for our kids to play, where adults do kids' things with comfort and where parents can play with their kids. The only entertainment in this Maximum city is Mall, Movies and Masala food!!
I am going to dribble post-noon. That is my idea of Gandhigiri. And I genuinely feel sorry for those people and their weighty souls...

Voting and voters

2009-05-03T22:10:00.000-07:00

We did vote, my husband and I. Some things that stuck me about the event was:

Our poor cops, they are standing the whole time while the citizens' voted. It seems a bit unfair. Perhaps they should be seated?
That the voting booths were all on the first floor -- which means, effectively anybody who has a problem -- spinal cord-injured, those in wheel chair, those with crutches, those who may be sick, the very elderly who may not be able to negotiate the steps -- are all denied their voting right!
Heartening: that the elderly citizens are allowed first right to vote, meaning they don't have to stand in queue. Same of any of the disabled who could make it to the first floor. They were also treated cordially and directed well..I saw the cop on duty at our booth was particularly sweet that way.
That though most people had their voter's Id Cards, both my husband and I have not recd ours.
And despite having entered name corrections -- for instance, I have retained my maiden name, the list still calls me Shameem Akthar Sheriff Saisuresh -- very complicated. Mercifully I had my passport for identification, which means they at least know that the strange Hindu name -- appended by some concerned lackey who does not like the idea of a woman holding on to her maiden name (belongs to the Sunjay Dutt gang I suppose:) -- was part of the portfolio, even if not accorded official status in my name game... Well, my husband went several times to the school where the Id cards were supposed to be given, but was turned away because of this or that. Mostly that. Any case, interesting aside, the lady who was ticking off our names said that the ID cards have been issued!! Where are they, now??

Despite all, Indian democracy rocks... And we must all vote, to make sure that it continues that way...

Smallest Gita in the world

2009-05-01T02:10:00.000-07:00

(Pic from net, from official press release I assume)
While passing Linking road, I spotted the Tanishq shop -- I turn off there towards Organised Chaos dance studio, where I learn B-boying -- and spotted this advert that said the world's smallest Gita on a pendant! Apparently created using nano tech by Pawan Sinha from the U.S. and launched by Tanishq which is a Tata group enterprise...Tatas are sure into small things in a big way...

You know,the first instinct when you see something like that is that you want to own it too -- and wish yourself rich enough to be able to do that:) However, I realised the beauty of the Gita lies in reading it and rereading it and unravelling the layers of its meanings through various interpretations of various gurus/writers you may respect. And that would not be possible if you had to look at the lettering under a microscope!! How do you comfortably read that... So apart from the novelty value and of course, if you are religious in that sort of showy fashion, it would make sense:) Otherwise my Radhakrishnan's modest best-selling Gita, much-thumbed, is far better:)

Now, just to find out how much this costs!

Saltpans: dreamy backyards of Mumbai

2009-04-28T23:17:00.000-07:00

,
When Janu, our plump sweet little baby was a toddler we (Sai and I) would feel guilty that she was cooped up in the house most of the time because 1) we were working 2) our flat was on the topmost floor so we could not leave her to roam about on her own down in the compound 3) and our timings were such that when we were home we could not go down and hang about -- the tiny compound was not only gloomy but also mosquito-ridden in the nights...

So we would travel in our little second-hand Omni to some nice dreamy locales, where it was not too costly to spend a night, off the beach, with a stiff breeze, good homely food and nice family company about us ...some beer and even fish (when I was ok with that sort of non-veg fare before yoga sort of wore it out of my system). Domnica guest house at Manori, off Mumbai, near Gorai, was our regular haunt.

When you left the hurly burly of Mumbai, sort of epitomised by the malls in Mira Road, and entered narrow strips of roads hugged by expanse where sky touched earth, you felt truly free. The village homes looking cosy, the illegal speedbreakers, the scrawny or lush vegetation (depending on the season), the lazy clouds scattering the sky, good-clean looking boys on bikes, dhabhas, housewives selling tadgola or cucumber (according to season and availability) along the roads -- it felt heaven...

One of the sights that greeted you and still do, are that of the salt pans, immediately after Mira Road drops behind you. Something about those harsh white mounds, the marshy water in dark pools about, a lazy crane breakdancing in those marshes made such breaks so special. I used to pack food since there were no food-stalls that could accomodate a kid. When Sai and I visited the Pagoda (Buddha relics also there, off Esselworld) we once more passed this tract and felt uplifted...

Sad thing is our kid is now grown up. Possibly when you are a teen you feel suffocated to spend so much time with your old parents. So she resists the idea of the such outings these days, preferring her i-pod and her mobile phone to the break of waves and a bare sky. We oldies felt the stab of nostalgia when the salt pans rushed past us on the roads.. Maybe next year, we will surely make it....

Diabetes control plant

2009-04-28T10:15:00.000-07:00

Where can u find the Diabetes control plant? At Thakur village
here are contact details of the nursery where u find that
NATURE BLISS
Shop no 30, Hailey Blg, Blg 51, Evershine Millenium Paradise , Thakur Village, Kandivli East.
Mobile number of Vasant Bhogan : 9820744425

Watching a movie, in Mumbai

2009-04-28T03:51:00.000-07:00

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We were watching the Tony Jaa film at InOrbit's movie hall. Can u imagine this? Many college kids were there and I was feeling happy that perhaps they are getting to become fit, love Muay Thai and like clean action films where a highly paid actress does not have to strip to make the movie sell...
No, but it seems the kids were there not for Tony Jaa ... and I could never figure out what they were really there for, since they kept jabbering throughout. And during the most beautiful moment of the film, rather evocative and technically splendid too, where Jaa jumps over the elephants -- some girls actually went out to buy popcorn!!! Mumbai children can be so frustrating that way, as company. I find that they are the most chilled out of the lot of kids (Generalisations are so passe, but I resort to them at such moments :) Chennai kids are introverted and shy, Delhi kids posturing and confident, but our Mumbai kids are the most casual and chilled out- rather gadget savvy. But I must say that they are rather illiterate in a lot of ways that is bothering, if you are a mother with a kid that age. You worry what sort of peer pressure some of these nitwits have!!! Hookah, I know for a fact. Sly smoking, sly drinking, sly heavy-petting (all of which common to all metros) but in terms of general lack of awareness,where you really feel that as an adult you cannot have much in common with this set, I think Mumbai kids rank highest!
I remember once going for Shakepeare in Love (I saw it thrice on the big screen, I was so smitten by it) and the kids laughed at all the wrong moments and did not seem to feel the poesy of the film. At the comic moments they were all serious so that the only voice cackling in the entire theatre hall was one voice -- mine!! I remember sitting with some bio students and they were blattering about something at the ankles and mispronouncing it so uproariously, that I could not help butting and telling them that it was Achilles Heels. The girls immediately awarded me with`You Clever Woman' look and looked so astonished and wanted to know how they knew what they were talking about... That sort of lack of awareness...

I can see something of that sort of orientation when they reject films like Akshay Kumar's Chandni Chowk or Tasveer 8 by ten. In the first one, the guy's heart was all over the film. I loved it, if only for that. The latter specially was a fantastic film, done with a lot of finesse (normally I am not a Nagesh Kukunoor fan since some of his films don't speak to me) but in this one he has bridged the gap between his docu-mode to Bollywood tamasha rather seamlessly -- yet the kids rejected it -- My daughter was amazed how her friends trashed it while she loved it..

You wonder, seeing that your tastes vary so much, whether in certain things you can call yourself a true Mumbaikar:) There is something so casual about criticism amongst Mumbaikars that you won't find in any other city -- a casualty that bothers on the moronic at times...

Cost of a film...PVR or InOrbit

2009-04-16T03:53:00.000-07:00

Now that most Mumbaikars are mall rats or cine-goers, we have one entertainment which is absolutely free while the latter is becoming rather expensive.

My husband, thanks to recession, has become more conscious of all the cash outflow. He has found out that two tickets at Inorbit (Malad) are worth one at PVR (Goregaon).
That is quite a difference, even though he insists he likes the spaciness of the chairs and the general cinematic experience of PVR screens.

I myself have not felt any difference: I only go by how a hall winds up the show: does it show the last tail-end features, those songs they make specially to flash at the end, those `Making of the Film shots' they exhibit also? And is there enough space to exit without being elbowed, nudged and pawed?

