POTHOLED

Pothole????? Nay I will call them craters. You find them all over Mumbai. Their count increases during monsoon. Actually they are found in abundance all over Mumbai, but it's during the monsoon that they seriously start multiplying. Their life cycle is great. They have a birth date and beyond that they just keep living.  What dies is a part of you every time your car, cab, cycle, auto or your FOOT goes into it.  You want to scream out but can't because as a mumbaikar your never dying attitude will be questioned. You spot them from a distance....you slow down your car....then just at the last minute you realize it's bigger that the surface area covered by your front tyre.  You have almost failed the test of avoiding them. But you still are not ready to give up...the never give up Mumbaiyah attitude raises its head adamantly. You swerve your car and there,  you hit against the car overtaking you. If it's not the doctors bill from the backache you got by bumping in and out of potholes, that makes a dent in your pocket, the dent in the car you hit surely will do.

It's more of a mission to spot them during rains when they are filled to the brim with rain water.  They are actually placed to keep your alerts high while driving. A way administration has figured out to keep a check on your driving. You can be a little agressive and slap a Public Interest Litigation against the administeration. But that too falls on deaf ears. Loyalty runs in our blood that's why year after year after year the contracts are given to the same people who can do a better shoddy work each time. They too learn from experience.

So now, with the BMC unabashedly making true statements that they won't be able to fill all the pot holes before the monsoon, even with mud or tree branches, The Road Ahead Certainly Seems To Be Full OF Potholes.

To Moustache or Not To Moustache?

"Why are Indian men so much in love with their moustache?" I am sure you think that it is my teenage daughter speaking. Nope, that is my teenage son. Yesterday while we were driving down to the local store to buy my weekly provisions I don't know what made him blurt that out. But it immediately took me back to the times when I was a teenager and had taken fancy to men with moustache. My brother would laugh at me and I would wonder what the fuss is all about. Then as I kept growing, my liking for men with moustache kept growing in the opposite. My apologies to all my mous'tached friends, but the fact may be that I am not even aware of them supporting one. I won't say I started disliking men with moustache but just that when I looked at them I would think how can they support it without any problems on the upper lip right below the sensitive nose.....

One has to credit the fact that they have had an evolution of their own kind. They are in  all sorts of shapes and sizes too. Right from the huge ones that find a mention in the Guinness Book of Records to the tiniest ones. When I talk of the tiniest one, Hitler comes in mind. This moustache sits right there, in the cleft of the lip making a person look so Hitler like. To make it feel better let's say so Charlie Chaplin like. A search on google tells me that it's called the toothbrush moustache. Can you believe it, that there was  a moustache spoon for mous'tached people to drink soups during the Victorian England? That's what Wikepedia informs me. Here are two links one should visit. One brags about the goodness of the hairy fashion statement, and how to maintain and take care of them, http://www.nowthatsnifty.com/2009/05/great-moustaches-and-moustache-types.html#.T5ws1cT9NH8 while the other  http://www.cracked.com/blog/a-guide-to-the-modern-moustache/ talks about the ones which should be banned. My personal favorite is the second link. But then whatever.... I never wished to talk about the types of moustaches, I was just retrospecting as to how can people support such a thing in such a sensitive part below the nose. Specially the real bushy ones.

Observing the movement of a moustache while the person supporting them is eating or talking is a pass time on its own. Watching those with the thicker ones is more ticklish to one's heart. Then when the men supporting a huge burly moustache gulp down a glass full  of milk or butter milk and have it smeared all over their moustache.....the way it is licked clean eeeeeew....

Not to forget, that there are people like our own Hindi film stars like Anil Kapoor and Jackie Shroff, who look the best in their trademark moustache. (I abhor saying Bollywood because I find that name very downmarket). In fact these two people without their trademark moustaches come across as if they are going through an identity crisis. 

So can the verdict be that the problem is not the person supporting the moustache, but the shape of the moustache? That's why maybe I support the second link. Ban some keep some. Can't be more judgemental than this. My dad too supported the toothbrush and the pencil moustache, but that was long before I was born. I fortunately saw him clean shaven. Thank you daddy. Your sweet kisses otherwise would have been so prickly.....

"To Moustache or not to moustache that is the question."

