Windy Skies

Suitors Wrestle For The Fair Lady

2012-01-23T10:24:00.000-08:00

Murshidabad, 2009.

To The One Who Prevails,
I’ve Promised My Affection,
For, While My Longevity Is A Function Of Age,
In My Desirability, I Seek My Immortality.

The Puppet Seller

2012-01-12T07:37:00.000-08:00

Baroda, 2011.

I Hold The Strings
Not So I Can Control The Dancers,
But In The Hope
They’ll Choreograph My Weary Fingers To Life.

Winter Sun Steps Down A Well In Mehrauli

2011-12-29T10:27:00.000-08:00

On a freezing cold December morning in Delhi some years ago, two men sought a patch of sunlight along a narrow walkway that runs along each of the five tiers of an old step well dating back from early 1200s, most likely 1230 AD.

Gandhak ki Baoli, as the stepwell located in Mehrauli is known, comprises of a shaft well to provide drinking water, and a main tank the residents once used to clean and wash. Both lay dry when I visited the historic remnant of Delhi’s past, dried largely from neglect and indifference.

While I envied the two men their comforting blanket of warmth, I steered clear of the walkways that got narrower with successive tiers descending to the well. As you descend deeper, down each tier, the approach narrows as if preparing to gather you into an all consuming embrace.

From the uppermost tier the same level as the adjacent street, the steps gradually disappeared from sight before they were swallowed up by an opening at the bottom, dark and mysterious.

In a fanciful moment, the kind frozen feet give wings to, I wondered if stepping into the opening would somehow magically transfer wandering feet back in time by eight centuries and deposit them at the very moment the first digger poised to strike the earth to the plan engineers had laid out for constructing this stepwell.

Leaves from an overhanging tree swept the stones with their shadows as a faint breeze stirred life in the vicinity while the sun warmed them.

We were a couple of hours shy of noon though I couldn’t be sure if sunlight would pierce the drop all the way down at noon. Surely it must be wary of what awaited it at the bottom.

Leaving the two men behind to bask in the sun we climbed the steps back up and reentered the humdrum of the Delhi street. And the winter sprung its embrace once again.

It was the last day of that year, not of the winter though.

Bandra’s American Express Bakery On Christmas Eve

2011-12-25T08:07:00.000-08:00

Christmas Eve in Bandra is no time to step into the bakery on Hill Road across the street from the Holy Family Hospital, not far from the intersection with Waroda Road that meanders through the old Anglo-Indian locality of the same name, and find someone to tell you why it’s named as American Express Bakery.

It’s definitely not a good idea to ask after the origin of its name let alone how old it is, not after an undated newspaper piece on the American Express Bakery, titled Some of the finest products in town, and yellowing from passage of time, framed and hanging proudly from the wall, starts off with:

Mr. Ross Carvalho, the owner of American Express Bakery, is unaware of the exact date the bakery [jumbled print from a cut in the paper] be a 100 years old. “It is definitely 65 years old, we have bills dating that far back,” he says.

The black and white photo accompanying the framed newspaper article, Some of the finest products in town, apparently shows the shopfront on Clare Road, Byculla. The one in Bandra we had stepped into on the evening of Christmas Eve last year is one of the three outlets of the American Express Bakery. The other two, the newspaper piece reported, are located in Santa Cruz, and Cumballa Hill. It added, “The establishment at Clare Road is the Head Office and the bakery.”

Since the framed print did not carry a byline, let alone a date, and I’m no expert in dating paper from the degree of yellowing subjected by time, I safely assume that no less than twenty years have elapsed since the piece first appeared in the series titled: Old Curiosity Shoppe . . . No 58.

Twenty years felt just right for the perceptible yellowing of paper. It felt just right to age it by two decades for no other reason than to distinguish it from the changes India began witnessing following its dallying with economic liberalisation, a period that would leave a certain way of life firmly behind, including the character of old that Bombay represented, a character that still survives in Bandra in patches, not in the least in the balconies projecting over the street below where elderly women in floral print skirts step out for air and watch the world go by, hailing familiar neighbourhood faces in Konkani. It was not the moment to dwell on any further, for the shelves along the walls were brimming with cakes and other goodies that typically bring up the end of the year in Bandra.

On a whiteboard, for the benefit of its customers, a roll call of confectionery announced their availability:

Fruit Mince Pies
Date Bars
Christmas Pudding
Gram Sweet (Doce De Grao)
Guava Cheese
Marzipans
Dundee Cake
Ginger Bread Cake
Chocolate Muffins
Cinnamon Roll

There was more in the wooden shelves, in cane baskets labeled, wrapped and lined up in neat rows. A few were empty, either awaiting the arrival of stock or cleaned up by patrons making an early run on the bakery before heading back to their homes to prepare for the evening, and the Midnight Mass when they would make their way to the Mount Mary Church among other churches in Bandra and lend their soul to hyms that would stir the Bandra night, gladdening many a heart within earshot, an uplifting tune in the breeze blowing in from the sea off the road that snakes past the hill along its base.

For last minute Christmas shoppers, a board outside the bakery assured that the bakery would remain open all day on Christmas so long as they didn’t expect the bakery to pack their purchases in plastic bags. In addition to a handwritten notice, a poster in the bakery left little ambiguity in the bakery’s stand on using plastic. It said, rather asked before answering it for the customer.

Want To Help Bandra?

Don’t Ask For Plastic Bags.

And that was that. I find it difficult to imagine why anyone would want to pack their bakery purchases in plastic instead of in a brown paper bag. It’s like drinking Falooda from a beaten steel tumbler when glass beckons. As with brown paper that extends the fragrances of its contents, so does glass heighten the visual appetite for the rainbow coloured Falooda.