I have found this -- the tailend features of a film -- can be missing at some suburban halls -- always keen to cut costs, they are thinking of only driving the audience out, so they can switch off the AC. I remember that one theatre near home did not switch the AC for long after we had entered it, and the kids were wailing after a while for the humidity. Some of the suburban theatres also smell lightly of urine and unwashed socks -- from the uncleaned chair upholstery I think... I have already complained about how once male guards were checking female bags during the morning shows...

I hate also the stampede at some suburban theatres after a show, as all the doors open into a narrow claustrophobic exit: clearly indicating that the norms of exit, to prevent stampede during catastrophy like a fire hazard, have not been kept in place. Pawing men, foot-stamping kids... and elbows into you -- nerve-wracking way to experience cinema.

Expensive simple delights

2009-04-14T05:29:00.001-07:00

They say coconuts are not coming into Mumbai -- but I still manage to get them at Rs 18 each, so the position is not so bad this summer. But what is happening to beloved and seasonal jamun. Seems this summer may pass without me staining my tongue purple. It is costing Rs 50 a kg, that too at limited spots, like the vegetable market outside Khar station. Can u imagine... I felt looted, but I bought them any case, half kg for Rs 100, before the recession does me in... the jamuns look raw to me. I have put them away in the fridge foolishly and now have to eat half-raw jamuns costing the earth and not even get my tongue purple:(

Did u know? In Mumbai...Garlic & shampoos have something in common

2009-04-11T02:53:00.000-07:00

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My maalish lady (masseuse) found some empty shampoo bottles in my toilet and asked me if she could take them away... I agreed, thinking she was using it to mix her own concoctions or massage formulas. Curious I asked her what she needed them for, and she tells me that she gets garlic in exchange for that... I was amazed. They still give you `ever-silver' vessels (out here, they call them steel) for old clothes. And now garlic for shampoo bottles..Good if that plastic is getting recycled. Of course, I remember once doing a story on fake things and how in Ulhasnagar (a far off suburb in Mumbai) there was a thriving fake industry making copies of everything!! Even now u can be conned by that... I recently bought a pair of `Reebok' sun glasses, looking rather sleek, paying an appropriately high price for it, at the corner shop where I got my reading glasses also. The reading glasses lasted. But I had to go to the shop twice to replace or complain about my Reebok glasses and then, finally, the third time the shop-keeper gave me a non-branded substitute... Which just goes to show that there are still fools like me and there is an entire industry catering to such fools, in this city!
Garlic for shampoo bottles. I think u must buy your shampoo only from good stores -- or you may well be picking up fakes...

Pumpkin seeds, whatdayacall them here?

2009-04-08T19:36:00.000-07:00

I know pumpkin seeds are sold at supermarkets like Nature basket, Food court etc. However, one time I bought a packet at one of Chennai's marts and almost threw up (and died) when I chewed into broken pieces of glass!! It was an extremely traumatising experience for me since I am a very bad `chewer' and it was merely a fluke that at that particularly bite, some instinct kicked into me and I bit into it, to bite glass! So, in an animalistic reaction I sort of warily avoid packed pumpkin seeds. Which just shows how stupid the mind can be in its avoidance behavior --because in India, if you are talking of such careless packaging, you can bite into glass into any packed food stuff! I once found a staple pin in a dosa... You know, survival of the fittest. Or the most deliberate chewer?!!

Any case, while discovering a pumpkin seed dressing recipe (toasted seeds ground with olive oil, garlic clove, cumin seed powder, salt) I also discovered that it is highly nutritious. Protein, which I sorely need but don't bother about. Zinc, also what I need, since I do not eat meat. Magnesium, since I like its happiness quotient and muscle-powering effect. And calcium, which also I can do well with. So, having got this into my head that I MUUSST have pumpkin seeds I tried to locate it in the grocery shops around my home. And guess what, nobody stock them hereabout. I described it and was sent on wild goose chase by some well-meaning shop-keepers. Since I did not even know the name, that was sort of a difficult task, wandering about, trying to locate something that nobody had. I peered at the glass jars with dana (seeds) but found the usual suspects -- walnuts, cashew, etc. but no pumpkin seeds. Then, finally, as always happens with me, I found it at a shop close to my home (and which I had passed just then thinking he won't have it). He calls it kalingat seeds (water melon seeds). And I am having about a tablespoon of it (it also has good fats -- lack of which is puffing up my protein-fat starved eyes) daily and feeling smart...

So, if you want pumpkin seeds, you must ask for water melon seeds, in Mumbai:)

Diabetes plant? Oh wow...

2009-04-06T08:58:00.000-07:00

Look what I found.. The DIABETES PLANT.... It has been making waves internationally, and is being rediscovered in India now... Sold at Rs 50, I found it in a corner shop selling artificial plants, real bonsai and real ferns... The lady at the counter informed me that you have to eat one leaf a day to keep your blood sugar naturally low. That is really decent of nature... But I remember the Leaf Man ( I have blogged on him in my yoga blog) telling me that nature has created plants for every known disease in the world. And that we can cure ourselves naturally. I had, I remember, been cured of corn with just the sap of a weed that grows by the roadside. ( I have blogged on that too). So now more about this diabetes plant -- ask in nurseries. If you are desperate then land up at Thakur Village, Kandivli East, and take the road off Rama's restaurant for this nursery. And don't come on Mondays which is the weekly off in this area. I will return later with the phone number of the shop soon...

The plant's botanical name is Salacia reticulata, and according to news reports (see this news report in 1997 in New Scientist) floating on the net, a Japanese team discovered the ingredient which blocks blood sugar.. And apparently this plant has been in use for over 3000 years in India (We were diabetic even then??I always assumed that it was the part of the new age syndrome -- though Dr Sharon Maolem in her extremely gripping book on mind-body links and healing in her quite iconoclastic book Survival of the Sickest suggests that diabetes is part of the body's healing mechanism to compensate for a cause from environmental triggers) ...

Any case some reports also suggest that there are over 400 known diabetes-controlling plants.. So I have no clue which one is the one I have shown here... But it is good to see that Mumbaikars can buy plants beyond money plant (the most common plant on balconies and homes, including its variants, because it is such a no-fuss, one pot plant)...

Restaurant decorum

2009-04-04T07:22:00.000-07:00

Aw, my camera missed the crucial parts of this menu card exhortations. What u see above is a list of do's and dont's on the back of a menu card. Some interesting rules are below:
* Not to hang on after receiving bill.
* To wait for food, since good food takes time to cook.
* Not to read paper or do paper work here. (Not your regular coffee shop).
* Left-over food will not be packed..

The last one was a bit unfair I thought... the rest of the stuff rather innovative and clearly comes after some bad experiences the restaurant owner has had, with people refusing to budge before finishing their morning paper (maybe reading it into the night:) or people who hang on after just ordering a cup of coffee... and even after the bill has been placed deliberately on his table:)

Imagine this from a restaurant owner whose establishment is encroaching all over the pavement (in this city, where else?). Who has erected some structures, including concrete ones on pavement that belongs to you and I. And who clearly is paying all the concerned authorities some huge sums, to do what he will. Even he has a sense of right and wrong. I wonder when our administration will follow suit and acquire some sense of similar decorum ... I simply cannot understand why they don't legalise encroachments in certain areas -- so that at least the money clearly being pocketed by all the `authorities' goes into the government coffers. This way, it feels so much like goondaraj...Not evidence of good governance but the starting point for criminality ... And then, even goondas will start making rules...

Pigeons, a sort of menace?

2009-04-03T01:34:00.001-07:00

When I came to Mumbai I used to think pigeons were very romantic -- which just goes to show that we can be made to believe anything. I even attempted to keep a birth bath at my old home, which fortunately, never worked well enough to attract any pigeons. Now, at my new balcony, I find pigeons, in the manner of all things that are regarded as dumb and therefore harmless, create a lot of damage. Last week, a lush plant of mine, which was beginning to drape long and beautifully, was viciously ripped from the pot. By pigeons. I fail to see any agenda to that --not even the oxytocin-induced nesting one -- in that gesture. The entire plant seemed to have been snipped by a neat, but vicious pair of scissors. This has been a constant from our pigeon neighbours who seem to think they own my house.