Can We Be More Considerate

Last week I struck Gold. Watched two good movies back to back. First Vicky Donor, and then I decided to go and catch upon Pan Singh Tomar. I had to struggle my way through the early morning traffic jam, to go to The Hub in Goregaon. That theatre has been a blessing whenever I have been late to nose out  a good movie. From  experience I have learnt that a delay of only two weeks too can make me go galloping to The Hub, to catch up on a movie. While all the major multiplexes shuffle movies within a few weeks, this theatre always has the worth watching movies running for quite some time.

Pan Singh's life  made me think... about the fact that how circumstances make a completely different person of us. Deep within, while we remain the same entity, we keep weaving our life around the challenges thrown at us. Then one day when we reflect back, we realize we are not the person that we were. Kept thinking of the callous policeman who was just not ready to carry out his duty.  I wonder as humans, why can't we relate to someone's problems. What makes people do what they do? Why do we carry so much of burden of selfishness within us?  How can someone who is supposedly a caretaker of the people  behave so callously. Why do they step out of their institutions and wipe clean from their conscience, the oaths they had taken during their training. Policemen and doctors, should be our support system at the time of crisis.  How many doctors have the sympathy or the guts to take in patients who deserve immediate medical attention and attend to them with urgency and  save their lives. A helpless patient and his family members are made to run from one hospital to other till they can't defy death any more.  Do these doctors, even for once at the end of the day think as to what must have happened of the patient they turned away during the course of the day?  Patients are lying in the wards awaiting treatment and there are no doctors available. This still happens after years of planning by the government to provide more medical aid to the citizens. Believe me it was easier to feel helpless twenty years ago, because we knew there was genuine scarcity of doctors.

To think of a time when every citizen's medical care will be a responsibility of the government, is still a far off dream, because the harbingers of the foundation of the country are busy collecting the who's who of the society in the Rajya Sabha. For all you know next they might even come out with the idea of a Madam Tussauds. Where..? Ahem, ahem...give it your best guess, it's easy.

This Vicky is Progressive

I am just back after watching the much talked about movie Vicky Donor.  A Fabulous film. An extremely delicate topic handled with such maturity, that I didn't feel awkward watching it with family. And I can say the same thing about the others too, in the audience.  It is wholesome entertainment and a progressive film. Oh how I wish, that the count of good hindi films is as good as Vicky's sperm count.  At least I will have more choices of  Hindi films to watch and not keep running back to Hollywood. 

I won't be grumpy in my post today, coz I have had a content Sunday. The girl who cooks at my home had taken a day off, so I was supposed to work in the kitchen. Now that is one thing I love doing. So obviously the lunch had to be something other than the routine fair. Prawn Risotto, that was great as lunch. Italy is one place where I want to take a culinary trip to. These trips are the latest craze. One gets to travel and even learn the local dishes from the chefs. Now what's better than that for a foodie like me! So the next time when I prepare Risotto, I will know how close my dish is to the original.

After a Sunday spent contentedly, I am off to prepare a cup of peppermint tea and retire for the day, to be ready to face a great week ahead.....

Goodnight and vedervi presto.

Will Miss Famous Studios

My older brother has been there looking for work, then I went there looking for a job, my brother's son too went there and dropped his CV at one of the studios about 3years ago. Unfortunately his children will only hear of it or read about it in nostalgia evoking articles.  Famous Studios, Mahalaxmi.  It has been a landmark. The first time I went there, I was about 21 years old. I wasn't prepared for the maze I was stepping into. I couldn't find my way out. Kept on going round and round. At last,  I went back to the office, where I had dropped my CV.  The sweet lady at the reception was not amused at all at my plight. She smiled and asked the office boy to show me the way. The boy guided me to the stairs and asked me whether I wanted him to come down, to the gate. I am sure he used to come across lot of dimwits like me. By now I was feeling so stupid that I refused any further help and managed to find my way out from there.  I would have still been feeling foolish about that incident, had it not been that many years later when I happened to be there for some work, I led another lost soul to the gate.

Generations after generations of film fraternity and ad world  has stepped into the building which has been a landmark since 1946. So many tales of the past must the walls of the studio be holding close to them. Euphoria of the citizens of a country moving from being a colony to an independent nation must have unfurled around it. They all will be lost in the rubble of the building to make way to a new structure. I just hope whatever comes there is not a grotesque structure of steel and glass, something most of the builders in our country have taken fancy to. We find it easy to copy what the whole world is doing.  We don't want to pull out anything out of the hat. There are structures of glass all over the city which I personally feel do not go well with the heat of the city. Mostly these structures are so ill maintained that there are layers and layers of dust settling on them, making them extremely dirty to look at. But they are cropping up like weeds all over the city.

