tanaji podcast

tanaji: meriku bombay bahut pyara hai

This was a frisky conversation. It maybe because of the way it started, with the misfire. We became accomplices in recreating the energy  that wasn’t recorded at the beginning. Capital punishment, Kasab, Osama Bin Laden, the response of the USA, love marriage, the natal family’s responsibility towards an unhappy or endangered married daughter. Tanaji and I don’t agree on anything but the discussion is thoughtful and friendly. I had no ready answer for the point he made that keeping political prisoners, or terrorists, in jail creates the vulnerability to hijacks or kidnappings where the prisoner is the barter. Here is the answer: This is no justification for capital punishment.

Tanaji is a 12th pass, HSC. He came to Bombay with the hope of a good job. But his real dream was to become a mechanic and open a garage. He took a course and got a certificate. He tried to open his garage, he found a place, but there was no money so success nahin hopaya. He can fix engines, he can fix cars. He says that if he had a garage or two today his life would be different. He might not have to be in a taxi. He might have a small flat of his own. The ‘haves’ in this country, say that their success was earned on merit and their honest sweat. Metaphorical sweat to be sure. It is hard to work up a sweat between the AC home to the AC car to the AC office, mall, store, restaurant and back. Out at the boundary, away from the pitch, the field looks different. It is full of khaddas and divets and strewn with pebbles and the ball takes these funny hops away, in random directions, this ball of opportunity. It has always seemed to be that amongst the people with privilege, and I include myself, even the most mediocre of us can find success in the world. Not so the rest, even for the most modest of dreams. (1 min 40 sec)

outtake peheli ka kwahish

While we were talking Tanaji got a phone call. It was one of his regular customers that calls to book his taxi sometimes for his morning ride. A short trip in Vile Parle to somewhere in Vile Parle, but it is near Tanaji’s home and it starts his day well. Many of the taxi drivers have these regular customers. Even today, or perhaps even more so today, in this time of Meru and Mega and Easy cabs. (2 min 33 sec)

outtake phone call regular customer

So what about this conversation of ours, especially about our daughters, our endangered daughters returning home. I still think that Tanaji was making a majak with me, he was kidding me, when he said let them burn her. Wait til his daughter, the one who he speaks of so fondly, the one who is so smart and is showing so much promise, leaves his home to join another. Hopefully his patriarchal posturing will melt away. Adjustments are made to the cultural rigidities that attempt to deny women the safety of return.  I only hope that his daughter, unlike so many other dutiful daughters, will realise this instead of enacting upon herself that ultimate act of hopelessness. Or stay silent and suffer, so as not to give tension to her parents, until her susaral log enact that ultimate act upon her.

In this conversation, the taxi union had just called off a strike. The government agreed to take on the idea of increasing fares and the unions. Today both auto and taxi unions are calling for strikes. The taxi union had declared 2 May for the Maharastra wide strike. The government responded by agreeing to form a new taxi trade fare committee as the union had claimed that the old Hakim committee formula was 15 years old and outdated. As of yet, the strike has not be called off. I certainly support their demand for higher fares, both the taxis and the autos. Especially the autos. In my latest round of travels, namely Coimbatore, Cochin, Chennai. Jaipur and Bangalore, our Bombay rickshaws are the cheapest. and rigged meters or not, at least they down the meter and return the change unasked. CNG is going up, food prices are going up, inflation is holding steady at just under double digits (they say). People need to eat. They need not to be making less money than they were last year or last week.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

kader usman mujawar podcast

kader usman mujawar: yeh bijnes mila apenko, aur kya

Mujawar Bhai’s son has had difficulty getting employment. ‘When they hear a Mian Bhai name, they tell us kal ao. But don’t put that on the internet, this thing we are discussing.’ After I turned off the recorder, I asked him again for permission to leave that in the recording. He was non-committal, but had not said yes. During the edit I left it in and when i finished, I called him. My Hindi is good, but not good enough to explain on the phone, what the internet actually is and what a podcast actually is and who hears it and what can or can’t happen, to someone who doesn’t participate in this online world. I had Jamid Ali call him to explain and answer any questions. Afterward I called Mujawar Bhai and he said yes, leave it in. He was worried that someone would hear it and he would somehow be in trouble. This is where we are in this place in this city at this time. Here is the truth, a truth that is experienced, and a truth that is known to many. But to say it out into the public sphere, is fraught with unease and  foreboding.  This is a double weight, the weight of the experience and the weight of the silencing.

I’m interested in the journeys that the drivers take through the city. Where were they before I got in their cab. What are the routes they have traced through the city through the day? I love maps and I imagine an interactive map tracing our route layered over our conversation and photos. Our route and our words, entwined and made visible, the verbal tread marks of our interplay.  Photos, video clips, words, streets, locations. Someday maybe. Any ideas are welcome. In the meantime, here is a little outtake of what brought Mujawar Bhai to Yellow Gate. (46 sec)

outtake yellowgate

A few days before I met Mujawar Bhai, I was at Opera House, trying to buy 1/2′ steel colour radium strips that are the base for my steering wheel wrappings, over which I wrap that brightly neon coloured plastic rope that you see on some taxi steering wheels. The shop I go to was out so instead I bought some 1″ naurangi and a cutter to cut it into 1/2″. Even though we were at Yellow Gate, I asked Mujawar Bhai to go to Gans Gali to see if a radiumwala might be there. When we reached, he asked a taxi driver leaning against a taxi. This outtake is the conversation. (1 min 27 sec)

outtake looking for radium

We did go to Saat Raasta but the store was closed. Below is the a strip of the 1.2″ steel colour and the 1″ naurangi and the cutter.

While we were talking and driving, one of those large Pajaro cars that sit so high, came fast at us from a street that entered from our left. It was clearly one of those moves to intimidate us into stopping so it could make its right turn across our path. Mujawar Bhai didn’t even blink. I asked him about it.

outtake bada gadi k dadagiri

Mujawar Bhai was in Bombay in 1992-1993 during the riots. Whenever I ask a driver – and I ask every driver who has been in Bombay that long- all I say is 92-93. They know what I am asking about. It has left a mark, it scathed this city and all you have to name is those years.

outtake 92-93

Look closely, you will see me taking his photo, reflected in his glasses.

The most delightful thing happened. Anish Kothari, who has left comments on the blog and with whom I have corresponded, wrote me an email volunteering to translate the podcast into English. This is  a true gift from him. I have wanted both translation into English and transliteration in Hindi. I asked Anish to write a little paragraph on himself so that people can get to know him and his presence on the internet. This is what he wrote:  ‘Anish recently returned from Mumbai where he had many interesting conversations with taxi and auto drivers. You can read his blog or follow him on Twitter‘. You can also thank him. I’m thanking him over and over.  Don’t miss his blog. Its very thoughtful and it has some wonderful images. So click here to read the English translation of the podcast. Its nice if you can follow along to the audio so you can hear the nuances of voice.