I won't get into other naughty things they do -- but apparently there is a law, a civic law, which forbids u from feeding pigeons in public places. Or other creatures.. Rs 500. Yet, when I do the yoga class at Carter Road I have had to go up politely and dissuade an old gentleman who insists on feeding crows just where we are doing yoga. I cannot see anything peaceful in his behavior -- though apparently the urge to feed creatures comes from something sattvic. I had requested him to move ahead, if he wishes to feed and avoid the spot where we are doing our yoga -- he has a choice of moving elsewhere, we don't. His insistence, for several days, indicates the sort of mulish stubbornness some of us enjoy displaying when we perceive something as our birth right -- esp if it also bears a hint of pious sanction...There is another gent opposite our flat who also feeds crows everyday at the same time. I recall, back home in Chennai, when we were supposed to feed the crow, it was a handful from the food you were eating -- to be left where one lone crow could eat it... Not thousands that swoop menacingly all over you...

The week before, another `peace-loving' pigeon-feeder put a full bag of grains on the exact spot where we do yoga... Something not so-sattvic about that sort of petulant behavior. So, we had no choice but to go over to the platform to do yoga -- and the entire hour we had a horde of deprived Indian men, seated around the steps circling that platform, trying to ogle into the girls' yoga pants.. As an instructor that had me so-fuming..

Any case, this is Mumbai and people make their own rules here......

Exotic vegetables, on your pavement

2009-03-31T00:33:00.003-07:00

I discovered this amazing vendor, off Khar Station, sitting along Hotel Jewel Restaurant and Bar (yes, I think it does say it is both hotel and restaurant:) on Khar's 2nd Road, where SV road (off Shamrao Vittal Bank) leads you to the station. He has EVERYTHING u want, I mean in terms of exotic vegetables... Avacado -- see that ripe and ready one. First time I am seeing this ready avocado in suburban Mumbai. Otherwise these fancy malls keep stuff half-ripe and u pick it and pray that damn thing ripens in your home. Btw. unripened stuff (that you ripen) are not as healthy as those which ripen naturally on the plant.

All those exotic things u want for your Thai curry recipe -- galangal, kaffir lime -- he stocks them. Just five bucks for a pinch you need... Thyme (in Rs 5 sachet), rosemary, fresh basil, lemon grass, cocktail tomatoes (for just Rs 10!!), dried mushroom (that last for years, he assured me), leek, asparagus.. everything. Zucchini too...
Great place if you are adventurous about food or health conscious. I used to be both, once upon a time. Nowadays, I am just a splurge who does not eat what she buys! But check out this corner for all your exotic veggie needs... What I liked was that he was not highly priced as are the supermarts or food marts that stock these things. Earlier I used to think them as rich rather than exotic, just going by the marked up prices of these things:) I have decided to, after chancing upon him, live on soups, mushrooms, grass and the rest of the stuff I have so wanted for long... I will visit him once a week and stock up. Yippee! You can be poor yet exotic now... when vegetables wander over to your pavement. I guess vendor encroachments do have their uses.. I am not going to join any crusade against them in the near future...

All things exotic

(Above: Snow peas)
(Zuchini, avocado -- raw and ripe)

Exop

2009-03-31T00:33:00.001-07:00

Now I am also a Warli artist

2009-03-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

As a deprived kid (who refuses to grow up) I always splurge on arts-for-kids kit. I have bead-makers, clay kits, moulds, mirror makers, science kits, and anything else you can think of. I simply cannot resist them. I always was artistically inclined (ha, we all think that) and only reason did not become Husain was because I was deprived (ha, we always think that too:)...
Any case while trying to pick up some prosaic notebooks for my daughter I saw this amazing Warli kit.. Resisting it, since these days I am mostly broke (being a yoga teacher) I returned home. But, then, that kit and my deprived childhood colluded together so much so that I was dragged back to that very same stationary shop and had to, simply had to, pick up this Warli kit for kids. I love it: it has clay thingies on which you may paint, but though I still have not laid ink on clay, I bought the kit for the book on how-to Warli yourself.

While a journalist I had wandered, with one of those agents who work these tribals, in Adivasi land and saw those amazing Warli wall pieces (natural paints like mud for that red tint) that the Adivasi women paint on those simple hut walls. Apparently done on some major occasion, like a wedding. But you know how human kind works: these women did it for free and for the love of it, and for being part of the community and all that. But the minute it got itself as commercially paying, the men step in and become cat of the walk:) See how most famous chefs are men? So also, in Warli art most of the painters who do the commerical pieces are men -- they are the one who get to Germany or Europe or wherever else the agent would take them, to showcase tribal Indian art.

Any case, it was fabulous to wander about in Adivasi country, huts far from one another. Where, in that rolling green -- hillocks and soft valleys and an occasional sliver of a sparkling waterfall -- that makes rural Maharashtra so beautiful and heart-stopping, you are lulled into sushegaad ( a state of mental siesta:) by the sight of lazy dragonflies floating over rich, tall grass. And in that seeming emptiness be surprised by a lone hut, and even more happily surprised by its hidden flare-up of this rich art. Glorious. It was what made journalism so fulfilling for me, those days:)

Any case somebody who liked that article of mine gifted me a huge Warli painting -- It had amazing scenes -- a woman being dragged by her man, by her hair!! Physical encounters.. Stuff like that you normally don't see in the clinically cleaned up Warli art available all over... it was a piece that told real stories. Apparently, real Warli art has these double entendre too... stories of money lenders, land-grabbers (from a rich, shrinking community in Mumbai) who would bribe these simple men with a bottle or two of alcohol.. Where such a conniving man may be shown as a rat etc.. That sort of real stories. But that painting of mine, which was layered in that special way, got burnt in the terrible fire in my house. My loving husband, sweet of him, later replaced that with another huge Warli piece. It adorns my hall wall -- but it is a tame one, compared to the riotous and rambunctious one I had...

Any case if you wish to gift a kid a nice kit, then this Wah Re Wah Warli is a good bet I would think -- I paid Rs 349 for my piece. There is a smaller one on offer for Rs 225...
Check out this link for what else the kit contains etc... It is marketed by Pegasus international I have this number on my kit, in case u wish to place an order: 326651661..

Happy painting...

Cafe coffee day: wake up call:)

2009-03-28T04:51:00.000-07:00

(The image of the Carter Road cafe is from this site)

Say I earn a piddling small amount for a class.. What do I do with it? I splurge it at this coffee shop. Do I love it that much? Actually I do it because I like to take on Bandra classes and when waiting between two classes, since mostly I have no place to go, I go here and sip on a large Ethiopian coffee... It is a good sip, satisfying.

What I love about this spot?

Great view, far enough to miss those fellows defecating along the seashore and far enough to make pretend that this coastline is divine.
I love it that it is no-hassles spot where a woman can be alone and not get stared at as if she is a pick-up... In India that is so sick, with most men simply unused to the idea of women hanging out on their own. And woe betide that sad woman who is also a yoga instructor with muscled arms (like I), with a boho look (again, like I, with gemstone bracelets, strappy tops, and weird jute bags) that for some strange reason seems to, in the deep recesses of suppressed Indian male psyche, flash come-hither signals. So, here, at this coffee shop that is not such a bother, I am allowed to sip my coffee without having to look over my shoulder.

Though the variety is good, I stick to my Ethiopian because it is big and allows me enough sips over an hour or so. Occasionally, I have my laptop with me and typing out my pending columns.

What I do not like about it?

Non-functional loo or barred loo -- always it is not to be used, mostly, no water supply is the excuse. Waaah!
No breakfast... what sort of a coffee shop is that that does not even have a sandwich for sad sacks like me?
Often, unbelievably, I am told the shop (though buzzing with shop boys inside) is NOT open because there is no Water Supply. Earlier, I used to think I was being turned away for my boho look, yoga mat and muscles et al making the boys nervous! I mean after my yoga class off Carter Road, around 8.40 am when I walk in to wait, I am told this. A coffee shop that does not function by eight thirty on a Saturday morning?? Give me a break...

But I still go there and hang out...