I am ready to hold the address Famous Studios, Dr. E Moses Road Mahalaxmi, as a sweet memory close to my heart and make way to a new structure only if the new structure makes me look up at it in awe.  Just like years ago when I landed in this vibrant city, I loved the view of the sea from Mahim Causeway. Even today I love that view with the added incentive of admiring the Worli Sea Link sprawled across the sea. As it is last year we bid adieu to many legends of the film world.....similarly with a heavy heart we will bid adieu to this legendary building too......

Life Post Auto Strike

Am back.  We all survived the auto strike.  Moreover, without complaining, we are shelling out more money for our auto rides. My son just walked in looking depressed because of the amount he paid for his auto ride back home from his office.  And I learnt a great way to force my employer into a pay hike. But what worries me is what my friends were discussing.  While some have posted it as their status messages too. That's the fact that the streets were so empty during the strike and they enjoyed driving. Hope the citizens don't get addicted to the regular on off strikes, and decide that they don't want auto's at all like downtown Mumbai. But surely we are too lazy to rebel to any inconvenience. We'd rather lap up the inconveniences in our stride and be the martyrs.

 A day after the strike was over, the streets were  chaotic again. Every one was in a hurry. Impatience and agression is regular on Mumbai roads and as the temperature in the city goes up, more and more agression sets in. People don't have the time and patience to let the others pass by. The Zebra crossings are mute spectators to the commotion. At New Link Road, there was a traffic jam and I thought, 'maybe its a nakabandi'.  But when I reached the tip of the bottleneck, I realized,  a private taxi and our trademark yellow and black cab had bumped into each other.  Surprisingly, the drivers had all the patience to let their vehicles be in the middle of the road, step out in the blazing sun, and argue right there, inconveniencing a whole lot of traffic...... "Nothing can happen of my city", I thought and moved on, only to be proved wrong soon.

At Juhu, near Marriott, once more I was crawling in the traffic. This time the driver of a private taxi must have been in a tearing hurry. So rather than driving further ahead of Hometown cafe and taking a U turn, he decided to drive on the wrong side of the road. With passengers in his taxi, he like a hero, tried to cut across the road and maneuver his car through the opening near Marriott and move to the other side. Poor soul encountered a hot headed citizen, who not only obstructed his path by his car, but got off and gave him a piece of his mind. In the centre of the road stuck in a strange position the red faced taxiwallah was not only forced to gulp down the piece of advice, but was also made to reverse his taxi and take the right path. His plan to save may be 3 minutes backfired and he ended up wasting everybody's time. Oh how I wish I was as courageous as that citizen......

Illegal strikers will face six months of jail...For that I think first the government has to construct more of jails....because taking into consideration the kind of strikes that happen in my country, I am sure they need lots of space to accomodate the number of strikers. But then what with the kind of law and order that only one out of 198 auto drivers responded to RTO's show cause notice....?

Congress has lost in delhi.....Wasn't that bound to happen? Is there anything to analyse about it? I would rather analyse the fact that why in the mornings when I sit down to read my newspaper, do I feel that I am holding a crime tabloid? To all those innocent lives lost either due to a negligent governing body or by the waywardness of a strayed citizen, May their Souls Rest in Peace.

Vegetable prices are set to soar. That is what the newspapers tell me. Reason : scarcity of water in the rural areas. Since the time I have read this news I am trying to figure out when was the last time the prices were stable. They have only been soaring up in the skies, be it because of the scarcity of water, the rising prices of petrol, the strike by the transport department or closer home, my bhajiwala deciding to take leave for two days. The third day he comes back with prices of his own because in his own right, he too has to make up for the lost two days.....