Past the Christmas tree blinking with colourful lights and welcoming customers stepping into the bakery, the streets bustled with Christmas shoppers. The winter sun had turned mellow as the evening set in over Bandra. A stocking hung in the front so Santa Claus would not miss it. Either way I doubted if Santa Claus would’ve missed the bakery from the road, for the lights illuminating the shelves announced a variety of confectionary to passersby on their way about town.

Within minutes of our stepping into the small outlet of the American Express Bakery, customers came filing past. From the opening at the back of the bakery the staff came carrying breads, cakes, muffins, and more.

In no time I was window shopping fragrances of freshly baked goodies, including confectionery and snacks and found myself lingering just a wee bit longer by the cane baskets.

If it wasn’t for the consideration of fresh arrivals looking to find their way past the older arrivals I would’ve stayed longer sampling more of the confectionery the shelves advertised.

I need not have worried, for stepping out of the bakery later I noticed a crowd further down the road. On approaching the crowd, A-1 bakery revealed itself. While there was no shop floor to meander about and stop by shelves, A-1 Bakery’s shop front was sufficient invitation if one was prepared to crane one’s neck and reach over heads to place and receive orders.

I cannot remember passing the American Express Bakery’s outlets in Santa Cruz, and Cumballa Hill, for if you’re looking for baked treats in the week heading into Christmas, it’s Bandra you head to. With its decidedly Goan Catholic flavour, and the not inconsiderable Anglo-Indian presence you could be forgiven for thinking that only Bandra’s bakeries do justice to confectionery in the flavours that bring Goa alive.

It’s a perception not without reason. I would readily breeze into a bakery owned by a Carvalho, a Gonsalves, a Rodrigues, a Pinto, a Noronha than walk into one owned by a Kulkarni, a Deshpande, a Jadhav, a Jain and the like even if migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Orissa were to man Noronha's ovens as is very likely. A name is a cultural association; in its longevity is invested a certain integrity by way of being true to its origins, steadfast to its cause; in this case, the recipe. Handed down generations, the feel for culinary heritage shared across generations is expected to make for authenticity. And therein lies its draw, and charm.

It’s inevitable for a city like Bandra, with a culture considerably shaped by and originally identified with the Christian community, given that the Portuguese turned it over to Jesuit priests as early as mid 1500s, to set an expectation among visitors come looking for flavours not readily available elsewhere in Mumbai. Even if they are, it’s likely they’re scattered about. The Roman Catholic churches that dot Bandra strengthen its distinct character.

It obviously matters little now if Bandra’s population shows little or no resemblance to the original mix of Christians of Goan origin, the Anglo-Indians, the Parsis. The impressions and the expectations live on in Bandra’s Bakeries, more so around Christmas time.

Later that evening, we made our way up the hill to the celebrated Mount Mary church and were treated to prayers a group of nuns were practicing for the midnight mass later that night.

In the video below, meander about the Mount Mary Church with me and waft with the mellowing crescendo rolling off the walls and the ceiling, before sliding off paintings depicting the life of Christ, his mission, his travails, and the meaning he sought for the faithful.

Wishing everyone Merry Christmas.

Books Travellers Read in Mumbai Locals – Part IV

2011-12-10T10:53:00.000-08:00

Continuing with my series, this is PART IV of my ongoing attempt to note the books my fellow travellers read in Mumbai local trains on their way to work and back.

Pictures can mislead. And, if a picture as they say is worth a thousand words, then it can mislead in a thousand words as well.

And if the picture is a book’s cover, well, you know what they say about not judging a book by its cover. But let it not stop you from imagining the story even if you aren’t given to judging it by the cover.

And on Mumbai local trains, the books people read on their daily commute in trains is among the more welcome distractions on the journey when Gujarati businessmen are not wrangling with their suppliers in that distinctly Gujju Hindi that rings loud and clear about the train compartment, muting other conversations as they tune in to the insistent one.

So when I glanced up at my fellow passenger who had just about managed to board the Dadar Local, I paused for a moment upon seeing the cover of the book he had fished out of his bag and buried his face in no sooner he had found a seat in the corner by the train window. In no time his face was lost to me behind the book cover.

And I had The Goat, The Sofa, and Mr. Swami for company on the rest of my journey. The unmistakable outline of the Indian Parliament building jumped out of the cover. A car lolled about in the street in front of the Parliament building, cleverly constructed out of letters making up the name of the author, R. Chandrasekar, more likely than not, a Tamil Brahmin, possibly a bureaucrat I thought at the moment. Later I learnt he was a former financial analyst.

Towering banks of lights rose from within the Parliament building, lights Indians would associate with cricket stadiums. What were these flash lights doing in the Parliament? Lighting up games Parliamentarians routinely play? Keeping a watch over politicians ‘fixing’ voting a la the infamous JMM episode? Illuminating politicians batting the ball into another’s corner? Watching over the Opposition clean bowl Treasury benches?

What were the lights for? To light up political shenanigans for a public weaned on reality shows with appetite for more? I didn’t really know for sure, but the book cover offered enough fodder to feed the imagination. And the goat in the mix? Unless the goat was the electorate, calmly and routinely led to the slaughter post-elections, time after time.

Not for a moment did the fellow passenger look away from the book, not even when the train stopped at railway stations along the way to take in fresh cascades of commuters barreling into the compartment like a river breaching a dam.

What was a Swami doing in the mix of the Parliament, the Goat, and the Sofa? Sofa? I was reminded of Chandraswami, remember him? The infamous Godman of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s time? The Tantrik?