Khadi stuff, wow to buy

2009-03-27T03:39:00.000-07:00

Khadi Gram is holding a 50 per cent discount sale on its fabrics. Which are, btw, rather highly priced. Some are designed by Nift (fashion school) students but I did not find anything that gripped my soul.
But at the Khadi shop, on Irla Road, I always pick up some fabulous perfumes (yes, simple oils like rose and jasmine and spice -- for Rs 80 to Rs 124) and great uptans (face packs which my mom and hers used:). And massage oils and natural soaps. They make great, elegant gift packs. I usually buy a few for such occasions, but become too attached to gift them away. Mint soap, panchakarma soap, diamond (yes!) soap, silver soap, gold soap etc... And sandalwood perfumes... and they also have aroma oils, rather costly, but original stuff I believe.
It is a nice great place to browse about if you like Indian stuff and natural products. One can go completely berserk! Here is the contact number, in case u want to trek it there: 26714320. It is near Alpha mall. Car parking is a hassle, but there is a municipal pay and park close by. Btw the one off Fort, though a bit dark and dingy, can surprise you with some interesting stuff. It has metal works, nice kurtis, and artefacts ...

At the Irla one, I even picked up Dead Sea salt for some 100 bucks. Have to yet open it, but it is a great spot for female stuff. For men, the good old staid khadi kurtas in the same cut. But it can, I believe, make its own personal statement. Btw. khadi is also the place u buy the national flags in various sizes. We own quite a few. Two tiny ones with their onw metallic flag staffs held on firm tiny stand. Also, two huge ones which my husband acquired after industrialist Naveen Jindal won a case for ordinary citizens to fly the flag as a matter of fundamental right:)

Horse is cheaper than a Nano here

2009-03-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

See what I spotted while house-hunting off Santa Cruz. Nobody was bothering to even notice this old man seated on a horse, with a large bag of some kurmur (must be that, or cotton, how else could he have held it so lightly aloft over an unprotesting horse). He was trotting off someplace quietly...

Btw though Nano is a one-lakh car and its selling point is that, and which is what makes its rivals sweat, when u book it you will find this clause: it says price will depend on the rate prevailing at the time of delivery. What that means is that your Nano is not Rs 1 lakh after all:)

But I plan to book it any case... I like small cars... It makes me feel harmless. Apparently for men cars are an extension of their personalities, which is why they like `em large! While cell phones have to be small -- the smaller the cell, the bigger the man!

Real estate: the real picture?

2009-03-24T09:23:00.001-07:00

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Did you know?
I saw some media-manipulated story on real-estate prices. You really cannot go by what some papers say since each industry has become media-savvy and knows how to pull strings. Projection is everything in certain quarters. Not good to bitch, now that I have left the trade, but journalists in the business papers specially are given tonnes of carrots by PRs and industry-leaders. Big-time gifts. Once you accept all that how much can u write honestly?? Any case that's not my bizness any more. House-hunting for someone else I found that some interesting things: that since real-estate prices are dipping, thanks to recession and no takers, builders are holding on to property and

preferring to give out plum property on leases. This way some money (good money) is being made while they will wait for the tide to turn.
In fact, the rent, somebody tells me, is likely to dip even further, by 25 per cent maybe. So, if you are looking for a premise on rent and if your business allows you to wait, you can get into contracts with those buildings still under construction and six months down the line know you got yourself a deal.
owners are ready to step back from the earlier insistence on a year's rent as deposit amount. They are ok with five to six months.. since companies are unwilling to shell out such big money any more...

More such wisdom as I continue to house-hunt...

2009-03-22T20:53:00.000-07:00

Media missed this one?!:
My husband, who is travelling into some back of beyond spot in Karnataka, told me this. That there are some rickety long-distance buses that simply have the word `Volvo' painted on them, to fool gullible travelers. They are not Volvo but the owners think that adding that word gives them some value:) Amazing this city...Is there a law against such things? Can u write Ford on a rickety Maruti and get away with that... Possibly. It would not matter to anyone really.. But if it is part of a business tactic then maybe the authorties that do the inspections of these buses should tick them off/fine them for such a silly, unbelievable con job. Maybe the inspectors also feel that any idiot who mistakes a rickety bus for a Volvo deserves to be duped? Who knows?

Vada Pav, Jumbo King and why Mumbai malls don't sell it

2009-03-22T20:35:00.000-07:00

(This image of a perfect vada pav, with a sprinkling of garlic chutney between two soft bread pieces, is from this site)

The other day I had the best vada pav (it is a traditional Maharashtrian favorite, a mashed potato fried in lentil batter, and eaten between two pieces of bread with a dash of some tongue-on-fire hot garlic chutney, or green chutney or both:) in a long long while. It was at the corner off Mahim Station, towards the Mahalaxmi Engineering Estate, on L.J. First Cross Road. It was being prepared by a housewife in a corner, with her utensils and stuff, and fried on the spot. So, its taste was extra-special. A touch of the garlic chutney and huge hunger made this a very special vada pav.

I have had some at Jumbo King: while they have the usual unusual mix-match to tweak Mumbaikar's obsessive need to experiment (including with food), I always stick to the traditional, old-fashioned vada pav ...Rs 10, so I won't crib. Just ok, is my verdict. This was at the outlet near my home, in Thakur village. Btw some of the combos they offer are really a bit `eeks'.

The other day, at Borivli's S.V. Road, where it curves into a flyover, at a Zunka Bakar stall I tried a vada pav -- he did not heat it, so my husband rejected it outright. What is a cold vada pav? Totally off-putting. But I bit into it. It was ok, despite my immense hunger and greater craving for comfort food. Somewhat flat. So, remember not all vada pavs are made equal.

BTW. DO YOU KNOW THAT JUMBO KINGS ARE not there in any malls in Mumbai? Because vada pav is too low-brow for them? Or maybe even low-priced? I wonder why local politicians have not made an issue of that...I would love to eat vada pavs in the mall, in the theaters and hopefully reasonably priced (how would a five-star vada pav taste?).. Perhaps it is not the mall rejecting them, but that the vada pav sellers find it difficult to hike the price of this humble food item to meet the malls's OTT rental costs. Either way, the loss is ours....

I read on a Sify link now that the Shiv Sena had launched a Shiv Vada Pav last year, after holding a vada pav competition and a vada pav conference . Oh wow!! How fantastic.... And that this Shiv Vada Pav was to be touted as a global phenomenon.

Yes, I also think making food is better than making war. And eating it is even better:) Especially if it is a hot vada pav with some aha-hoo garlic chutney:)

2009-03-22T04:31:00.000-07:00

Spotted in town: Bargains galore. Buy one, get seven free??!!! A shirt brand waving this carrot to buyers...

Dilentantism Mumbai style: a butterfly before u are caterpillar

2009-03-22T03:59:00.000-07:00

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It is a good or a bad thing I don't know. But as far as any commitment goes, the citizens can be really guilty of diletanttism. My kid goes for dance classes and she is a dance freak. She tells me that in a class of 11 or so, only one to three persons may be hardcore followers of that particular dance style. Otherwise, u have dance `teachers', some nowhere graceful, who actually finish one level and go on to teach that style! So, they sort of mix and match and create some pop sort of dance and give it a classical name, and lo, there are people who actually pay money to learn that! Since such diletantte stuff can be cheap, Mumbaikars are so happy they got themselves a bargain. This is true of such difficult styles like salsa, krumping or belly dance.

Why this city is particularly cursed that way, is beyond me! I started Kick-boxing four-five months ago. Now I am so hooked that I am hiring my trainer as a private instructor to learn it far more deeply. And the reason I don't want to do it in a general class is because I realise most others are just floating about, not really serious about kick-boxing! What draws them to it is a big, BIG mystery to me! I find being in the same space with such learners constricts my own learning... I can see that while I was in kick-boxing class, every month one young thing will pay a month's fee, learn to frisk wrists, then leave. Most of them were my yoga students, much to my dismay, since it bothers me that people can be so shallow, that even while signing up, they have committed to only one month (of kick-boxing) I mean.