People who follow these taxi conversations often ask me to broach subjects with the drivers. I’m quite happy to do so because it brings in fresh ideas and openings into the exchanges. One person brought up this white uniform-khakhi uniform division, this differentiator that signals a place in a hierarchy. And then this article.  Sometimes people request questions that transgress the delicate boundaries of congruity and decorum. I am a woman. The driver is a man. The taxi encloses us in a private intimate space with only a seat back between us, breached by my arm and the recorder. We are talking of his life and I am trying to build trust. So when we talk of passengers kissing in the backseat or safe sex, there is a sweet chasteness in the words, as if we are balancing between danger and rectitude. Instead I can post this, a wonderful article by Ally Gator in Timeout where he explores in full those areas I can not.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

sheshnath tripathi podcast

sheshnath: anne ke bad yeh samjho ke bhago bhago bhago

It is a given in Bombay that you don’t stop to help an accident victim or involve yourself as a witness to a violence or a crime or anything to do with the police because you will be entangled forever in the court cases or possibly become a suspect yourself. People will look away, they walk away and then maybe stand at a distance and watch. And I’m not counting the famous cases where men didn’t come to the aid of  women who were being sexually assaulted and raped in public, in front of them, in the general car of a train. Sheshnath has a different idea of what it takes to be a citizen, which includes intervention, protection and bearing witness. (55 sec)

outtake citizenship

This next outtake is a long one but its interesting. Organic farmers’ markets have started appearing on weekends in different parts of the city. I have never gone because they felt like an implant from elsewhere that was being grafted onto a city that teemed with markets already. I knew that urea and DAT were used on wheat along with gober composted in a raari. Without urea, the new seed types don’t produce much. What I wasn’t seeing, wasn’t wanting to see, was the extensive use of herbicides and pesticides.  We speak here about farming today, on his 10 bighas and what he grows and what he uses and his reasoning, this tradeoff between a good harvest and using poisons.  Its sad. I love bhatawaa. (4 min 7 sec)

outtake kheti

Shethnath doesn’t like cricket, he doesn’t watch films and here is what he did on Holi. You can see where I am going with this. (47 sec)

outtake holi

Sheshnath first settled in Mulund and then Malad and now he lives in a room in Andheri East, a 10×20 room, with his wife and two children. He speaks of moving back to Gorakhpur but his children are in good schools, good private schools for which he pays tuition that leaves him in this 10×20 room. I imagine that his home in his village is much larger, with a rasoi, a private area room where women sit, a public area room where male visitors sit, an aangan inside and a place to sit outside where people passing come to sit with him for while, or yell a greeting as they pass. The trade-offs of leaving a village and moving to a city like Bombay. You leave behind space and family and community and hopefully in exchange you gain money for the present  and for the future, an education for your children. But the sadness of Sheshnath was that when he had a chance for a home of his own here, he didn’t take it. (1 min 28 sec)

outtake room and rent

All of you in Bombay, when you go out today, of the first 10 taxis you see, how many of them are fiats? I’d say, unless you are at Maratha Mandir, 5 were fiats and 5 were a new vehicle. The inexorable is relentless and changing slowly the city. Sheshnath knows that and though he has 10 years left before his taxi will be cancelled, he is going to buy a new vehicle soon. He says mehsoos hota when passengers get into the new vehicles instead of his fiat. But other changes to kaali-peeli have been proposed: 7-seaters, call centres, GPS. We discuss there. (1 min 53 sec)

outtake new taxi ideas

Taxis have been in the news. On 27 October it was the 100 year anniversary of taxis on the streets of Bombay. DNA wrote an article that, though it didn’t go into the history much, was very nice nonetheless. Other news is quite so laudatory. RTO in it extreme silliness had decided to change the colour  from kaali-peeli to well, they weren’t sure, but in this article it seems that the transport minister, Mr. Vikhe-Patil likes peaches and cream. The final decision however, rests with the MMRTA comprising bureaucrats from the department and officials from the RTO. This makes me very sad, this erasing of kaali-peeli. I can’t seem to work up enough cynicism or jaded worldliness to be able to smile wryly, shake my head sagely and move on.

Here are some happier links. A very nice article in Mid-day on Meter Down with a photo of Jamid Ali and me, and little side bar quotes and photos with Junaid and Anil Chauhan.  It also references a conference at India Cultural Lab called Urban Reimagination, put together by Paresh Sahani at which I spoke about migration and Bombay taxi drivers. The Facebook page has photos and videos. I was also interviewed on the Tiffin Talk show on Dabba Radio that is hosted by Richard Thane. My interview is here and Dabba Radio is here.

Sitting in the back seat reaching over with my little digital recorder while the driver watches the road, negotiating the traffic and talking with me. This is what it looks like.

A short note on why its taken me so long to post here and release a podcast. The nature of my job that pays the rent has intensified and has me traveling quite often, throughout India, for weeks at a time. I’ve been finding it hard to keep up with my heart’s work. I’ve gotten more used to this travel now and it doesn’t leave me so depleted and wanting to just read or see my friends. I’ve already got another conversation to start editing and I’m committed to keep talking to the drivers, blogging and podcasting as best I can.

so, til next time.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

idris podcast

idris: kwahish ek hi madam ke bas, uparwala apna imaan ke saath khatma kare

Idris lives in Dharavi. In the podcast we discuss the Dharavi redevelopment plans. In the outtake below we have a difference of opinion about compensation for those that will be project affected. We also have different levels of faith, both in the promises made and in the intentions behind the project. But I don’t live in Dharavi. But he is not in danger of ‘resettlement’.  (2 min 14 sec)

outtake dharavi discussion with differences

Idris owns his flat along with his brothers. They booked and bought it about 8 years ago for Rs1.8L. Today it would be 40L. All the brothers worked for a time in Saudi. If they hadn’t, they probably wouldn’t have been able to buy a flat. Not even in Dharavi eight years ago. Their 570 sq ft piece of solidity. Solidity is difficult to purchase on a worker’s salary. Solidity is difficult to come by here in our Bombay for people whose family home is or was elsewhere. Solidity, a place of one’s own, and in his case, a feeling of safety. (1 min 20 sec)

outtake idris’ flat

Idris thinks that the problem is that our wants have increased. We used to be content with only having two or three sets of clothes. True, today there is more to buy, we want more, and living demands more wrap-around accouterments. But prices have gone up more than our ability to earn. When Idris made rs90/day, ghee cost rs30/kilo. Now he takes home on average rs300/day but ghee costs rs300/kilo. He used to earn 3 kilos a day driving taxi. Now he earns only one. The outtake below talks about the price of real estate in Dharavi and his earnings, then and now. (1 min 5 sec)

outtake rocketing real estate

One night I was coming back from Pune and I got down from the bus in Sion and took a rick back home. We went through Dharavi and I took this video of the street that Idris lives on. Just as we were getting to Idris’ building, at that T junction, a bus pulled up along side, blocking the view. I would like to shoot more of the streets that we journey on as we talk. But I am holding the recorder and even more so, if I turn away from the rhythms of our conversation, I am turning away from the small connections being created.

Idris has four daughters all married and two sons, both of whom are in Saudi working. In this outtake he speaks of his daughters and his sons. (1 min 3 sec)

outtake daughters and sons

I have yet to hear a driver praise the union. You won’t hear it here. (1 min 36 sec)

outtake union and taxi cancellations

Before I get into any taxi, I explain what I am going to do, ask questions, which questions, record, take photos. It isn’t until later as we are rolling along, am I sometimes asked why I am doing it and what will I do with it. This is how the conversation went with Idris. (14 sec)

outtake internet

When I got into the taxi, Idris got a phone call. This is a video of us driving down the Chembur street in evening traffic, one hand on the steering wheel, one hand on the phone.

