Why we stink

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...

Roadblocks or speed breakers

(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

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...

Watching a movie, in Mumbai

Free MySpace Animations!

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

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.

Security or threat?

Free MySpace Animations!

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...