Similarly I have been learning music for the last three years, from a classically trained, highly talented teacher. She is not a music teacher by profession, obviously because there is no money to be made that way: thanks to diletante waywardness of this city. In my music class, I keep revisiting old bhajans, so that I can correct my mistakes. I insist on this though my music teacher wishes to teach me something new. But I hear from my music teacher that this is different from what she normally (and frustratingly no doubt) encounters from some other old aunties (who used to bargain and not pay her Rs 25 per session): they used to insist that she teach them new songs even though they had not perfected the old ones!! They think they are learning???!!! With my music teacher also, due to this sort of nonsensical participation from others, I take private classes. I find it terribly frustrating to be spending time with people (learners) who pretend to be learning and those who have low commitment quotient. It is bad enough I deal with that while teaching yoga!
This same sort of `disloyalty' to commitment to learning something full-fledged is what powers this city commercially perhaps. U can set up shop and hope to steal your neighbour's customers. Malls are brain-wracking to find how they can hold on to their footfalls! This city loves motion, and that means they will not commit!! Brands, exercise styles, sports styles, clothes styles (real mismatch, mix-match that is boldly Bombay, you won't find elsewhere), boyfriends, mobile phones, mobile phone numbers, caller tunes -- they want CHANGE!!

It is its strength. This dilentantism.... But perhaps it can be its weakness too... as its commitment to causes are also so vague and vapid... But you cannot say that to a hardcore Mumbaikar...for whom the only thing that is constant is change... Cliched, but true.My prayer? Maybe that will change, too, someday:)

2009-03-21T08:33:00.000-07:00

Spotted in town:
I saw an eaterie today with these words to describe, itself as a place where `food, fun and fumee happened?' What is fumee?? Somebody please explain!

Momos in Mumbai

2009-03-21T08:11:00.000-07:00

The first time I had Momos was at Kavita Mukhi (the unconventional, torchbearing nutritionist-entrepreneur)'s shop which was selling her goodies. I loved it then. The right amount of rice (without which South Indians wilt) and those spicy stuffings from which you try to pick flavors and find out which of the ingredients is now turning you on. After that, with a huge gap, I had it recently at Goa... at the little Tibetan shack off Calungute beach. Lovely. But then, found this outlet at InOrbit and celebrated by buying one full plate and shamelessly eating it all by myself, without sharing with anyone from my family. Rs 30 for the veg plate... It was so Wow!

Whether the leather weathers anymore…

2009-03-16T01:45:00.000-07:00

My husband has always owned a pair of Woodland shoes, you know the brown rugged pair that men everywhere sport when they want to project a little outdoor-ish kind of image? My husband was one of the early converts, ever since Woodland advertised with the line ‘leather that weathers’. I’ve known him to hunt high and low for the pair, but as with all things popular this particular model was clearly on the way out.

Arre, it just doesn’t wear out, he would exclaim after 2-3 years of totally mindless use, in water, on treks, in the desert. See, the sole is still intact, what a brand, wow!

Gently I would try and tell him that such a long-lasting model doesn’t make sense for the manufacturer, his commercial interest lies in you not keeping a pair for three years but ideally buying one pair a year.

Every time Woodland announced a sale my husband would pop in trying to find out if this model could be had cheap, but no. He would always find that the discount sale did not apply to this popular model. Rs 2800 it cost, and Rs 2800 it remained.

Recently, when we visited Thakur Mall at Dahisar checknaka (I had blogged about this mall recently), he stumbled on to a Woodland factory outlet which had an ongoing sale. And hubby’s eyes lit up when he learnt that his favourite model could be had for a throwaway Rs 1000. Eagerly he tried on the pair, and his eyes crinkled in dismay. But this pair doesn’t feel like they are from the same family. The right shoe feels different from the left, he said.

The salesman, eager to make a sale, refuted the claim. No sir, they are from the same pair of course, he reasoned. No, my husband was adamant. Try walking in my shoes, you will know what I mean. See how firmly the right shoe grips the floor, and see how the left shoe slides on the same floor, they are from different pairs.

Finally the salesman tried on the shoes and agreed. Then my husband’s eyes caught the different lining on both the shoes. See, if the shoes are from one pair the lining will be the same, but they are different. In fact, one shoe’s front is curved and the other shoe is squarish.

Sheepishly the salesman brought out another pair, and my husband was thrilled to note that they were alike in all respects. And they matched his existing, but down in the mouth, pair externally in size. But on a whim he said he’d like to try these on. And grimaced soon after. The shoes were just right for his feet, there was no room for his toes to breathe.

Give me another pair, preferably one size bigger, he said. Sorry sir, came the prompt reply, this is the last pair we have, said the salesman. Meaning, take it or leave it, knowing full well the ardour in my husband’s eyes.

We took it, the husband hopeful that given time the shoe will ease to his foot size. Alas, every weekend he wears it (yes, he uses Woodland on his weekends) he would end up in pain in the evening. Two months later, the shoe clearly was not adapting to his foot size and he was resigned to buying a new pair.

As luck would have it we recently passed by a Woodland showroom announcing a 50 pc sale, and we walked in. To my husband’s query about the model, the salesman replied, no doubt shattering him: Sorry sir, that model has gone out of production.

See, I told him on the way out, Woodland makes no money from this model if it doesn’t wear out as you say, it makes sense for them to phase it out. But, what about men like us who love it, he asked, to which I had no reply

But worse was to follow. The very next day, as we were shopping around our complex, suddenly my husband started limping, before bending down to pick up something from the ground. His sole, from the months-old shoe which he boasted just goes on and on, had come off! Looking shattered at this breach of trust, he limped back home, holding the sole in one hand till I took pity and put it into my shopping bag.

At home as he struggled to put shoe and sole together with Fevikwik, he was a disillusioned man. How could Woodland do it to us, isn’t nothing sacred anymore, he asked rhetorically. Something tells me Woodland won’t come back into his life again.

This city and its autos:)

2009-03-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

I don't know: barring one incident when I felt the autodriver was taking me for a ride, literally, I have been having a decent run with these fellows lately. Cannot imagine what has come over them. It feels just like my old beloved Mumbai.

I even spotted this auto with this sign: see the slideshow, though it is not too clear. The auto owner has actually put a sign on the back of the driver's seat where he has given his phone number, to which u can call and complain if there is any complaint against the driver. Oh, wow!! Possibly the owner has a daughter and wants to make the whole world a safer place for the rest of womanhood? Possibly he has had bad moments with auto drivers and feel it is his karmic duty to clean up the city of some who can be like the very vermin...

Can we have more of such auto-owners? Can there be a law that insists on such a sign?

The world is becoming a better place?
Seems...:)

Bandra flyover: dangerous spot

2009-02-09T07:54:00.000-08:00

(Middle of the Bandra flyover, where vehicles are flying about happily. At the `entrance' or the spot where the flyover begins, is where there is a messy patchwork that can be life-threatening, extremely dangerous, with tremendous scope for collision, particularly between small and big vehicles, as the former slowdown and the latter speed up)

As you sweep over and into the Bandra flyover, in an auto, you shudder suddenly as the tiny vehicle u are travelling in coughs and sputters. This has happened everytime I have swept over the flyover. The auto rickshah wallah, a hardened bunch usually, shiver when their vehicle wobbles, almost halting: this is a dangerous patchwork of concretisation which creates this reaction. An even patch there means the autos have to slowdown, at the precise spot where they hope to propel upwards with greater power. Also, as they slow down they sense that the vehicles behind them, some of them large, are accelarating for the sweep upwards. This means, there could be a dangerous collision. Every rickshahwallah I have travelled with cribs about this and just how dangerous it is. Who cares??

It pisses me off so much that there is so much shoddy roadwork in this `international city'. And if this is the state of an important flyover, in the heart of the city, then imagine the plight elsewhere.

Security or threat?

2009-02-04T01:31:00.000-08:00

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Yesterday I got a mail, possibly by mistake, floating between my society's committee members. It seems one of the security guard chiefs (of Maratha Guards) threatened one of my committee member, threatening to `chop him into pieces.' The reason for his grouse seems to have been resistance from this member for a pay hike for his guards!! Now of course, the chief is denying it. But as the mails flying between committee members (coming to me, for some reason:) suggests that there is quite a bit of panic all around at such an atrocious, open attack. If these fellows can talk like that to society members (de facto divinity in any complex in Mumbai) then what of us simpler, humbler mortals??

