On theater, spaces and seating

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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?

Off the railway station, Bandra

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...

Tch! Tch! Toilets in Mumbai stink:(

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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:)

Botox, I, and a big bad city:)

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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:)

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

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...

Voting and voters

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...

Horse is cheaper than a Nano here

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?

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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...

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?

Mumbai magical in the morning

(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.

Spit town

Was at a tehsildar's office to register my Leave and Licence agreement. And found that getting an agent to do things was the smooth experience, almost felt like I was dealing with a private company. Btw. (in Mumbai some private companies behave like they are government departments. It is all about us as a people, really!!) Any case, one thing that makes all groups -- government or private look alike is the spit stained wall...

And this was like a decoration which started from the base of the staircase and went up all the way to the floors which opened into the office. Fresh, red colour too. And right under the Do Not Spit written in BOLD RED LETTERS,in Marathi.
Welcome to Mumbai!

Mumbai snapshots:)

Spotted this amazing little note on this cement chair in a middle class society and thought how Mumbaiya it was:)
One chair in the simple housing complex, lined with small shops. On it, this note: `Donated by so-and-so. Only for Members.' What happens, I wondered, if anybody who is not a member sits on it? And I wondered what had provoked the donor to make that point -- an uninvited congregation of outsiders? Or is it some panga (Mumbaiya, for squabble or tussle) with the shop-owners? Who can guess. In any case, it was enough to warrant immortality, along with the donor's name:)

Todays' snapshot:
Some more things that stand out from the terrible events. Some questions that is bothering me:

• Two important TV Channels behaving like policitians they condemn. One TV channel sniggers, continuously, about people (socialites, it says, with a nasty, biting lash) who are holding candles to demonstrate solidarity... It continues, throughout its debate, on this gesture of candle holding ... And I could see where that was coming from, this nastiness: so I wished to say, `Shut Up' ! ... Because though I liked your coverage a lot, I think you were behaving just like those grand-standing politicians. You were not attacking the `socialites' but your rival channel. And that was cheap: because a lot of people who held the candle that night were not all there for the limelight -- that is a cheap assessment from you -- a moral judgement that you as TV anchor were not entitled to make....
• I wonder how after the terrorist hijacked a CG vessel, nobody in the concerned departments caught on to the fact... You would think an alert would have been sounded if you lost contact with one of your vessels? No radio contact?
  
• Or, since I do not have the details, let us assume that the terrorists maintained a false contact with the CG control through the navigator, whom they later killed. In a hijack case, you would think the CG would have a code that the navigator could have used to alert them of this danger... Was such a thing in place...? Even debit cards have these codes now, that you can punc in when a robber tries to make you use it, at gunpoint....
  
• I remember reading that after the mobile contact with Sabina Sehgal (TOI journalist) was lost for seven hours, it was tracked to Raigad. What is the meaning of that sentence? No journalist finds it worth to check that it? That small sentence has been worrying me a lot....