On the other hand what goes up should never come down. So the prices keep soaring and we keep on buying the veggies without flinching a bit because Indians today can afford anything and everything. The bhajiwalas know this very well, that's the reason they have different price slabs for different areas. What may be selling for Rs 32/- a kilo in Malad, will have a price of Rs 40/- a kilo in the more upmarket Lokhandwala or Versova. Upmarket because these areas boast of addresses of many stars, and that's what gives it the tag of being upmarket. And people talk about equality...???  If that is not enough to irritate you, then go ahead and pick up your phone and place an order for home delivery of some veggies. Try asking the bhajiwala the price of any vegetable...there will be a second's pause and you will be asked sweetly, "Kaun si building bhabhi?" (which building?). The price quoted will be according to the name of your building. You fume...! Believe me, that's all you can do, because no one around you is cribbing. Well, I go a step ahead and wish for a rebirth of Mrs. Indira Gandhi.

Today being a Sunday, you must have certainly replenished your veggies.  Primarily because the city is going to wake up to another auto strike tomorrow.  By the way, by now most of us must have gotten ourselves well versed in facing this challenge, that looms large every couple of months. As a money making idea, I was thinking,  somebody who has a sound financial background and good contacts, can invest in a good amount of Nano's and on such strike days can just bring them on the road. Given the regularity with which the auto's take a break, I am sure he/she will mint enough money (even if it happens only twice a year), that he can go on a vacation for the rest of the time.

While two issues, I feel are enough to crib about for today. I would say good-night for now. And while u brace yourself up for a busy Monday, minus the trademark auto's on the streets, let me ponder over the fact as to how a quake in Indonesia can damage a flyover in Lalbag.......

Will come cribbing back next weekend.

Summer has set into my city. The heat is getting unbearable with each passing day. So today morning when I stepped out for my walk, I was taken aback by the whiff of fresh air which filled my lungs with the pure smell of morning dew and greenery. Hurriedly I took a few deep breaths, so sure that by the end of it the freshness will be gone. But fortunately I  enjoyed it for another 20 minutes and felt blissed. My thoughts immediately wandered off to the times when I used to go visit my son when he was studying in Woodstock School, Mussoorie a couple of years back.  24/7....yes 24/7 I could fill my lungs with the pure fresh air. Supposedly some years back my area in Mumbai too, was less crowded and there was no dust. I could keep the windows open ALWAYS. Didn't need the AC's. The maintenance guy would finish his job in ten minutes and would crib that we didn't use the AC much. But today if I keep the windows open for even 10 mins, I have a fine layer of dust all over my furniture. My heart yearns for the blissful days lost to the  agressive  development and the continous interior re-decoration going on in people's home every year. By March end I feel the need for AC's in my home. Sadly, my thoughts wander back to Mussoorie and I realise that few years from now I won't be able to fill my lungs with fresh air in Mussoorie too. I am pretty sure about this, taking into consideration the various changes the beautiful hill town is going through with so many brands coming in and the quality of the tourist getting rowdier. The town seems to be developing, but, I wonder at what cost?

Development should transform a place in a way that life gets easier and healthier for its inhabitants. It doesn't seem so when I pick up the morning newspapers and go through the statistics of pollution and the diseases setting in. The city should be getting more appealing to the eyes. On the contrary, the Metro construction is not even done and there are posters pasted at many strategic points already. I miss what Mumbai was and looked ten years ago. But then, its name sounded good as well.

When it comes to sounds, today morning at the age of 44 I wondered if I should go for a phonetics class in English. The afterthought was a result of a discussion with my son on how to pronounce Chris Evans' (Captain America in The Avengers) name. (Well he is from Woodstock school and has an accent to his English, which he has not given up even after two years of being back in Mumbai and knows how to pronounce all the English names) I pronounced it ee-vans...but he corrected it to be eh-vans like..... There was a heated argument and I tried to support with various examples that Eva makes it to be pronounced as  ee-vans. As a dedicated soul to the rightfulness of English and to prove that he is correct, in the heat of the argument he too excitedly put forth an example saying, "it might be at some places but Eva (he was talking about Eva in Wall E) was called eeva and so it is eeeeeeee......  errrrrrr.... Eh-vans." There was a pause and then we both could only burst out laughing .....

After contemplating for a couple of years I finally sat down today, to write this blog, because I felt my frustrations  as a Mumbaikar were innumerable and I needed to vent them out. I feel sad at the way the city is shaping up, but still my heart wants to believe, that after maybe about ten years of development, it will turn out to be beautiful and at par with major cities of the world. That's the undying attitude the city imparts to its residents.

I'll be back soon with few more frustrations. You too are invited to vent them out and let's discuss them and throw them out of our systems. Maybe that way we can cool ourselves off a little this summer...