The Goat, The Sofa, and Mr. Swami. Well. I’m yet to read the book. I learnt it revolves around the intersection of Cricket, the Indian Prime Minister, the Pakistani Prime Minister who invites himself to a cricket series being played between the two in India, and a certain Mr. Swami. For the rest, read the book. While I was tempted to tap the reader on the opposite seat for his take on the book, I left him alone to survive the evening journey back home immersed in R. Chandrasekar’s book, an escape into the gathering night while I delved into various possibilities, all afforded by a book cover.

Facebook Page of The Goat, The Sofa, and Mr. Swami.

Talking of Pakistan and the Pakistani Prime Minister, I saw Mumbai train commuters take an active interest in Jaswant Singh’s book on Jinnah, the man who pushed for the partition of India after barely ever participating in the drive for independence from the British in the years leading upto 1947.

Muhammed Ali Jinnah was not the kind to dirty his hand-tailored suits and starched shirts, let alone his Sherwanis and Karakul hats, in the ‘lowly’ task of fighting for independence from the colonial power, it was far easier and convenient to direct the bloodshed of people with his call to Direct Action using the Muslim League than wage a long, hard struggle for freedom from British rule along with the Gandhis and the Nehrus.

I wondered if it was a coincidence that Jaswant Singh’s book on Jinnah had its spine coloured red, the colour of blood shed in its millions by Jinnah's call for a separate homeland for the Muslims, Pakistan. The bloodletting still continues in the neighbouring country, among their own kind this time around!

Jaswant Singh’s expulsion from the Bharatiya Janata Party must have helped pique interest in the tome. For a time, it was not uncommon to find Mumbai train commuters immersed in the book, television debates raising its visibility and contributing to the hype around the already hyped up relations between the two countries.

I miss hearing birds about my travels around Mumbai unless I were to make my way to Byculla to the verdant patch that’s home to a zoo, or to Yeeor Hills, a contiguous part of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Borivali aside from a few scattered patches of green in the Bombay of before.

With the exception of pigeons and crows, and the occasional sparrow, there’s little else to show for birds in much of Mumbai. Shrikes, Drongos, Barbets among others are conspicuous by their absence in the concrete jungle the city’s been turned into over the years.

Cumballa Hill is a hill in name only, and it’s no different with other ‘hills’, including Antop. If you’re keen on seeing Hornbills, you’ll have to make your way to Fort, to the Salim Ali Chowk to see the logo of the Bombay Natural History Society, the Great Hornbill. It mostly lives in Mumbai in a logo on the stone wall.

So I was surprised to say the least on finding a middle-aged man seated in the corner by the window poring over an illustrated book of birds, flipping pages, unmindful of the racket at railway stations along the way.

If ever there was an oasis of peace in a train compartment of Mumbai local trains, even if in the pages of a Birding Guide, that moment qualified for it, for the one immersed in the promise of nature and the other delighting in the reader’s interest survive a city largely denuded of its feathered bounty.

From the photographs in the book, it appeared the Birding Guide was geared to introducing the common birds an urban dweller might expect to see if city planners had accounted for and retained green cover in Mumbai.

But then Mumbai is a different kettle of fish, and while its city planners had accounted for it in the beginning, as is evident in the gardens, and parks and other formerly open areas, the caliber of governance in recent years, influenced in no small measure by the suspect quality of people elected to positions of power, has seen a steady deterioration to a point where birds are reduced to living on the pages of a book.

It doesn’t take a detective agency to unearth the causes of decay in governance, living standards, and the grind of the daily commute, certainly not of the caliber of The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

It’s not a book I see often in the hands of Mumbai railway commuters. Apparently, it’s a series of episodic novels by Alexander McCall Smith, an author of Scottish origin.

The first time I learnt of the existence of the series was when I saw it in the hands of a bearded fellow commuter on a rainy day in Mumbai who would dutifully carry a long handle umbrella in the manner of the old gentleman carrying an umbrella and looking out to sea on the cover of Sooni Taraporevala’s PARSIS: The Zoroastrians of India; A Photographic Journey.

The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency had piqued the interest of others in the train compartment as it had mine. It was an uncommon title in a setting where travelers were more used to seeing commuters carry titles by Michael Crichton, Jeffrey Archer, and Sidney Sheldon among others than a title by Alexander McCall Smith.

It’s rare I pass a fortnight by without seeing someone reading Michael Crichton, among my favourites as well.

The elderly gentleman had placed Michael Crichton’s NEXT on the seat beside him. I initially mistook his action to mean he was reserving a seat for a fellow commuter. It wasn’t to be.

As the train pulled out of the station, he snapped out of his short nap and dived into Crichton’s NEXT, a book that apparently originated after Michael Crichton returned to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla in 2005, where he had done postdoctoral work, to attend a conference on Genetics and Law sponsored by the Jefferson Institute. He was surprised and outraged by what he learned about the current laws regarding a range of issues in genetics. He immediately put aside what he had been working on, and began research for the book that became NEXT. He modeled the structure after the genome itself, incorporating fragments of popular culture, and writing a series of stories that sometimes interconnected, and sometimes didn't. The result was a very atypical novel. (Source)

Michael Crichton, The Official Site.

The Da Vinci Code continues to hold its own over the years. The only thing that surprises me when I see yet another traveler on a Mumbai local train immersed in Dan Brown’s book is not why he’s reading it but why he is so late in reading it. A sentiment I kept to myself upon seeing a South Indian commuter with neatly combed hair, a red and ash coloured tika gracing his forehead, engrossed in the Da Vinci Code.