This security guard business is getting rather tangled, as the above incident shows. One time, after my room burnt down and we were repairing it, we had to ferry cement sacks up...30 or so in all. While the property manager's office had no objection, one lone warrior security guard, Mondal, I recall, refused to let that poor teen carry the sack in the lift. When I returned home from my classes I saw this kid walking the eight-flight staircase with this huge load on his back.. I felt absolute pain. I went down to argue and then tried to reason with that old idiot, but he stuck to his ground -- My house, fellow is guarding!! Getting his salary from my maintenance fee and he refused something I needed to have done!! Can u imagine that cheek!! And even if it was just his ego(that affects his relationship with flat-owner), what of compassion in him (for somebody from his own home state, possibly, and his own economic background)? To make a young boy lug up those huge, heavy sacks of cements!! This is the state of security guards in this stupid, confused city... Then, though I felt rather sick, later, when there was festival, I tipped that silly old misguided old man because I felt that if continued to fume everytime I saw him, I am destined to have a future life with him in some corner of it! And ever after that tip he salaamed me. And that too bothered me a lot... That is all it takes for a guard to switch from a state of misguided, stiff-necked duty to misguided obsequiousness...

At Khar the other day, at my private class, again I witnessed a tussle between a flat-owner and a guard: the former must be a crorepati, but if anything the guard is very happy to be grappling with a rich man... The owner was saying that it was the guard's duty and that fellow was, shoulder held high, answering him right back... It bothered me, just because obviously most security guards hired here have a major chip on their shoulders about something. And can, if not handled properly, actually be security threats themselves... Remember the shoot-out in SRK's house?? Don't forget the recent incident at Nadiadwala's house, where he got neatly burgled by his security guard...

I recall, when we had the Knight Frank security earlier, one of those fellows assigned to our building used to scratch is crotch rather suggestively when women passed him by. Anybody bothers in this chalta hai city, except this silly me who wishes to change the world? Another fellow used to ogle at my little girl. I used to be so terrified that I will be pacing up and down half-an-hour before her school return timing, worried sick at the thought that she must pass him before entering the house. I confined my work so that whatever happened I was home for her since I felt threatened for her, by this man.

There are too many incidents like this. In the beginning of this year, while doing a private-general combo session in another Evershine complex closeby, I was entering the gate while the guard supervisor asked me to jot down my name. I am ok with that. But he indicated I must enter the tiny enclosure where he was seated. The other fellow, his junior, also nodded eagerly. The idea was that I get sandwiched between these two in a narrow space... As far as I recall, that is not the requirement, since the enclosure has a window through which we can reach our hands in, to write!! I told him to pass that notebook to me, so I can jot my name down. I thought if they tried that stunt with a young child or teen (when you are the mother of a young girl, you are either like me, paranoid. Or like most others, indifferent: - since the latter would be the only way to be sane under such circumstances) she may not have the presence of mind or confidence to say what I did to them... Sick fellows.... Later, at the class, I asked one of my students, a male, if he was asked to write his name at the entrance. He said, no!! Clearly, only us women are security threats to these guards..

Bored men can be dangerous...

Mumbai magical in the morning

2009-02-03T02:32:00.001-08:00

(Sun peaking out of a foggy Mumbai sky)
I go to the Bandra yoga classes in the mornings, shivering fitfully in the auto. When I wake up for the class, I do get the occasional twinge at how I am slaving like a dog (I must be up by 4.30 am just to get things organised around the house since I am gone before/almost when the rest of the family is waking up) and if I should take on such far-off assignments. But when I am inside the auto (bliss, to find one and even greater one, to have a regular autowallah ferry you to your destination, as is happening with me) and look at little children walking long stretches in small groups I feel sheepish at my own laziness. The kids are out in the road, with the occasional stray dog barking at them. Some working women are also out, standing all alone in lonely stretches along the highway, waiting possibly for a co-worker to pick them up. The Pune commuters are also out -- u can make that out by the bags. And you feel that the whole world is about and busy and wonder why you felt lethargic when u were preparing to step out. Hey, some hardcore walkers and joggers are either out enthusiastically gossiping, or listening to ipods/mobile music or just slogging alone. That looks so cool. The best face of Mumbai is in this period, pre-dawn, dark, busy and empty.
I am a bad photographer even when things are steady. Catching pictures on moving auto is higher challenge:) But it is my Nokia Xpressmusic that has managed to give some form to these shaky images below...
This is the stretch along the Goregaon's Aaarey Colony -- the greenery is unbelievable. The sun is peaking out, golden, still untainted by Mumbai's pollution. Some poor people are using the bushes for the morning ablutions. Today I saw an interesting (!) sight -- a man had crapped, and was throwing water to clean up the mess, over a pavement. You know, if I was a rich builder -- instead of depositing money at temples to wipe away my sins, I would build public toilets -- there is more punya (grace) there...
This stretch is off Santa Cruz, before the flyover, where the airport stretches. It seems to be beloved of early morning walkers. You can see housewives in groups, in their nighties, walking and gosspiping. Old men, young men, girls -- some even walking alone:) I love that. Today, opposite the huge gate, I saw a group of young kids, with their instructor, training for some sport. Oh, the other night, I even saw (when the flyover construction work was happening), a small group of young kids learning martial arts on the flyover. Btw. If I was a rich builder, that is another thing I will do for some solid punya -- build or create beautiful spaces for some real sports training.

PVR mall at Goregaon

2009-02-02T01:13:00.000-08:00

I prefer InOrbit Mall to PVR. But since the latter is close by and since my daughter is becoming a mall rat, we often end up at PVR to catch a film and gorge at its food court. So this is I, at the PVR cinema, looking up at the six-pack of Aamir in Ghajini, a film which I chose not to see btw since it is so violent and I find such films overwhelming ... and traumatising (having seen the Tamil version with Surya in the lead). Apparently the Hindi film is not so violent, whatever that may mean in terms of degree..

Any case to return to PVR mall review. I find though at this mall though there are tonnes of brands, most products are high end. Even Reebok, I found that my modest Kandivli had some nice, inexpensive gym wear at affordable rates (there is a 40 per cent flat discount on Reebok products and I found the yoga mat I like very much has actually become costlier over the last few months -- from 700 rs -- post discount -- that I spent on it, to now rs 900 -- so I am rather wary about this discount business). The PVR Reebok had high-end stuff which I, despite my bad wastrel spending habits, could not think of buying. The may be the only reason I like to visit PVR because I do not spend so much plastic money there. But Peter England had such a fabulous sale that I bought a pile of very sexy clothes and bags and accessories and spend only Rs 2000. My idea of a good buy:)

Any case, the PVR mall is over-crowded. Mostly visited by mall rats who do not want to spend or buy anything but come just to soak into that Mumbai-crowd-energy that draws people like magnets (even on flyovers). Also, you are constantly walking over elevators and staircases, going round and round, in a leg-crunching fashion that makes me very irritable, especially when u want to duck wannabe city-slickers and Mumbai casanovas who want to hit on women and little girls who insist on wearing shorts to such places .. The toilets are also rather crowded (on the food court floor) and imagine waiting inside such a stuffy place...

And the worst, for which I really hate Mumbaikars, happens here: q jumping. At the food court that is very common. All queues encourage this. I had a sort of showdown with the Falafel counter staff for allowing men to edge me out.. I have to duck the elbows of some loutish men (usually pointed at the soft spots in a woman's anatomy). So while u duck them, the q-jumpers jump the queue. Since you cannot teach such boors any manners I ticked off the Falafel staff. Who, whether deliberately or not, after that kept me waiting for even longer and then again, forgot to give me the dessert, so that I was fuming and my dessert felt sour in my mouth.. Really. I am determined not to eat anything further at that counter till my anger chills off...

And then, at the Peter England counter, where there was a ridiculous double Q which kept merging and dispersing and where, whenever I asked someone if there was one Q or two, they looked through me or over my head as if I was an alien who they were pretending was not there: what is wrong with these people, are they so shy? Or ill-mannered? Or illiterate? Then, one short fellow skims past me, and past another genteel gentleman importantly, jumps the Q right there and then, in front of me and into my double-trouble q!! Oh, I could not bother. I had a feeling that that Fellow Up There (God, no less) who likes to laugh at me, was chuckling and I was not going to add to his laughter can by starting to fume. So I ignored the q-jump and joked about it to my genteel neighbour. We laughed again, when that short lout in front threw the one pant he was buying into my neighbour's spectacles, almost blinding him. I felt better laughing than fuming. That is the only way to survive in this city.. whose microcosm that PVR mall is... which u must avoid if you want to avoid those flashy, wannabe crowds (I am part of that too, visiting it, no doubt:)...
Phew, I feel tired just thinking of them...and seeing myself of part of that breed...