The cancelled taxis are sold for scrap at Do Tanki in Chor Bazaar. Seva Lal got Rs12,000 and Rafiq got about the same. I was there last week buying old taxi fiat steering wheels. I have been there many times buying wheels, buying old taxi rear view mirrors but I have never seen it so full of parts. The dukan ka seth I buy from (the one with all the radiators in the beige shirt) who deals in old fiat parts said yes, there is lots of maal, lots of parts because of all the cancelled taxis, but there were less buyers also now with so many less fiats on the road. I took this video. The noise you hear in the background is the hammering of cars into parts. This is where the taxis go. (when was the last time you saw a water carrier like this? another once commonplace sight that is slowing becoming absent until you are surprised to see one)

Taxis are in the news again. This time it is because they are now going to be radio dispatched from call centres. The union has agreed. I guess they are trying to keep up with Meru. I am a bit confused as to which ones will be included in this new scheme, the new ‘yellow’ taxis? the new vehicles? and who will run the call centre? Read about it here and here.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

Heros Gallery

Talking about kaali-peeli, in the last episode, Mohammad Khan, I link to a DNA article about painting the taxis yellow as some kind of upliftment to our city. In todays HT is an article about the same thing. It is supposed to be all completed in phases by June 2010. The article states that they want to give the taxis a distinctive look. Right now they are only iconic – one of the icons of this city. Say kaali-peeli and everyone knows you mean the taxis. Kaali-peeli entered the vernacular of this city decades ago. Read it and weep.

peeli not kaali peeeli HT 29 dec

Am working on the edit for the next episode. Idris. 25th episode. Watch this space.

mohammad khan podcast

mohammad khan: panch chhe rupiya mein kitna khasakta tha

Tur dal is Rs115/kilo. Tomater is Rs40/kilo. kanda/piyaz/onion are Rs18/kilo. one small bunch of kothmir/dhaniya is Rs5. Bhindi is Rs80/kilo. a kela/banana is Rs2. So what if cell phone rates have gone down and SMS is cheaper. What are people eating? How are people eating. We used to think of dal/roti as a staple, a fall back, the food of the masses. Or a roti and an onion. The only way to make dal now to keep within a budget is half the dal and double the pani. I was at MTNL the other day and the woman there told me she has stopped having people come home.  In the outtake below Mohammad Khan talks about mangai. (28 sec)

outtake mangai tur ka dal

We went up Ambedkar Rd, over the Byculla Bridge, out Saat Raasta to Moses Rd. You hear me tell him to take Tulsi Pipe. Its a good view and I want to track the changes in the skyline, the ‘progress’ of the buildings emerging from where Jupiter and Elphistone Mills used to be. Below are photos of Ambedkar Rd, just before the Byculla Bridge.

My father always taught me economics by asking how long it takes to earn my do roti. What Mohammad Khan is saying is that he used to eat for 5-6 rupees what today costs Rs 30-35. He earns at the end of the day almost three times as much as he did when he started driving taxi but his costs have gone up much more. If in 10 hours he earned 80 rupees it took him about 40 minutes to earn dinner. If in 10 hours he now earns 250 rupees, its taking him an hour and about 10 minutes to earn dinner. And I didn’t ask him about room rent.

We started talking about 26/11 but the conversation quickly turned to driving a private vehicle. He drove for a man from his village that does bhangaar and has an Ambassador. He was paid Rs600/mo. This is the same amount the Sevalal earns driving a Honda City for the wife of the couple that live in the luxury highrise.  (1 min 15 sec)

outtake driving private

There was an article in DNA with the headline ‘Mumbai Taxis May Soon Turn Yellow’. You can read it here. I haven’t read about it anywhere else but according to the article, the state transport minister Vikhe-Patil announced at a taxi man’s union meeting that he wanted the kaali-peeli taxis to have a make-over, to match this new imaginary city. As he put it, “With the changing skyline of the city and with the introduction of the metro and the monorail, the taxis should also don a new look.” I put that at about the same level of governance and economic upliftment as I do the renaming of the airports. Thinking outside the colour scheme or at least half of it. The taxi union has agreed if the city pays for it..’incentives for the expenditure to be incurred’. Least they could do after not giving any incentives on the expenditures incurred on the new vehicles for cancelled fiats.

More on our city. We decided to take SV Rd instead of Reclamation to avoid that massive jam at Lilavati that happens every evening now that the Sealink traffic empties at high speeds onto that road and impatient drivers commandeer the opposite side of the road, thus backing up traffic in that direction and turning the Lilavati  junction to gridlock.. SV Rd of course isn’t better  and is further exacerbated by the skywalk being built down the middle of the street. He is more hopeful than I am. (18 sec)

outtake bandra west skywalk

I am hopeful too. I love this city.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

vote here

After voting, it will ask you to fill in an email ID. It will then send you an email with a link to click to confirm your vote. That email came immediately…. into my spam folder, so if you don’t see it in you inbox, check there.

I’m thrilled that Meter Down has been nominated… that the drivers’ voices are being heard. Thank You Indibloggers!

mahadev singh podcast

mahadev singh: idhar aye ek baar toh phir idhar se jaane ke dil nahin karta

What I heard, what came through, was the ambivalence experienced in the midst of change. A change to taxi driving, a city changing around him. Passengers picked the new vehicles to ride in. No one wants to ride in a fiat anymore. But as we spoke about the fiats, they became the desired, they have room for legs, room for luggage. Poised on the point of change, teetering between what was and what is becoming, what will be lost and what is being gained, Mahadev Singh spoke from both sides. We can contain these feelings, the simultaneous good and the simultaneous bad.

I spoke to my first Meru driver. It was his 4th day driving. He was an older man who had driven kaali-peeli all his life. He owned three taxis that he rents out. He said he wanted to see what it was like to drive this fleet taxi. But he didn’t hold much stock in it. He was going to give it a month test. He liked the A/C but he thought in the end he could make as much money driving less hours in his own taxi. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal about kaali-peeli drivers attacking Meru drivers because of the competition and loss of business. Though I have never heard about it, I guess it has happened. Man does bite dog sometimes. But I have asked every driver about Meru and have never heard any hostility. They seem to feel that there are enough fares for everyone, that enough people won’t pay extra, or can’t pay extra for the comfort of A/C or the convenience of electronic meters.  I admit though, I haven’t asked the Meru drivers their side of the story.

Mahadev Singh lives in a flat, in Mahalakshmi, with running water and a bathroom . The rent is Rs3000/mo which is the price of the maintenance the owners have to pay. This is a flat in a new building erected on the site of demolished jopad-patti and his landlords are rehabilitated jopad-patti dwellers. I have another friend who lived in a run down broken room in a rundown broken building that got torn down by a builder and from that she was given a nice flat with a kitchen and a bathroom in a nice building full of supportive rehabilitated neighbors at a maintenance she can afford. These stories aren’t all bad. But there aren’t enough good ones. More people don’t get flats or though the flat are free, the maintenance is too high to afford or the flats are too far away to make it to work or they get trundled off to transit camps from where they never leave or they can’t prove they are eligible for a new flat, they can’t prove they exist. Lately Dharavi redevelopment land grab has been in the new daily here, here and here for instance.

This is the only outtake. Because traffic was light, because we took the sealink, the raw audio was much shorter than usual. I cut this out of the podcast mostly because it came at the end, and the ending is too abrupt. Nothing lingers. I knew the answer to this question, which is why I asked it. Patrilocality. The daughter leaves her home and belongs to another family elsewhere.  How can you give you daughter her inheritance of your land if she belongs to another family somewhere else? In its stead is dahej, rakhi, maamera/maayra/naanero, these cultural strategies for passing inheritance to daughters but end up devaluing their births. (34 sec)

outtake inheritance

My friend Kannu wants to put his son, Divesh, in a boarding school like Mahadev Singh has done with his son. Kannu lives in Bombay and makes his money as a maharaj, cooking for various families. His village is 45 kms from Udaipur on the Chittorgarh-Udaipur road. He himself is an 8th class fail. He says boy children are too difficult to discipline and the women in the household anyway are too busy. I think about all the fathers in distant cities and wonder about this migration where men leave their families and spend decades away earning the money that farming no longer provides.

I think Mahadev Singh is right about the sealink. Rs30 is just about the right price where people would take it instead of inching along and jockeying for position amidst the pollution and honking in the Cadell Rd/LJ Rd traffic. Rs50 is just over that amount that most people will pay. People who have cars that is, people who are used to paying for petrol. I have only taken the sealink in taxis to augment this blog with more photos and videos and scenes of Bombay from out in the water, the city from a distance.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

vijay kumar podcast

vijay kumar: garib adami ko chahiye ke apna haq kissi ko nahin deve

Vijay Kumar’s Bombay story continues. Here he talks about 1992-1993. He slept on the footpaths at Worli because the room his parents lived in was too small for all of them. What he says is what I often hear, that it was the manipulations of the politicians, that it was garib log who lost their life’s work, that the city became more visibly disjoined as Muslims moved together for safety, that his social orbit is eroded by what happened. The sound quality of this outtake is a bit bad at the beginning. It’s the wind blowing into the recorder. But later in the outtake, when the wind noise stops, you can hear the rain. (2 min 11 sec)

outtake_1992_1993

Vijay Kumar tells us that he is from Bombay and tells us why Bombay and why not UP. And then he brings up Raj Thackarey and the lafda. And recites to us all his Bombay based documentation and that he speaks perfect Marathi and so he says, he should be OK. It is as if he has internalised a checklist of authenticity, imposed from an outside source, that since he thinks he fulfills it, his inner sense of home and belonging to our city is safe. Safe in the sense that if this lafda starts again, he won’t have to leave. But the anxiety is there, voiced in the recitation of the checklist, in the need to justify his claim of belonging.