Jeffrey Archer’s Shall We Tell The President has pushed his other bestseller Kane And Abel hard for a place in the reading hearts of Mumbai train commuters.

It’s to the book’s credit that commuters will hang on to handle bars on their long commute to the office and back, sufficiently gripped by the plot to be lost to the world around them, a moment of peace fathomed among the pages of a book to the comforting feel of paper.

Note: Read PART I, PART II, and PART III in my series noting the books my fellow travelers read in Mumbai local trains on their way to work and back, and sometimes on their way elsewhere around the city.

A Request: I would appreciate it very much if you would note/credit and link back here if this post inspired you to do a series or a variation of the series of your own.

Since this is a part of my larger India Reading Project involving books and the reading people, I’ll be counting on the link-back for continued and further participation of new readers.

Related Posts in my India Reading Project Series

1. Granthayan, A Mobile Book Store
2. Indian Copy

Conversations, And Backdrops in Jodhpur

2011-12-03T07:09:00.000-08:00

Walking down Jodhpur’s M. G. H Road in the heat of the September Sun, a middle-aged man broke his stride upon receiving a call on his phone.

It soon became apparent that it was not a call to be answered hurriedly, and certainly not one to carry on with while dodging passers-by on the street. The call called for a more pleasant setting, some shade, and a place to recline and answer in leisure, making me wonder who was on the other line.

There was little chance I would ever find out but it didn’t stop me from wondering about likely possibilities, and they certainly weren’t mundane possibilities. Wandering does that to imagination.

Looking around for a place more appropriate to the occasion, the man soon found respite from the searing Sun on the steps of an old stone building, leaning against a stone pillar as he stretched himself out on the steps.

Rust had eaten away the letters on the metal nameplate that I had initially mistaken for wood. However, adjacent to the nameplate, letters stenciled in black ink on the wooden door survived to indicate the nature of the establishment: Bharat Tent House.

I cannot remember clearly if Bharat Tent House was housed in the Sanghi Das building, or if it was in an adjacent building. It shared the open area in the front with other commercial properties, including a TV Repair shop.

By now the man was deep in conversation, occasionally smiling as he threw his head back against the floral designs carved in the stone pillar and looked around absently, his mobile phone held firmly to his ear. It was inevitable I would linger around, eyes trailing along the contours of his backdrop, pausing every inch of the way along the façade etched with decorative patterns on pilasters projecting from the wall, lending the door on either side ample relief.

The pilasters ended in fine stone corbels on which rested the entablature projecting from the wall, over the fading blue door. I couldn’t tell for sure if the carved corbels projecting from the wall were merely decorative elements or actually bore the load of the entablature over the door.

The weather beaten door was locked, its blue reminding of the sky in a city that sits at the gatepost of the Thar desert. It was a magical moment, a Jodhpur moment, no less.

And I wondered again, this time around not of who might be on the other line but if his conversation was as interesting as his backdrop.

Circle Of Yellow

2011-11-30T11:58:00.000-08:00

Tughlaqabad, 2009.

Visitors to Tughlaqabad catch up on a bit of fun with the Frisbee in the backdrop of the ruins of the fort near Delhi dating back from early 1300s.

Delhi gets cold in the winter. While Toshi and I were warmed up from tramping up and down the old fort along its high ramparts, others chased the Frisbee to warm up and bond among the ruins.

In the persuasive haze of the Delhi winter, the bright yellow Frisbee reminded of the Sun to those of us who sought it to beat the cold. As the circle of yellow cut through the air, it brought some cheer in its wake, even if of the fleeting, floating kind.

The Grass Is Green, The Flowers Fresh

2011-11-29T09:46:00.000-08:00

In late 2009, as I walked down many a Calcutta street, past the ubiquitous image of flowers springing in the grass, it increasingly appeared that there was barely a neighbourhood in Kolkata where the Trinamool Congress did not have a presence. The TMC was everywhere:

On walls of homes along quiet lanes, keeping a young man company on the steps warming to the morning Sun,

Or looking over the shoulder of an elderly lady knitting on the steps of an old dwelling in Kalighat,

Better still, fluttering in the breeze in streets leading to the Esplanade,

Everywhere,

Except at the Writers’ Building.

It was still Red.

Bright, brilliantly Red.

Strikingly Red. Forebodingly Red.

Only until the middle of 2011, that is. The year Kolkata, and West Bengal went to polls.

And Trinamool Congress finally came home to the Writers’ Building. The lease is new, for now.

The grass is still green, and the flowers fresh. Jora Ghas Phul.

A Sunday Morning On The Mandovi

2011-10-23T05:37:00.000-07:00

From Old Goa the road to Panjim meanders along the Mandovi, often at the same pace as the river, conducting vehicular traffic along its gentle curves to the faint fragrance of the river marching steadily to the Arabian Sea off Panjim, Goa’s capital city located at the confluence of the river and the sea.

This is the stretch I look forward to on my forays into Panjim. On clear days, and the skies are usually clear on either side of the monsoons even if not always blue, the breeze sweeps in on the stretch of road and the rumble of the bus turns into a steady lulling drone, only changing on the driver shifting gears up or down the inclines when it isn’t trying to overtake another.

Occasionally a loud blast of horn will sound from large river barges navigating the Mandovi and ferry goers awaiting river ferries for Chorao and Diwar will turn their face in the direction of the horn. If they’re lucky a second blast of horn will reverberate through them, bouncing off the narrow streets before the quiet lays claim to the streets once again.

The stretch of road past Old Goa offers glimpses of the river in snatches of streetside conversation interrupted by coconut trees, groves, whitewashed chapels set off by gulmohars in spring blaze, shipyards, fisheries, shopfronts, fishing jetty, fishing trawlers, and verandahs along the front of old homes, the cast iron railings lending the street a hint of relief, and on Sundays even more so.