Candies: sweet place

2009-01-18T23:51:00.000-08:00

(Candies entrance, dreamily green; don't miss the rush of school kids:)
(The beautiful Buddha statue at the entrance)
(Veg puffs, and two coffees, for Rs 160. And don't miss those sweet sugary what-dya-call-them-thingies on the left:)
After a vigorous kick-boxing session, the one thing u crave for is some hot liquid... Strangely, hunger just disappears and I sometimes do not even think of eating evening food. So, earlier I used to take my lap-top, punch my pending columns and dreamily look over the haze of pollution the Bay of Bengal, off Carter Road's Cafe Day. And spend quite a packet of my hard-earned money on continuous cups of coffee which steamed but seemed cold by the time the lips made contact with the cup; or occasionally buy the cookie box (with free espresso offer) that nobody ate at home. And swat flies, which sort of stuck to you wetly. And shoo off crows that eyed your cookie box hungrily. But last week I discovered this amazing place called Candies, off Pali Hill. It is a must-visit place. It has very good, clean energy. With a Thai golden Buddha Statue looking benignly at the world, and especially at all those who enter Candies, that energy is a given:) I found school kids just love it, they were everywhere and that is understandable, why: the price is affordable (soup for Rs 30, veg puff for Rs 30, quiche for Rs 50). Food portions are nice, bite-sized, so you can eat more of many... My fav sort of eating.. And what I love about it is the space inside is so green, lively. The decor is good. It feels clean, spanking. And what I most loved, is that tiny flourish of courtesy, in those tiny sweet-bits that come on your plate: sometimes a soft chocolate, but always something sugary and sweet...
There is a salad bar too, yummy. I love salads though though for that you really need to be hungry. As I said, I am never hungry to eat food after exercise (My prana or chi must be indeed rising:)

Where is Candies?

(Off Gold Gym).

St. Andrews Road
Bandra West
Mumbai-400050
Landmark: Near Pali Naka
Phone: 022-26432425

Linking Road, Yeeks...

2009-01-16T08:10:00.000-08:00

(Empty stretch along Linking Road, before the shops open. I noticed the wires hang bulbless before the shops. Obviously, the bulbs are removed when the shops shut, to prevent theft!!)

I used to live in Bandra for a long time, on St Paul Road, off Hill Road, in a dilapidated bungalow (which continues to crumble as I occasionally pass it now). My spouse-to-be and I were there as PGs. Yes, I belonged to that rare tradition-breakers (for middle-class, I am talking about) who had a live-in relationship before it became permanent. And it was NOT all that wild thing Indians think live-in relationships are: usually it is rather a mundane convenience, commerical convenience too: since both of us worked on shifts we hardly even saw each other:) But like I said, in Mumbai, though all my immediate colleagues and middle-classly clerks and office staff knew of it, nobody made a song and dance of it. Nobody treated me like a fallen woman or whatever it is they say about such `bold' women in our country:) Which is why Mumbai was so liberating for me, from stifling Chennai which, despite its intense pretense at insularity, can be rather nosey about such things. But apparently these days rooms/flats are difficult to find, for live-in couples. Which goes to make my point, Mumbai is becoming boring and stuffy, like the rest of India.

Now to come to Linking Road specifically. Even those days when I was wide-eyed new to Mumbai I never did much of shopping around Linking Road. I found/ find things there on the pavements, pretty tacky. Unlike some `wow', `I-must-have-that' moments you get in Colaba or even Hill Road (not so often, that stab, these days). I remember reading a while back that there was some nasty eve-teasing moments when the shop-keepers were caught ragging the girls from the schools near by. So, I don't have a great liking for that stretch.

But somehow my kid got into her pretty head she must visit a particular shop for a particular pair of shorts that her particular friend had. And so there we were, before the shoppers took over the pavements. We located the shop: I explained to my kid that most of the stuff on the rack at that particular shop with that particular appeal to her particular friend seemed like discards!! So we sauntered off sadly from there and went to another shop, off KFC. She liked a top on the mannequin. And the boys undressed the mannequin. And then, till my kid tried on the top and we left, say ten-15 mins, the shop-keepers deliberately did not dress that topless mannequin. Their behavior indicated that they had slipped into a crude moment: they were walking around it, fingering the mannequin. And though one could not come outright and say this was eve-teasing at its worst, something like that was happening. At around eleven am or so, and with few women still out on their sprees, you could be in the minority in that male-dominated space. Not a pleasant experience at all. My innocent kid did not notice. But I felt that sort of capped my Linking Road experience. And convinced me that it has nothing of appeal to me, before, now or ever.

Colaba calls

2009-01-13T02:06:00.000-08:00

Sigh! I have been having the Colaba-itch. Completely keeping off South Mumbai since I shifted to back-of -beyond Kandivli, I have not been visiting it as often as I did, while working at Nariman Point and earlier at VT. Unlike Fashion Street and Linking Road and even Hill Road, which have largely metamorphosing into some sort of a low brow stuff (largely), Colaba has managed to retain its exoticism and exclusivity (in terms of what you get on its streets, I mean). So, since visiting it after the terror attack, I have lately begun to re-experience the Colaba craving. Never mind that Mcdonald there has no toilet, no seating place and the only toilet, shared by other shopkeepers is too seedy, soiled to be worth more than a line here. I feel most uncomfortable in this Mcdonald due to its pace, some sort of rest less energy that stampedes my enjoyment of the French Fries.
I love Colaba, never mind that is is full of pimps who keep propositioning to my husband, despite my domineering presence. Never mind the drug dealers hovering around, thinking my fair-skinned husband and daughter to be foreigners in search of a joint!! Since I look and talk and walk like a local I have never been subjected to this seedy attention. Last time, when my husband decided to walk his talk and took a national flag along the path covering those spots hit by the terror attack -- because it outraged him that some cowardly twerps from elsewhere exploited the openness of this city and used it just to vandalise its soul -- from VT onwards to Oberoi, , I walked beside him, to take off some of the attention he was drawing with his serious look and his huge flag:) I think he was also making some point about how a Muslim (I) and a Hindu (Him) could live together in peace, and love. But since I am embarrassed by such outward shows, I felt that having done my wifely duty I could leave him at some point, where his friends joined him. So, I shrugged him off at Churchgate (his friends joined him there) and moved to Colaba for some gemstone windowshopping. Had a blast. Till I tried to call my husband and his phone kept ringing and ringing. Standing off Cafe Mondegar I felt a bit lost, and felt stared at, in a strange way that can happen at such places, by people on the look-out for such things. Colaba is that sort of place: one time, safe. Other time, something creepy can crawl out.

Any case, this blog is about the Mario Miranda T-shirt I picked up at Mondegar, for around Rs 210. It is the Salaam Mumbai visual (see my side-bar), that typifies Miranda and Mumbai. I love it, though have not yet worn it. It has a nice line about beer and cheer. Yes, Mondegar is that sort of place. Nice food, limited menu but wholesome. Beer and some old music. You know what I mean:)

Ha ha, language issues

2009-01-11T09:53:00.000-08:00

The other day I had to give a speech at my complex. While some people came up to tell me it, in the usual nice way people have, that is was `inspiring', one vinegary person pointedly told the organiser the matra basha was being ignored by some people!! He meant me, of course. Sod, I am from Tamil Nadu. I speak passable Hindi and can be understood well enough. I am also suffering when the language comes out a bit wonky (because I am a linguistic freak and it hurts me more that a language rolls crudely off my tongue) but that is not due to my not trying. In childhood is when you really pick up the nice nuances of a language. If political leaders in my state had not played politics I would also be speaking great Hindi. But instead of appreciating that I can speak the language well enough perhaps not elegantly enough people still pick on me!! One school kid who (I was teaching yoga to that bunch) once told me that I `sounded horrid' when I speak Hindi. I don't think so at all -- but thanks to Bollywood actors, from Mehmood onwards, poking fun at our Tamil-accented Hindi is a big laff:) Any case, I will laff along -- all I can say I love all languages and I feel attempt must be made to speak all elegantlyand yes, regional languages must be given prominence because otherwise they will suffer greatly as future generations neglect them completely. Indian languages are beautiful and spiritual and each must be conserved and the only way one can do it long-term is to bring them in use in daily currency.