I was not born in Bombay. I do not speak Marathi. Bombay is my home. There is no dissonance in these sentences.

Everyone is used to a bit of corruption. Usually it is tolerated if what one pays for gets done. Less so if it is already within the realm of the day-to-day duties. Such as paying for have one’s papers processed faster is OK, but paying just to have them processed is not OK. Any everyone ‘knows’ that politicians are corrupt and eat our money, but if they also deliver, this too is borne. But how much is too much stealing? Vijay Kumar draws his line. (26 sec)

outtake_stealing_too_much

Vijay Kumar sees a future city in which he has no place. Sion and Bandra will be joined – the Dharavi reclamation project – the cleaving together with BKC – and folded into Bombay which will inhabited by only an upper class of people. There will be Malls, shiny new taxis, big flat complexes. There will not be thelawalas, jopadi, or much of an informal sector, which is the hustle and rozi-roti for poorer people. The work, the work that demands labour, will be done by a class of people living outside of Bombay city, who will travel in and then travel back out. Looking at the Virar fast at 6:30pm, with people hanging from the footboards, the windows, the top, we are almost there. I would have thought he had also internalised the floating discourse of a Bombay imaginary or maybe he had accepted with the cold strands of logic, a reality bearing down on him. But then he says – garib adami ko chahiye ke apni haq kissi ko nahin deve. Which haq is that? To live in our city? Yeh hai apni haq.

The outtake below is his philosophy on work and some stories from his private life. (2 min 53 sec)

outtake_work_philosophy

We turned right at Kemps Corner onto Peddar Rd and drove past Haji Ali. At the next signal, right after National Sports Club, the signal that you can turn right into for the back galli into Nehru Centre, the car next to us asked for directions. Listen to this outtake and you tell me, where exactly did he mean to turn right to get to where they were going? Pooch pooch ka jana.

outtake_directions_to_navi_bombay

Below is a point&shoot video of the flashing heart, of Vijay Kumar and my dog Josh, barking in the background.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

ram sanwar podcast

ram sanwar: jo mehnant karta, jo uparwala dehta, woh milta, wohi sapna

We met at a petrol pump next the New Great Eastern Mills which is where he works. It is a taxi petrol pump, where drivers meet to turn over the taxis to each other at shift change. It was a sunday and many don’t drive that day.Taxis were parked everywhere. It was night and it was finally raining after the very late onset of the monsoon.

He speaks about his Union, the Rashtriya Mill Mazdoor Sangh (RMMS).  His is one strand of the story. The RMMS was the only Union recognised by the Mill owners because of the Bombay Industrial Relations Act which ensured there was only one union, and the Congress Party spawned it.  The RMMS was highly compromised and had lost the trust of the mill workers.  There was another Union, the Girni Kamdar Sangh. And there was Datta Samant. And then there was a strike in 1982. Which has never officially been called off. But the Mills are over. And its not mainly from the strike. One of the best books I have read is called “One Hundred Years One Hundred Voices, the Millworkers of Girangaon: an oral history” by Meena Menon and Neera Adarkar. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Bombay, in labour history, in oral histories, in history, in voices, in cultural studies, in people, in movements and everyone else. Another informative book on the Mills and Bombay is “Ripping the Fabric: the Decline of Mumbai and its Mills” by Darryl D’Monte.

I have spent time at New Great Eastern. The owner has an interest in art and lets an artist I know do her shoots there and she let me come. I returned and took more photos of the plant floor.

The Mill areas of Bombay are thought to be Maharastrian, the Mill Worker culture established by migration from the Konkan coast and the Ghats. But the Mills also brought migrants from UP, from Bihar, from Tamil Nadu, from all around India. I asked Ram Sanvar how many workers from UP there were in the Mills at the beginning. I doubt his answer. (1 min 4 sec)

outtake kitne bhaiyya log mill main

We speak about the changes we can see. Its easy to spot the new kaali-peeli vehicles, the aqua, tinny-looking Meru taxis. But there have been quieter changes also. Ram Sanvar talks about the changes in his dhandha that have been instituted for the safety of the passengers. (1 min 50 sec)

outtake taxi safety today and hifi taxis

One of the most interesting things in the podcast was a fleeting mention that i regret I didn’t explore with him. The taxi owners, for instance Seva Lal but others as it has been a running theme throughout, have spoken about the taxi permits. They are crucial to the success or failure of the private fleet taxis and the existence of the kaali-peeli taxis. There is an off-the-books market for these permits. A taxi owner without a permit needs to find a taxi owner with a permit to lease the permit usually for five years. But Ram Sanvar, who has a permit, said that he had to produce a ration card, from Bombay, that is over 15 years old. This severely limits a migrant’s ability to arrive in Bombay, get a taxi-driving permit, buy a taxi and be a taxi owner. I believe that it was set up with that intention, to skewer the opportunity toward a person who is from Bombay and use the system to keep a migrant at an economic disadvantage. But these things don’t work. There are always alternate systems by those with a little bit of hustle to level the playing field.

a video of ram sanvar:

The work in the Mills was gendered of course. Though some women worked there, the worker population was primarily male. And the work that the women did do was lower down on the scale, less valued and less skilled and less paid. but women did work there. It being an industrial work force in one subscribed area, Ram Sanvar saw more women working outside the home and fields than he every had seen in UP. In this outtake, he speaks about the changes that are happening, changes he welcomes, from a past societal practice he sees as mistaken. As he also plans ahead for his daughters. (3 min 20 sec)

outtake UP women and working

We came from Chinchpokli and around through Byculla and out to Worli and got in line at the seaface to get onto the sealink on the last night before they would start collecting the toll. We inched along with all the other vehicles that wanted their last chance at a free ride. It was still raining and everything was clear and glistening and there we were, in the sea, looking at the lights of the city across the water.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

seva lal revisted podcast

seva lal: kwaihish rekhna aur pura karna do alag-alag cheez

People hire drivers, often to take them to and from their offices where they get salaries that have benefits, one of which is paid leave. Another is paid sick leave. Yet, how often is that benefit passed on to the drivers who drive them there, or the cook that feeds them or the bai who keeps the house clean? (1 min 37 sec)

outake paid leave

We met on the streets of Lower Parel, I waiting in front of Globe Mill Passage BMC school until he came to fetch me. We wanted to find a quiet place, a shady place to talk. None of the high office buildings around there would let us sit inside their compounds on a bench under a tree. We ended up back in a taxi, his saggeewala’s,  parked on the street in a line of taxis where Seva Lal used to park his taxi before it was cancelled.

As with Jamid Ali, we already knew each other so in the place of discovery was a continuing story. The taxi wasn’t moving through the city, he didn’t have to concentrate on driving, we were facing each other in the front seat. All of this alters the rhythm of what is being asked and what is being said. I think the story here is different. Its not only the taxi. It is what happens after taxis get cancelled and the tenuous and shrinking spaces of livelihood. Seva Lal has gone from an autonomous job, an independent owner with a degree of control over any transaction, over his workday, to being an informal employee, a hired servant of someone else and at a 40% drop in earnings. It isn’t the cancellation or the new vehicles, though it is in a way. Why aren’t 25 year old private cars being taken off the road? There must be a way that the burdens of change aren’t disproportionately borne by those who are least equipped to grapple with them.