Sundays empty urban and rural landscapes not so much of people as they do of purpose, of urgency, of the necessity of travel, of having to be someplace you’d rather not.

In arriving as Sundays do at the end of the week or at the beginning depending upon how you choose to see it, they seek to serve as a prelude to the moment the body, freed of encumbrances, fleshes out a new beginning, shaking off the sluggishness of the week before, not unlike acquiring a new skin as the old one is lost to the mandatory weekly moulting.

While awaiting a river ferry to take one across the Mandovi, there’s little to distinguish the waiting from any other on a weekday, except maybe there’re fewer vehicles awaiting a ride across the river on a Sunday than on a weekday.

The river itself is a picture of calm, barely a ripple in the sunshine unless fishes try to break surface. Kingfishers continue to perch on overhanging branches before speeding into a dive and returning with equal alacrity, a wriggling fish held firmly in the beak if lucky. Off the road life goes on as usual, and the week is but days that’re no different from any other except maybe Sundays on the Mandovi but not by much.

The spring reveals itself in Goa as flowering trees blossom among the chatter of birds calling on them as much for the succulence on offer as for reveling in the warmth of sunshine on the banks of the river on a Sunday morning.

The Silk Cotton tree in particular is insistent with its blood red blossoms setting off the quiet of the street and the blue skies. Like blood shot eyes lined on bare branches, the flowers seem intent on being seen from afar by birds and meanderers alike.

After the mild Goan winter the first sight of colour breaking out in the trees is an occasion to pause along the way and step out for a closer look. On the banks of the river it’s the time to gaze along its length and steady the morning rush into something more manageable and peaceful.

The Red Silk-cotton tree is among the first to blossom and is the harbinger of spring. If you see a Silk Cotton tree in bloom while most other flowering trees haven’t began blooming yet, it’s likely you’re out in January like I was when I came upon this tree on the banks of the Mandovi on a salubrious Sunday morning on the river.

The tide was out, exposing laterite stones along the sliver of land below the road. In the shade of an overhanging tree, local villagers cast lines out in the river from slim bamboo sticks, watching in silence for signs of fish taking the bait.

Watching them perched on stones and gazing fixedly in the river after the lines that’d gone under, I wondered if necessity had driven them to fish in the Mandovi that morning for, fish are plentiful roadside in the villages that dot the Goan countryside as vendors make their way into village centres early each morning, and while not everyone can afford all the fishes on display there’ll always be a variety or another available in cheap and in plenty.

However, it’s entirely possible that they’d time on hand from their vocations on weekdays and had chosen to go fishing for a bit of quiet and sport on the river, hoping to land some for lunch but not overly disappointed if the Mandovi refused to yield any for their effort that Sunday morning. Moreover, fishing brings a Sunday feel to the activity all by itself as any slowing of pace through the day inevitably will.

Across the road from the three fishermen, a local youth stepped to a roadside Cross bearing white candles. After a brief moment of prayer, he lit the candles at the Cross with a deliberate precision that comes from doing it over time. An act of faith strengthens in belief from enduring time, and tide.

Once the candles he had lit were burning bright at the altar of the Cross, he bowed his head before stepping out onto the road. Whether he had petitioned the Cross or was offering thanks for realizing his prayers is something I would never know. It was equally likely he was paying homage to departed memories as is likely he was infusing his day with piety from offering candles at the Cross.

Later, as we boarded the ferry to Diwar, I leaned against the deck as it pulled away from the landing at Sao Pedro before affecting an about turn in the middle of the river as it headed for the opposite bank.

A fisherman on the river bank we had just left swiveled on his heels as he expertly looped the fishing net into the air, pausing mid swivel to watch it settle in a billowing circle, setting off little ripples where it hit the water.

On the river ferry, framed by an open window a woman in red corduroys lent her gaze to the river in silence. Like a painting of a river hanging from a wall, the open window framed the stretch of river behind her as the ferry neared Diwar.

Soon mangroves and fishing nets replaced the river scene in the open window and the clattering of iron chains sounded as the boatman lowered the landing.

Then there was silence as we stepped past the gangway and made for land and beyond, for the tree from my childhood travels.

Its leafless outline has been a constant from the time I first landed in Chorao on a Sunday bird-watching trip from school, subsequently making my way to Diwar for no better reason than it was there to be explored. It was there I first saw it, and subsequently ever after. It’s home to the great Kites that hover in the skies over Diwar, a place to land for a breather before opening their wings for a foray in the skies.

The stark outlines of the barren tree relieved the empty rice fields of Diwar midway through their stretch against the hills inland where a whitewashed church stands from before, from way, way before.

Here, on the power lines that run along the narrow road that takes the traveler deep into the island off Panjim, Roller Jays launch into the air playing in the same frame as do Black Drongos and Small Green Bee-eaters, each carving their empty space in which to hunt insects, each dancing to their own rhythm bequeathed them by their own kind.

Occasionally a bus will trundle past on its way to the ferry point. On Sundays, even fewer buses will.

Stepping off the road in the direction of a large, shady tree ringed by a platform for travelers to pause and take in the quiet we find company, of locals who’ve ridden to the shade of the tree for a bit of beer and quiet.

Soon another villager joins them bearing snacks (Vada Pao) to complement the crate of beer and soft drinks. It’s likely they’ve stocked up on liquor to go with beer and have taken time off from home to lighten up their Sunday with a bit of beer and talk while the Mandovi courses past them behind the bank of mangroves at the edge of the field.