Coming to the language issue here, while the Shop boards names issue became big, the media generally ignored all the events happening in my part of town (Thakur village). Lots of shops got into real trouble, as seems to happen as a matter of routine here. In any case, following that, some shops have gone overboard and do not have any name in English -- the idea was to have the shop name in both languages I thought. See Garcia, the pizza guys, in the above photo:)

In Tamil Nadu, where also the language issue has long been politicised, everywhere you will find boards both in English and Tamil. That is because Tamil Nadu has international aspirations.

If any foreigner comes to Thakur village (surprisingly, quite a contingent lives here) I can imagine him looking at the Garcia board and wondering.... I mean, it does not even a small pizza or a food plate image to indicate what it is selling!! Fear, as they say, can be quite a key!

The low-cost gourmet restaurant

2009-01-08T07:59:00.000-08:00

Almost accidentally we walked into the Gourmet city restaurant. What a place to eat good food!! (It is inside In Orbit, first floor, off the home furnishing section of it). For one, it is quiet, far from the bustle, I-will-elbow-you-out-of-your-table buzz that hustles the Food Court in In Orbit. It is empty, because sadly except regulars to the gourmet shop (which most middle class types avoid for obvious reasons -- high end stuff, recession and all that) nobody probably knows of it.

I ordered a ravioli (Rs 100 only!!) with mushroom sauce (etc Rs 100, but divinely worth it) and my husband some pasta and we drooled. And I had a cactus tea infusion and he a genuine filter Capi and we drooled some more. It is has a great menu, covers a nice palate range, including Thai food, aloe vera punch, terrific shakes, etc. Am going to be visiting the place soon. Prices are very reasonable. Chefs look like they know their stuff. Food tastes pure, hot and really tasty. The tea came with a perfect tea-timer -- and I loved that nice little touch about it....
Off it, at counters around you get gourmet stuff from abroad -chocolates, cheeses, teas (I picked up a huge bundle -- from sweet rose, to mulethi to orange etc and lots of fusions:) -- I skirted the other sections. But my subconscious clock is ticking -- waiting for the moment when I am going to be back!

Where is this Gourmet Restaurant?

Inside In Orbit's Home Stop. Link Road. You cannot miss it!

Parking woes

2009-01-05T00:01:00.000-08:00

This is the lane near my home, off the Dream Park. As you can see, most of the lane's side are used for cars. This is a pretty common sight all over Mumbai just because the city planners are deliberately obtuse. I mean, even the BMC wants to build malls!! NOt car parks which is the need of the hour. Even the builders want to build malls and buildings (that, thanks to recession, nobody wants). Even purely on commericial terms all seem to be particularly moronic -- any financial nitwit will tell u the demand for car parks is more than for malls and flats. Yet, these seemingly money-making breed (BMC is the richest civic body in India) are so short-sighted.

In South MUmbai you may own a car for five lakhs or so. But pay parking fee deposit of Rs 1.5 crore. Is this for real? That too in some seedy, dilapidated compound wall?

In my own complex, the car park which cost Rs 75000 has now appreciated to Rs 3.5 lakhs (in seven years). Stilt parking costs Rs 7 lakhs, and still people are buying and begging to buy, though none are available for such rates. The car, as u guessed, is less than the parking space:)

And even as I throw such figures, the official secret is that all builders must provide car parks for free (ha ha!!!) and that is mandatory. That of course is a big joke. The builders won't provide car parks even for a fee, is what most residents find out. Only everybody colludes in this big laff:)

As abroad, rented parking slots is where the big money is. Clearly nobody is seeing that!

A dog's life: stray dogs in Mumbai

2008-12-26T03:16:00.000-08:00

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I noticed a peculiar thing and I have been noticing it for long: there are less stray dogs in South Mumbai than in the suburbs. When I went on that Sunday after the terrible terror attack, just spotted one in Colaba Causeway. In my part of town, there are is one for every ten persons living here. And I am not joking. I have allowed my cycle to rust than risk their barking run after me...

Mornings when I go out, I see packs run after school kids, snapping... I have been snapped at, by dogs in the parks... And in IC Colony, even seven years back, the packs used to terrorise scooter and autos, running manically after them. I have often spotted dogs mauled -- huge chunks of flesh off their nape -- by other dogs. It seems a constant shift in dog population, as new ones come from other suburbs, creates a vicious struggle for survival...

They -- the south-Mumbaikars who own the city -- will say that is because of overflowing garbage bins in the suburbs. Maybe.

Or could it be that the Sterilisation programme is not happening this part of town? I would really like to know.

I remember being intrigued when the freshly sprung NGOs offering to do the sterilisations charged Rs 750 to sterilise a dog..That was three-four years back. It is free for a man, why was so much being needed for an animal .. I wonder what these NGOs are charging now, for each dog?

Despite this humungous amount being offered, the NGOs would have some hassle or the other about doing the programme satisfactorily -- last I remember they wanted allotment of space where they could do the sterilisations...

Questions I would ask authorities that are meant to look after the stray problem :

How much funds have been allotted to Stray dog sterilisation?
How much utilised?
Give us the break-up areawise: allotments areawise -- each suburb for instance. More people vote from the suburbs than from the privileged South Mumbai. Yet we suburbanites get stick end of all such funding...
What is the cost for each dog sterilisation? Break-up of the cost..
Have u blacklisted non-performing NGOs...
How are allotments made to these so-called NGOs? What is the special skill they bring to this task?

Of course, the most important question is, sort of unrelated to this and yet related to all this: is there enough anti-rabies injections to save those who get bitten.
How many in Mumbai annually? 50,000 of which 25 or so are fatal..
I remember reading of a political type once running from pillar to post to get a rabies vaccine for his kin bitten by a stray: he could not. Then what of us simple mortals?

Welcome to some south Indian food..

2008-12-25T08:19:00.000-08:00

Mid-day had done a favorable food review of this restaurant. So favorable that my husband, from Cauvery's own shores, had been slurping about a visit since the weekend. The wait was worth it. Kutty's is genuine South Indian khanna, with a mix and match from Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Different flavors of rice: next time I am going to order that ghee rice with aromatic herbs...we had a tangy rasam and though I was just going to dip into it, my kid stole it from right under my nose and finished it off. Iddiyam with potato stew. My husband had sambar rice with avial. Different vadas(kheera or greens), even idlis -- some chettinad cuisine too, and coconuty kerala stews and olan... Nice prices too. And as I tell all, the worth of any restaurant can be judged by two things: one, of course, the food. Two, how well its loo is maintained. They rank Excellent on both fronts:)

One of the waiters from good, clean south felt a bit inhibited that the restaurant was surrounded by slums we did not tell him the TV stars live where he was pointing:) This is Mumbai man!! It is on Link Road... visit it if you like subtle flavors, clean food, smiley waiters, affordable menu, food on banana leaf, payasam as dessert, bamboo-wood Kerala decor -- it will work its magic on you...

Address and contact details:
266/2125 Motilal Nagar, No 1, Link Road, Goregaon West Mumbai 62
Phone Numbers: 65282645/28712089 /2059
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Bikram yoga in town:)

2008-12-24T08:35:00.000-08:00

The U.S. rolls royce yogi is in town, and setting up shop. It is good for us poor yoga teachers because it means there is going to a finer sense of discrimination now, as branded yoga gets a footing. There is too much mish-mash nonsense in Mumbai, more than any other city...

The cost of a Bikram Yoga routine: Rs 84,000 only.

But why is Bikram Yoga ads carrying a young BC's photo?

Maybe because of this?

I remember once Bharat Thakur telling me (while I interviewed him for the Mansworld magazine cover on yoga, which had photo-featured Deepika Mehta) that he trained only young yoga teachers because, as we all know, gods are young... :)
Well, SRK, Salman, Aamir, are you guys listening??