Seva Lal’s daughter was getting married and he was soon leaving for UP. I asked about the jamai, wondering if he would also be coming to Bombay to make his rozi-roti. and hopefully be closer to her family. UP is so far away when its your daughter leaving your home. (1 min 55 sec)

outtake ladki and jamai

Below is a video from my point-and-shoot (which has a spot on the lens I think) where Seva Lal shows us his sethani ka ghar, the taxi line where he parked his taxi, his street and the lane to his room, next to the mandir.

In the first conversation with Seva Lal, he spoke about marriage and why his is successful. It touched me then and it has always stayed with me. I wanted to ask him what he had told his children, especially as the marriage of his daughter approaches.(2 min 7 sec)

outtake successful marriage

bombay today…….

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

rafiq podcast

rafiq: chelti jab tak chelana ka. ankh band hogaya tho anari

I apologise for the sound quality. I had forgotten to set the mic sense to uni-directional so I’ve picked up all the ambient sound in full. Plus, the back seat of the Omni is so far back, I had to sit on the hump on the floor behind the front seats and stick my arm through the opening between the driver and passenger seats. I kept sliding off the hump and my arm kept getting lower and lower as I got tired of holding it up. Though it did help create an intimacy in the shared hardship, I prefer the fiat, and the unbroken backseat to hang over.

More and more new kaali-peeli taxis catch the eye, moving through the montage of Bombay streets. The kaali-peeli blends into the known but the shape, the size, that difference, registers. The cityscape will slowly change as each month, each year, a few more new taxis appear in small increments within the total. Visually measuring the difference is like visually measuring the growth of a tree, until one day you realise the tree is big and there are no more fiats on the road. But the atyachar continues for the drivers. (57 sec)

outtake aur atyachar kya hai

New vehicle sightings:

Worli. Kalbadevi. Bombay Central. Mahim. I think if I were ever gone from here, hearing the names of the city spaces would make me teary. Nostalgia for that which I haven’t left, yearning for where I already am. In this outtake Rafiq tells me where today’s dhandha has taken him. Mapping the city in the naming of places, reciting Bombay. (1 min 48 sec)

outtake aaj ka dhandha

Rafiq must pay Rs. 5,000/mo to the bank or they tow away his livelihood. That is Rs 2,500 for interest and Rs 2,500 on the capital. Or they tow away his livelihood.  He can’t be more than 2 weeks late on the payment. Or they tow away his livelihood. He can’t go home until he has earned Rs. 700. And yet he keeps his children in fee-based English medium schools. And postpones the day he can stop renting and buy his own room in Nallasopara until he pays of his loan. In 5 years. 60 weeks. I asked him about his day off. (52 sec)

outtake no chutti

Rafiq is an SSC pass. Maybe 17 years ago, an SSC pass could hope to get a job. He hoped, but no job. For two months after his old fiat was cancelled, he was anari, doing a bit of refrigerator work, working contract at Jet Airways for Rs 5,000/mo. I asked him if he ever considered becoming a Meru Taxi driver, riding around in AC. From his answers, I wonder who they do find to drive for them. (1 min 19 sec)

outtake meru ka naukri

Rafiq had many stories, especially about taking people in emergencies to hospitals. The Navi Nagar story is a favourite. But underlying it is the story of the service that taxi drivers do for us, rickshaw drivers do for us, that in our expectations, our  class bias perhaps, or in our panic, we might not notice. The family didn’t have the neighbors help carry the woman down to the taxi. They yelled down 9 stories – hey taxiwala bhaiya, give us a hand. The Kamathipura story is also a hospital story. The third story is about returning things left in the taxi. Rafiq says of all these things, upaarwala barkat se achha.

outtake navynagar story (55 sec)

outtake kamathipura story (32 sec)

outtake returning samaan left in taxi (2 min 1 sec)

The litte beeps you hear in the podcast? Its the electronic meter. Each new vehicle has an electronic meter that shows the actual amount you have to pay. No more 13x multipliers. No more fare cards. No more reaching out the passenger side window to rotate the meter down, or up. And no more photos of decorated meters. Plus an added feature. In the front of the taxi, facing the street is will be a red light that shines if the taxi is available, the virtual meter up. (or is it the other way?)

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

kadeer podcast

kadeer: mera niyaat achcha karna ke liya sochta

I took a photo of his Shiv Sena card but the camera couldn’t focus through the opaque, foggy plastic protector. Kadeer isn’t very different from the netas who switch parties, not because of a change in beliefs but because of some personal advancement. Or the political parties that partner up with yesterday’s opposition to better the equation to stay in or gain power. Kadeer isn’t switching between parties and Kadeer isn’t trying to gain power. Just trying to keep it steady.

Cultural terrorism has  ratcheted up its violence. Roving groups of vigilantes are attacking women for entering male spaces and enacting in public, male acts such as drinking alcohol. Or these same men, wearing western clothes, attack women for wearing western jeans.  or being alone on the streets at night. This violence against women by individuals is just part of the trajectory that extends out of actions by the State. In Bombay they went after the bar girls and closed the bars. Women sitting together outside, on a bench, by the sea, in a car, after midnight are told to go home by police roaming the streets on their bikes or in their qualises or those big dark blue vans with the yellow stripes. Couples are harassed and arrested for public displays of affection in parks or at the water’s edge by the sea. This outtake talks about the Bandra-Worli sealink and then the police at reclamation lovers’ lane. (1 min 22 sec)

outtake sealink & lovers lane

I am being prosaic if I write about the cyclical nature of Bombay road work. The machines that appear as soon as the rains stop to dig up the road that was dug up and finished last year, well after the rains started. We were struck in traffic on the Mahim end of the Western Highway, below the western line trains are running and the Mithi River and the green of the mangroves. The workers were doing something on that part of the road where the highway is getting ready to end, widening or patching or digging and most of the lanes were closed down. As we nudged our way into the bottleneck, this was our conversation. He calls it a gandi baat. (36 sec)

outtake gandi baat

What is the middle class? Is it that large majority that neither lives in a jopadpatti or a luxury flat, driven around in a mercedes? Are the highly paid IT workers middle class and the BMC primary school teacher who rides second class from Bhayander or Dombivili both middle class? Were the mill workers middle class? Kadeer locates himself firmly within the middle class which he then defines. The bada class he says can’t sleep at night. They have big tensions. Chotta class has smaller tensions. I don’t think its a matter of the height of the fall or the weight of the money but rather the precipitousness of the consequences. Maybe the poor don’t spend on a luxury like neend ki goli. (2 min 3 sec)

outtake middle class neend ki goli slumdog

As we wound around the bylanes of Bandra, avoiding the road work between Lilavati and Baristas, Kadeer started talking about playing housie and the different places on which night he goes to.  It took me a few days into the edit to understand that housie is bingo. Am i right? I loved his description. (33 sec)

outtake housie

These photos are of Crawford Market and the street in front of it. Kadeer was just pulling out of the taxi line and I was shooting through the window. Look lovingly at Crawford Market. Once again it is poised on the tip of a decision; is the whole structure Heritage Grade I or just part of the facade and the tower? Will it remain as we see it or will some large looming cement and glass edifice rise from its centre and wrap around and devour it?

A plethora of TV stations come to us through cable. In these days of 24 hours news stations, in all languages, competing for many of the same segments, its hard to separate the fact from the fantastical sometimes especialy since often they are presented as the same thing. In this outtake Kadeer recounts what he saw on the news and then his favourite programme on his favourite channel. (52 sec)

outtake discovery channel

In the photos of the dashboard above, there is a newpapers rolled and stuck behind the decorations. It carries news of and for the diaspora and it has a special section for overseas, outside of India, assignments.  Kadeer wants to get out of the taxi, get out of India and make some money. A migrant in waiting.