They’ll have planned the Sunday morning outing over the week, calling up to confirm the time before riding out to the tree by the lonely road, looking forward to doing nothing in particular and reveling in the thought of it. Soon the Sunday on the Mandovi will pass and the week will be upon them.

The anticipation of doing nothing, even if limited to a day, is a salve for having to live with choices made as a matter of course, compulsion or necessity. The anticipation exults not so much in the freedom to do as one pleases as in reverting to a natural state of being, floating freely and away with time, like the birds in the skies over Diwar on the banks of the Mandovi.

Converging Landscape

2011-10-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

Hattargi, Karnataka. 2011.

When the landscape hurtles to the horizon, flat and deep, for a rendezvous with the heavens where they converge to infinity, it’s never easy to determine if the clouds are coming in or going away, not in an instant anyway.

There’re no trees about for the wind to bend, nor are there leaves in a mood to oblige the nudging breeze. And if you hold your breath in the instant your eyes rove the land before you, it’s likely the expanse will root your feet where they first land for, there’s nothing to approach, nothing to get close to, and nothing that you’ll see better than you already do from where you now stand.

Yet, the landscape holds the gaze as vastness will. Nothing moves or if something indeed does it barely registers. A landscape that stills time assumes a vastness that endures the moment, prolongs it, and freezes it, rooting the eye, and the feet to the eternity of its passing.

The sheep that graze in the fields move less like individuals that they are and more like the clouds in the skies overhead, flowing together into one unyielding mass, changing shape, distending, contracting, but moving all the time, indiscernible but moving all the same, like thoughts seeking space to nest in the mind.

For a moment I wished for Sunflowers in the field, imagining the sheep grazing in a thousand Suns. It was September, and straggling monsoon clouds were playing catching up, travelling great distances over a land they had never visited before nor would they ever visit again. Come next year, other clouds would take their place, passing over farmers gathered on the steps outside their homes, their eyes to the skies, wondering and waiting for rains so they could plant jowar before the last of the clouds disappeared over the horizon.

In the moment that passed me that September day, I caught a glimpse of the land and the horizon locked into a perpetual tango, painting the landscape for travelers like me.

Cricket Bat in the Jungle, Batting Wild, Batting Free

2011-10-09T02:07:00.000-07:00

On finding a ‘Cricket Bat’ in a Goan jungle, more precisely in the wildlife sanctuary at Mollem.

If you plan on having a ball in the jungle it’d help to have a cricket bat to play the ball with, or better still, have a ball with. You might yet get a pitch to parade your skills on even if it’s a wet one and the soil is loose beneath the surface, and if you’re lucky you can count on a wild bison for a wicket keeper.

It doesn’t matter if the bison cannot collect the ball cleanly, trust its girth to stop some from passing it to the boundary as did Dhoni in the recently concluded Test series between India and England, and life goes on.

Just watch your step if you do not want to sprain your ankle running in. Where Indian Bisons (Indian Gaur) have stepped through they’ve left ample evidence of their weight on the pitch, deep holes where water collects temporarily before seeping into the earth.

And to clear the field a flat batted shot will not do, get under the ball and attempt a skier to clear the trees if you aim to get the ball anywhere, else it’s likely the nearest tree will field the ball long before you’ve completed your bat swing.

For spectators if you’re happy with a Grey Hornbill busy in a fig tree, chattering Flycatchers, Emerald Doves in tree tops, Warblers in thickets, Kingfishers hovering over jungle streams, and Langurs leaping among branches then you’re set for the game, a bee buzzing in your bonnet.

While there’re bees around, there’re no colourful bonnets about to buzz in, unless the colours sported by Bonnet Macaques on their behinds suffices.

However, speaking of colour, there’s plenty around. Winged wonders who’re as exotic as their names would suggest, flit about the field all day, zig zagging like commuters on Mumbai thoroughfares.

Common Map, Common Crow, Common Sailor, Grey Pansy, Grass Yellows, and even a Count you can count on, the Grey Count, among the lesser Commoners who’re no less cheerful or enthusiastic to see you take guard.

Just take care not to swing your bat when one of them is passing by the edge, for there’s just the chance the Hot Spot might awaken that very moment and show up the spot where the wing singed your bat, sending you on your way to the pavilion, except here you’d have to clamber up the rickety steps of a machan to cool your heels, or to the straw hut the forest curator uses to keep an eye on the grass plot maintained for the Indian Bisons in the wildlife sanctuary, not unlike the pitch curator who keeps a beady eye on the grassy pitch lest an Indian player, enamoured by the nightlife in town, and having partaken of its spoils the night before staggers onto the grassy pitch before play begins.

Don’t forget to watch the ball as you cream it through. There’s every chance Langurs might decide to swing it right back and there’s no guarantee they’ll be aiming at the stumps, and not you.

If you clear the field, chances are the ball would’ve to lucky to make it through the vegetation, and there’s no knowing who’s lurking in there for, over the years I’ve seen slitherers of ever kind when hiking in these very patches, including Kraits, Cobras, Russell’s Vipers, Saw Scaled Vipers, and Whip Snakes here.

But then fortune favours the brave, so you might as well make a dash for the ball before the vegetation devours it and you’re apprehensive in reaching for it in the thicket harbouring the unknown – a motivation as pressing as any in diving for the ball before it crosses over.

Is there a lesson I see here in including this patch in the fielding drills Duncan Fletcher puts the Indian Cricketers through given how they rolled over and lay supine before the ball ‘died’ on the boundary. I’d assume there is one.