We all have our stories of trudging through the rain and waist high water the day of the flood on 26 July. I was in Lower Parel, at work. My neighbor was near Mahalakshmi Station. We met on Tulsi Pipe and walked to Bandra. What i remember the most, even more than the thigh high water that filled my ground floor house, is the people who lived in the jopadpattis that lined Tulsi Pipe Rd at that time. The streets were flooded, their shanties were flooded yet they piled whatever they could find to demarcate the open drainage holes and various ditches in the road and stood out in the rain that night, to warn us, the multitudes wading thru the waters, so no one would fall in. This is not a spirit of Bombay story necessarily, though it could be written up and prismed that way. I wonder where they went after their jopadi were torn down.  Here is Kadeer’s story. (50 sec)

outtake 26 july flood

Kadeer bought the taxi from another driver seven months ago. That driver took out a loan and Kadeer pays him monthly on the loan terms. Rs 4,000/mo. If he drives 6 days a week, that is about Rs170/per day that he has to earn to pay the loan. This is actually better than if he were a driver leasing a taxi where the first Rs/200 per day would be for the owner. In this outtake Kadeer talks about the union and the loan. (49 sec)

outtake union and loan

Taxis have been in the news lately. There was an article about permits and how the state government is thinking of making this system of agreements legal. I had no idea that it wasn’t. In the podcast with Kadeer, with Sebi, with Junaid they all speak about the permit system.  Here is a Times of India article on the legalising of the “rampant illegal transfers“.  Here is another Times of India article explaining the number of cancelled taxis and the terms for getting new vehicles. And what about the 25 year old taxis that are still driving around? DNA explains what actions are being taken to stop them in their tracks here.

and after the news, a shameless plug.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

mohammad kasab podcast

mohammad kasab: roti milta upaar wala aasaan hain bahut

I was down at Lohar Chawl and then walked the line of taxis parked facing toward Mohammad Ali Rd, opposite from Crawford Market to find a taxi. That is where I found Mohammad Kasab sitting in his taxi in the middle of the line, in the middle of the day. I asked him what his day had been like, where his passengers has taken him around the city. In this outtake he tells me. (1 min 16 sec)

outtake aaj ka dhanda

The photos below are of the Crawford Market  road as we started, and  turning the corner onto Mohammad Ali Rd as we drove under the flyover.

During the ride I had him stop at Ghaans Gali in Agripada. I have spent much time there, looking for radiumwallas, buying a meter, talking to taxi drivers. This time I wanted to buy more of the brightly coloured rexine mudflaps seen hanging behind the wheels of taxis and rickshaws. Ghaans Gali is where taxis go to get fixed;  garage after garage and long lines of taxis, black and yellow stretching down the lane, dappled in the shade of the trees. Along with the garages are the parts and supply shops, the painters, the fender unbenders, the meter calibrators, the decoration sellers, the chaiwalas and the drivers in their khakhi uniforms, at once relaxing and anxious to get back on the road. There are more of these places throughout Bombay, though Ghaans Gali is one of the main ones in town. In this outtake Mohammad Kasab names another main one. I know why he says it. Its near his home. (28 sec)

outtake ghaans gali

Mohammad Kasab at Ghaans Gali:

In the podcast we talk about the Mills and their absence and the new city that is emerging in that space. Passing Dadar he talks about another absence, the Dadar wholesale market that has been pushed out of the city boundary, across the river and into Vashi. Byculla Market, Crawford Market and Dadar Market…..all once wholesale, now the next link down in the chain, each losing bits of their vibrancy and altering the routes of taxi drivers who trace the changes as they ferry the passengers who follow the goods. (1 min 9 sec)

outtake dadar market

I sit leaning forward in the back seat, draping my arm over the drivers seat with my small digital recorder in my hand, holding it in front of the driver’s mouth. The first time I tried recording, I sat in the front seat. At each signal we stopped, someone, in a car, in a taxi, yelled over to us, asking what was going on. Sitting at these long signals there is nothing to do but look around or watch the decrementing LED counter – 84-83-82-81-80…….. until its your turn. So people notice my forward pitch, my outstretched arm, a handheld small white object. We were idling at the Mahim Church signal, waiting to turn right onto the causeway. The beggar came begging and then the Cool Cab driver next to us noticed something different in the kaali-peeli next to him. (44 sec)

outtake at the signal

How many of us are in a job that we know we will do until we stop working? I always know that there will be another job at another place and probably, and usually hopefully, another type of work. Many of the drivers had various jobs before driving. And the younger ones have ideas, dreams of getting out of the taxi into something else… a shop, a hotel, maybe someone’s private driver and a few have plans of going ‘out’ to drive trucks somewhere else. I called Subash Chand a few months after our conversation. His phone was disconnected. Maybe his plan to go to Saudi came into being. The older drivers see this as their last job, the one they will do until they can’t do it, or anything, any more. In this outtake, Mohammad Kasab describes that time. (29 sec)

outtake kab tak taxi chelayga

26 November attacks didn’t loom largely in our conversation. You can hear that in the podcast. Even with a name like Kasab. Which I didn’t want to bring up because..I’m not sure. It didn’t feel like a  flow within the conversation perhaps because the attacks didn’t loom large. I did ask him if he took out the taxi the day after the attacks had started. Even now I am not sure if he didn’t or if he did but stayed only in Kurla, Sion, Matunga areas. Listen to the outtake. What do you think? (42 sec)

outtake nov 26 taxi

In the podcast, Mohammad Kasab talks about the move to clean up Bombay, to remove the dirtiness. I speak of a ‘word class city’ narrative being imposed on the spatiality and landscape of our city. Are we speaking about the same thing and each experiencing it and naming it within our own context? Mohammad Kasab likes clean roads and the removal of jopad-pattis and shantys from the streets. From Mohammad Ali Rd/Baba Amdedkar Rd. we went through Byculla to Saat Rasta to E. Moses. As we turned right onto Tulsi Pipe, he points out how clean the road is since all the shantys have been removed. Since I am holding the recorder in one hand, I am not able to take photos along the routes. Even more, to pull out a camera would signal a disengagement from his words, a turning away from the intimacy of the conversation;  it is their stories that are the essence and the substance and the meaning. I returned to this spot a few days later and took these pictures of that stretch. The bus stop with the Slumdog Millionaire advertising poster in the place of where there used to be slums is not some intended heavy irony. It is how it is.

I am not seeing an increasing number of Meru taxis. That might have to do with permits. I wonder with the cancellation of the 8,000+ fiats whether the owners who can’t afford a loan for a new vehicle will lease the permit to Meru and more pastel generics will fill the cityscape.  Despite the lure of comfortable AC, the kaali-peeli drivers chafe at the structured naukri type relationship and the terms of employment. As Mohammad Kasab closes with in the podcast, “kisko bhi paisa dena ka, kiska bhi chelaana ka”. In the outtake he talks about Meru terms but then explains who pays for kaali-peeli fender-benders. All you samanjdar drivers out on the Bombay roads, remember this. (1 min 36 sec)

outtake meru and more

and what of my my mudflaps from Ghaans Gali? Here they are…………..

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

sebastian fernandes podcast

sebi fernandes: aam aadami aur mat girao

In the podcast audio, Sebi tells is a wonderful story about an ‘up-to-date’ young woman who gets in at Mahim and on the way to Colaba has him stop at Heera Panna so she can quickly buy something. She disappears and never comes back. He says that he thought she was educated but now he thinks she was just a fraudster. “What is this attitude that she isn’t educated because she was doing fraud” a very close friend asked. My friend is right of course. I wish I had asked Sebi something about that. His answer might have been interesting, especially because he believes that governments lie and cheat and fraud. But then maybe educated means something else to him, something that isn’t conferred with a degree. In the outtake below, Sebi tells another story but this time it is of a robbery, with a revolver, in broad daylight. He seems more surprised by the fraudulent woman than the gun-toting men. Are you? (3 min 52 sec)

outtake dharavi revolver

Sebi grew up in a family of 10 children, poor, the son of a mill worker who gambled away his earnings. He is a Bombay-born, hard-working man in a city without enough housing that is a siren calling out to everyone the possibilities of opportunity. He says in the podcast audio that Bombay is a city unkind, but not fatal, to the poor. Yet in this outtake, he talks about ‘those people’, the ones who live on the footpaths, who have too many children, who drink too much, who beg for a living instead of working. These representations seem to hover over our city, voiced in all areas, 1 BHKs in Parel, in 2 BHKs in Vesova, in 3 BHKs in Chembur, bungalows in Juhu, luxury apartments atop Malabar Hill, and, yes, in the 1 room chawl of a taxi driver in Dadar West. Perhaps it makes it easier to live amidst the very marginalised, the barely making it, and go about our lives. (4 min 1 sec)

outtake footpath

There is a taxi badge that every driver must have to drive taxi. Then there is the taxi permit that allows the taxi to be on the road. Permits are valuable. Without one, the taxi can’t ply. There is much jugaad around permits with the new Meru taxis. What I have never understood is whether the permit is with a person, or the permit is with the vehicle. In this outtake Sebi explains permits. (47 sec)

outtake taxi permits

The taxis over 25 years old are being taken off the road in the next coming months. I keep hearing differing totals. Some say 11,000, some say 8,000, others quote numbers in this range. Each taxi has at least one driver and many have two drivers. That is a large number of drivers without a taxi to drive, without a job. I read an article in today’s paper about this. Not of course from the point-of-view of the drivers, but from the point-of-view of – isn’t it wonderful this progression into a model modern city. The headline caught by eye. It talked about polluting taxis being forced off the road for the betterment of our environment. How dishonest. Two years ago, or perhaps its three now, all the taxis were made to convert to CNG. At a cost to the owners for which many took out loans. Taxis aren’t polluting our city, whether they are 25 years old, or the last model to roll off the Fiat production lines in 1994. In this outtake, Sebi talks about the cancellation of taxis, and what it means for the drivers, of which by he way, he isnt one. (38 sec)

outtake taxi cancel

The cancellation of taxis, the appearance of fleet taxis, the everyday problems of working and the conflicts that are born from interaction with the public while being a service and being a business. Unions are supposed to protect us, to serve us and to negotiate in our name with whomever are the powers that be. I always ask the drivers if they are in a union, the whys and why nots and the benefits or not. In New York City, where many of the drivers are South Asian, there is a very strong, very progressive taxi union conceived and headed by an India-born woman named Bhairavi Desai (more here). There is a book about her and the union titled Taxi!: Cabs and Capitalism in New York City by Biju Mathew. I recommend it. So far, most of the drivers in Bombay have not given the unions very high marks. Sebi has thrown away his life time membership card in Nav Jivan, and here he explains why. (3 min 21 sec)

outtake union card phenkdiya

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

jamid ali podcast

jamid ali: kwaish adami ki asmaan chhoona ki hoti

In the Interlude post, there is an audio file of Jamil Ali singing a ghazal about mothers, or I suspect, his memories of his mother that is no longer with him. Below is a video, taken with my little point-and-shoot of him singing the same ghazal.

About a month ago in Bombay there was a strike by taxi and rickshaw drivers over the ruling that taxis  older than 15 years are to be removed from the roads. Many of the drivers in this blog talk spiritedly about this saying that the fiat car is strong, that it should be judged on the condition of the vehicle and not its age. And what of the many drivers whose livelihood will be taken away from them when their taxis are taken off the roads.  There is currently a case that has been moved in the high court challenging this government resolution. The papers have covered it.  http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1209579 In the outtake below Jamid Ali speaks about the strength of the lohari fiat and has his ideas of how to ensure a driver keeps it maintained. But then he tells a wonderful story about a woman, a widow, who owns a taxi and what this ruling will mean to her and her two children. (2 min 56 sec)

outtake 15 saal ki taxi

Taxi drivers are being fined when they refuse a fare. I often feel like I am asking for a favour to be granted as i walk a line of taxis, bending down to window level, saying where it is I want to go, ending the word with that hesitant inflexion and slight raising of tonation that connotes permission. But I confess, having been a driver, there is that other part of me that is in the front seat turning me down with a shake of my head. In the outtke below, Jamid Ali tells his story of when he couldnt get a taxi, a tale of tables turned.(1 min 36 sec)

outtake cant get a taxi

Films are a common denominator, a topic as easy to speak about as the weather, high prices and the traffic in Bombay. Many conversations open up from here. If I were to keep a poll, Shah Rukh Khan always gets the highest ratings. Jamid Ali is no exception. In the outtake below he talks about plot, haqeeqat and Karan Arjun. (2 min 17 sec)

outtake karan arjun

Between the time we recorded this conversation and now, Jamid Ali has gone back to UP. His brother had been bunking school. He needed the guiding hand and, I wonder, the punishing hand of an older brother to put him back on the path of attendance. It seems to be working. In the podcast Jamid Ali says that only if his brother gets a good education and a good future, then Jamid Ali’s leaving behind his badmashi days will have produced something meaningful.  I think they are already have.

Below is one more ghazal written by and sung by Jamid Ali….to his brother.(3 min 37 sec)

bhai ghazal

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

arvind kumar rai podcast

arvind kumar rai: hai ke ni

We see people on the streets, on the trains, in buses, in the markets. All around us are dwellings. Which ones are theirs? Where do the taxi drivers go home to after we hear their story?  Though this outtake is named room, its more about pani and mornings and divisions of labour. (1 min 9 sec)

outtake room

10 hours a day x six days a week driving in Bombay traffic, talking (or not) to the strangers in the back seat.  Then comes chutti ka din. This is what Arvind does on his day off. (48 sec)

outtake chutti

Below are photos of Arvind going to the shauchalaya and coming back. Its on Sayani Marg, that road that when you want Tulsi Pipe but are coming up NM Joshi and can’t go straight onto Tulsi Pipe, you turn right onto it and then left from it and you are sitting at Elphistone signal on Tulsi Pipe.

As part of the narrative to turn Bombay into a world-class city, our netas and babus have visited Singapore and Shanghai and other cities that model this imaginary. From the first driver, Hari Lal Yadav, up to now with Arvind, we have been hearing anxiety of impending cancel of the kaali-peeli fiats. First it was any vehicle over 15 years old. When I recently met Junaid to give him his DVD and photos, he told me at the meeting of Taximans Union (Nav Jivan), Quadros had announced the decision that any vehicle older than 25 years old will be cancelled and off the road during next next 12 months. This will take minimum 8,000 or 20% of kaali-peeli taxis off the road. 8,000 to 16,000 drivers. What will they do and where will they go?