Aha, the thoughts that will flit about a perspiring forehead on spotting a cricket bat in the jungle no sooner had Philip and I spotted it by a freshly made dirt track in the sanctuary.

We found our own cricket bat in the jungle the moment we stepped through a rocky path laced with straggling grass and into the thicket before happening upon a newly laid dirt track along the periphery of the sanctuary that runs by the highway conducting vehicular traffic to Belgaum from Panaji, through Mollem before surmounting the Anmod Ghats and back the same way.

Looking around me I spied ‘seats’ of leaves, likely Teak, arranged neatly in a small clearing set back from the newly minted dirt path, indicating where labourers had settled down for a bit of shade and quiet at lunchtime.

The leaves were yet to lose their colour and elasticity, indicating it wasn’t a long time ago that workers laying the walking path were batting the lose topsoil into place with the stodgy cricket bat that looked like it was hewn from the trunk of a Jackfruit tree or maybe a Mango tree. I couldn’t be sure, just that the weight suggested the possibility.

And the fact that they’d left the bat behind where we found it meant they would return to work on the dirt road some more, it looked like it might need some more of batting the soil layer down before the Sun, assuming it would manage to pierce.

I lifted the solid wooden batter shaped like a cricket bat and swung it in the arcs I used to when I was at school and dreamed of making it big as a batsman. But whacks that life dealt me on the hind quarter with cricket bats of another kind nudged me into batting corporate timelines, with teatime restricted to dip wala chai produced in cheap plastic cups stacked in a corner of a makeshift cafeteria, cups you had to learn to hold lightly between your fingers if you didn’t want to turn them into fountains of steaming tea spouting in your face.

I liked the way the workers had arranged the leaves into a temporary seating. Over time the ‘seats’ would turn to mulch and likely nourish the very tree they came from, not unlike the branches that colourful fungi had made their home on.

In the jungle, the temporary is permanent, and temporariness, enduring.

The number of ‘leaf-seats’ suggested there were no more than four workers involved in laying the jungle path. And if you concede the bisons their right of way, and hence the right to leave their footprints deep in the dirt track there were fewer indentations in the entire stretch of freshly turned over red soil of laterite origin that sloped along to a jungle stream some distance away from where we stood than what you’d find in a foot of city roads in Mumbai.

As Philip and I stepped on the surface, bending to trace the outlines of what appeared to be Bison tracks, I felt the surface needed more of the batting down and baking in the Sun to hold firm if it was to survive more of the monsoons on their way West over the Arabian Sea.

And one Cricket Bat in the jungle, worked by one batter at a time, would not suffice if the surface was to be batted down firmer before the soil dried out. More wooden bats were needed, and more batters to wield them and work the surface.

As Philip and I walked down the incline, binoculars dangling from the neck, I wondered if it wouldn’t help to have the ‘feared’ Indian batting lineup donate their cricket bats for the purpose considering they barely made their effort count on the scoreboard in the recently concluded Test series in England, and given how many were found short on technique in facing the English bowlers would it harm the team to have them assigned to batting down the surface of this jungle trail?

I doubt if it would. If anything it’d give them a better feel of tapping the surface of the pitch with the toe-end of their bats to flatten out unevenness before taking guard at the wicket, that’s assuming they’d be picked up to play for India again.

For Drinks Break they can reach into the crook of a nearby tree for water to quench their thirst. That way they could imbibe some jungle wisdom from the Wisdom Tree.

For a shower, they could make do with the jungle stream that courses by not far from the trail.

And if it turns out the Indian batsmen are no good even at batting down the surface of a jungle trail, then there’s the jungle well to hide them from sight lest they get noticed by the selectors again.

The Silent Sentinel

2011-09-26T12:31:00.000-07:00

Panaji, Goa. 2011.

In the moment the tide passes
Allowing time a temporary reprieve,
The shoreline reveals its midriff,
As it basks in the rare relief cast its way.

The sentinel’s lights, having fallen silent, pause
As eyes scan the horizon for an anchor.

Finding none to steer their course,
They chart their run along the shore,
Keeping a meandering soul company, and delighting in the colour
His umbrella lends a wistful monsoon sky.

In the moment meandering meets serendipity
Time anchors my wandering feet to the passing moment.

Chaltey, Chaltey, Baaton, Baaton Mein

2011-09-14T03:09:00.000-07:00

Behind the dwellings and commercial establishments on Nirmal Chandra Street are more dwellings along narrow lanes that convey residents along to their homes. The lanes are wide enough to let two residents pass each other but not if a two-wheeler were to be parked in the way.

From the road there’s little to indicate the layers that wrap neighbourhoods along tight lines, only relieved by brightly painted doors and windows and lanes sectioning them into blocks while cutting through the neighbourhood.

Into one such neighbourhoood we had sallied forth on a winter morning in Kolkata. When we turned left into a lane branching off the Nirmal Chandra Street the Sun had just about managed to rise above the street-facing homes to light up the houses behind, and it was barely an hour shy of noon.

Around a scooter parked in a lane connecting homes, four school going children had gathered, likely discussing their plan for the day off from school. Sundays are unusually quiet in the older parts of Kolkata.

There’re few people about in the morning, and those who’ve stepped out for an errand or accompanying another for public service exams usually conducted on Sundays will meander about or bask in the winter Sun reading newspapers roadside.

In the winter Kolkata embraces the Sun early in the morning. It’s no use turning to the clock to confirm if it’s still night, not when the winter dawn stirs at a time when it’s still night elsewhere. It was the farthest we had traveled east. And it was the earliest we had seen the Sun rising.