under the hood

In this outtake, Arvind talks about why he joined Nav Jivan Taximan’s Union, and what he thinks now. (1 min 14 sec)

outtake union

These days, Raj Thackeray and his MNS goons have been taking on store owners and traders, insisting on signage in Marathi. मीतर डाअन  Is that Marathi? I say its Hindi. Thackeray is also taking on the Bachchans and Shah Rukh Khan. But what about when he was creating havoc with the taxi drivers? Arvind talks about that time which may not have passed. (1 min 13 sec)

outtake raj thackeray

Always on the road in this traffic. I am impressed at how many of these drivers have not had accidents. Arvind is not one of them. (1 min 42 sec)

outtake accident

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

junaid podcast

Junaid: Kismat mein jitna rehta, itna milta

The dance bars are as much a part of this city as the red buses or kaali-peeli taxis. If a film has a dance bar scene, it signals the setting is Bombay. This outtake is the rest of the conversation about the dance bars Junaid doesn’t frequent. I asked him about the women that danced in the bars. His thoughts intrigue me because they don’t touch on morality, the good or bad of the women. (3 min 50 sec)

outtake bars and bar girls

The next three outtakes are one flow of conversation that due to length, I divided up and are in order from the beginning to end. In Junaid’s village, the girls aren’t married until they are in their late teens or early twenties. But the sagai is arranged years before. Junaid doesn’t think this is right and he explains why. (1 min 42 sec)

outtake jaldi sagai achha nahin

From sagai accha nahin to ladki accha nahin. The ladki is the woman Junaid is engaged to be married to in 8 months. But it isn’t Junaid saying accha nahin. It is his neighbors and his family. His feelings are soft and warm and protective. and determined. (2 min 17 sec)

outtake ladki acchhi nahin

Kismat runs through this podcast. In this outtake Junaid elaborates and embroidered into the fabric of his thoughts is a silken thread of defense of his wife-to-be. (54 sec)

outtake kismat

I ask about the leaving from home and the coming into the city. I ask about what has been left behind and how that left behind is experienced, this continuum of inhabiting here and inhabiting there. Junaid speaks of the Chiliya community in the village and I hear the story of gaon mein aisa hai and traces of sheher mein aisa nahin hota. We all have our stories of adaptation, in large ways and incremental ways, to the complexities of our lives in these times. (1 min 46 sec)

outtake chiliyan gaon mai aisa hai

The men are away working and the villages are full of women raising the children. I have wondered about that, especially about the boy children. I asked Junaid what advice he would give a 12 year old from his village that wanted to come work in Bombay. His answer gives thought to my wondering.

outtake 12 saal ka ladka

I haven’t posted in a long time. I was travelling through Spain and then back overland through Turkey, Syria and then flight to Peshawar and through Pakistan to Wagah, Amritsar and Golden Mail back to Bombay. I didn’t ride in any taxis, but I have this photo of a taxi dashboard in Damascus.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

anil chauhan podcast

Anil Chauhan: Mein kuch banoonga jaroor

He couldn’t get the lug nuts to turn. I told him to try standing on the lug wrench. That is what i do, bounce on it with all my weight. I showed him how, but the lug wrench fell off. It was stripped clean and smooth on the inside, and couldn’t hold the corners of the lug nuts. Close by was a taxi that had just dropped off passengers and I sent him to ask the driver for his lug wrench and he came back with it and the driver also. I sat on a small step near the foot path and took photos as the other driver changed the tire. Look at the tire in the last 2 photos. You can see where the rubber has split.

Anil Chauhan’s brother is getting married. Anil got married last year. The older sister is already married. A younger sister is yet to be married. Two sons, two daughters. Two dahej dena and two dahej lena. Does it come out even? Click on the link below. (1 min 55 sec)

outtake dahej

This was one of the taxis that has separate driver and passenger seats in the front and in between them a silvery pole from ceiling to floor with lines etched on it that snaking up the length to form diamond patterns. Most taxis dont have them, either the separated seats or the pole. It was also one of those taxis that has mirrors on the ceiling, a larger one over the back seat and a smaller one over the front seat. and a green or blue florescent light between them. Someone told me that they heard that it is in these taxis that lovers can ask a driver to park and walk away for awhile while they enjoy some masti. No driver has confirmed this. In these photos I am shooting up into the mirrors.

In the Dahej outtake above, Anil describes himself as from a choti jaat. I asked him about relations between barra jaat and choti jaat in his village. Listen to his answers. (2 min 37 sec)

outtake jaat

Aside from the poles and the mirrors and one of my favourite seat cover patterns, this taxi had my favourite gear shift knobs. I love the the rainbow colours and the plastic rose fully blooming inside. And the grapes hanging from the rear view mirror. At night they flash different colours from the tiny lights inside. Watch the video to see the flashing and even more for a wonderful image of Anil in the rear view mirror.

Villages have large deep wells that the young boys splash around in. Anil said he goes to Juhu Chowpatty to catch the breezes. But has he ever gone swimming in the sea there? (27 sec)

outtake swimming in sea

The rear window of Anil’s taxi has Ganapati large holding a diya and hugging a Shiva Lingum. But dont miss the words in english on (our) left rear of the license. No what? Why not?

Anil feels that if one can drive in Bombay, one can drive anywhere. And for him, driving is what will enable him to provide for his family and fulfill his dreams. People have commented that the drivers don’t have very ‘big’ dreams. Some have found that sad. But what better dream is there to fulfill other than being able to provide for one’s family and give your children a better future than your present? Don’t most parents have that dream? What is it then that some people find sad? The difference in increment? (28 sec)

outtake driving for life

And what about these dreams? A room. A flat. In Bombay our dreams always contain that anxiety of somewhere to live. That particularity of Bombay: the disquiet about a room for one’s own. (1 min 26 sec)

outtake_roomsoom

By the time we reached Bandra, it was dark. My point-and-shoot has trouble in low light and I don’t like flash. I was trying different settings. One was a long shutter speed in my shaky hands. But the photo is interesting.

Anil Chauhan was 13 when he left home. He left school after 8th class. He has worked selling fruit, making brushes in a small workshop unit, carrying water on his head and now driving taxi. He has been back and forth from UP to Bombay to UP to Bombay over and over. But what advice would he give to a 13 year old who asked to come with him back to Bombay? (42 sec)

outtake advice

I take their phone numbers and I always give mine. We stay in touch usually. This is Anil’s diary as he looks for a page to write my number.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

lal mohammad khan podcast

lal mohammad khan: bombay aisa saher hai yahaan jo ek time aajaata isko dusri jaga dil nahin lakta

Streets are cleared of hawkers and thela-walas. Markets are moved to Vashi. Streets are cleared again of hawkers and thela-walas. And again. The push to imagined modernity also pushes the people who work on the streets away, elsewhere. This ripples across the skein of working people connected to them in ways that are not visible. The hidden hardships are felt, and in this case, articulated in this outtake. (1 min 33 sec)

outtake taxi-ka-danda

Kurla Terminus, officially Lokmanya Tilak Terminus, is a rail head in the eastern suburbs for trains coming in from the eastern, and southern parts of India. It is relatively newer. It hadn’t been built when Sagir Bhai arrived in Bombay. Back then, those trains terminated at VT.

We took the Eastern Express highway to Sion and then through Dharavi to the road to BKC that connects to the Western Express Highway. Right at the signal there when we turned left to go towards Bandra, we heard the police whistle and the havaldar jumped out and flagged us down. or so we thought. This is the view from the back of the taxi as I waited for him to come back.

Many of the taxis have florescent lights in them. The image in this blog header is a taxi driver in Mahim at night, with the green light shining from his ceiling. Lal Mohammad Khan’s taxi had a blue light inside and a light on the dashboard that shone out the windscreen, flashing and changing colours: red, blue, yellow

to see it in action and to see Lal Mohammad Khan, watch this video. The young boy who comes into the frame is the bhaji thela-wala ka ladka.

Lal Mohammad Khan’s taxi had some nice decoration.

and seat covers………..

Actually, I had a funny experience at Kurla. The first taxi I got into was with two brothers. They were Bombay Maharashtrian. I thought this would be something different and perhaps interesting, the non-immigrant experience. I had explained I would be recording the conversation and they agreed. Strangely, they insisted on showing me the taxi badge and taxi license. And a rate card that turned out to be some local printer job I think. We had already left the terminus and were winding our way through the lanes of Kurla East to reach the Expressway. I told them I would also be taking their photos and also explained how I would use the material and that they would also have a CD, DVD and hard copies of the photos. They were increasingly uneasy. No photos they said. Or, as a compromise, one brother would talk but the photos would be of the other brother. No photos of the taxi. I said lagta hai ki ap log biswas nahin karte hai issi mamla mein and if so, i will be quite happy to get down from the taxi. They pulled over to the side, I paid the Rs 13 and walked back to Kurla Terminus. There was this taxi with green decoration on the back and Lal Mohammad Khan leaning against the driver door. I explained where I was going and what I wanted to do and showed him the recorder. He smiled and said chelo.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

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