Except for men bathing around a water tank on a footpath along the BSNL – Entally Telephone Exchange building, and later around another water tank in Monilal Saha Lane, there were few people about, among them a barber who had set up an impromptu shop at a street corner. Round the corner behind him the street ran empty.

On Sundays the shutters of most shops along the road were still down with a few exceptions like K. C. Mookerjee & Sons. The Iron & Hardware Merchant probably had a tradition dating back from 1836 to keep alive.

Chatterjee Paul & Co. were probably under no such compulsion and it’s likely they dated back just as far back in time as K.C. Mookerjee & Sons did. Alongside Nirmal Chandra Street, Chatterjee Paul & Co. had also listed Wellington Street, the original street name. If anything, mails addressed by the former name would still find its rightful way.

Chatterjee and Mookerjee are Bengali Brahmin names, a formidable community in the Bengali cultural landscape, admired and respected for its contribution to the Arts, as ubiquitous as the famed yellow Ambassador taxis. And like with most non-Bengalis, those from my generation and from the one before were first introduced to the names Chatterjee and Mukherjee courtesy the classics both filmmakers entranced the Indian audience with, their middle of the road cinema tapping into the goodness of India that Indianness is often associated with, or at least used to be.

While Hrishikesh Mukerjee moved the Indian masses with Anand, Chupke Chupke, Gol Maal, Anupama, Abhimaan, Guddi, Khubsoorat, Aashirwad, and Bawarchi, Basu Chatterjee tapped into the everyday India of his time with the timeless films Rajnigandha, Chitchor, Choti Si Baat, Khatta Meetha, Ek Ruka Hua Faisla, and Baaton Baaton Mein among others. Together they defined a culture and froze it for successive generations to tap into while reminding those of their generation of an India of before, of the 1960s, of the 1970s. Their themes move me still, and the songs even more so.

I first imagined Mumbai local trains from Basu Chatterjee’s 1979 hit, Baaton Baaton Mein, and as a kid I actually believed that romances blossom in Bombay local trains after watching the kindly Uncle Tom introduce the Bandra Boy Tony Braganza to Nancy Perreira to the background score of Suniye Kahiye, Kahtey Suntey Baaton Baaton Mein Pyar Ho Jayega as they travel from Bandra to Churchgate on the Western Line. It was not until much later I learnt that the reality of Bombay of my time was very different from that of Basu Chatterji's time when it was still possible to fall in love Kahtey Suntey Baaton Baaton Mein.

It’s a song I never tire of, an imagination I’ve never abandoned, an era I indulge myself in through films of the time, yes, of a time when Nancy’s mother, Rosie Perreira, initially apprehensive of letting Tony marry Nancy since he was earning only Rs. 300/- per month, finally relents to the match upon learning that his pay would increase to Rs. 1,000/- per month after his probation period.

Suniye Kahiye, Kahtey Suntey Baton Baton Mein Mein Pyar Ho Jayega

सुनिए, कहीये
कहते सुनते बातो बातों में, प्यार हो जाएगा

ये पहली नजर का, उफ़ क्या असर है
तुम्हारी कसम डगमगाए से हम है
नहीं जिस पे काबू, ये हैं कैसा जादू
मेरे लिए तो, सच भी भरम है

घटा, चाँद, बिजली, बरखा, पवन में
शामिल हो तुम मेरी हर कल्पना में
तारीफ़ मेरी इतनी करो ना
उड़ने लगू मैं, कही आसमां में

तुम्हारी अदा है, वो सब से जुदा है
चाहा हैं तुम को इसी वास्ते
हम बेखबर है, तुम बेसबर हो
उस पे हैं देखो नए रास्ते

It’s perhaps indicative, and maybe even instructive, of the streets and the city of how signboards will sometimes chaltey, chaltey remind the traveller of an entirely different context and baaton baaton mein hee transport the meanderer back in time, to once familiar signposts.

Down The Dirt Road

2011-09-01T09:04:00.000-07:00

Goa, 2008.

From the house in the shade of trees,
A little boy in red cycled down the winding dirt road.
Past harvested fields and coconut trees he rode
Clasping an empty bag against the handle,
As he flew down the stretch.
With the loose end of his bandana bouncing behind him,
He pedaled furiously and was soon upon us.

But before I could ask him
What it was his mother had sent him out on an errand for,
He curved past me before turning into a blur on the road
We had ridden along on our way to the river Zuari.

When you’re young and raring, any road will do.
And freedom is pedals under your feet,
A set of wheels at your command,
And an excuse to hit the road away from home.

Jama Masjid On Eid Eve In Mumbai

2011-08-30T22:46:00.000-07:00

After an early dinner of Surti Thali for Rs. 80/- each at Hotel Surti located at the intersection of the Bhuleshwar Road and the Kalbadevi Road we crossed the crowded intersection and entered the Sheikh Memon Street in a blaze of lights streaming out of shops on either side of the street, the displays of jewellery in the Zaveri Bazaar enticing shoppers rivaling the bustle of the street on the eve of Eid-ul-Fitr as we made for the Jama Masjid in Bhuleshwar, among the oldest mosques in Mumbai.

The Bhuleshwar Road terminates at Sheikh Memon Street while the Kalbadevi Road continues to Metro Cinema adjoining Dhobitalao and across the road from Jer Mahal near St. Xavier College.

As dusk fell, the lighted minarets of the Jama Masjid towered over assorted shops shining brightly, among them the diamond and gold merchants of Zaveri Bazaar on Sheikh Memon Street. Past Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri, among India’s best known and biggest jewelry retailers besides being a trusted name in the jewelry business in India, the minaret grew larger, its features now clearly visible in the lights illuminating it.

Mumbai’s Jama Masjid is contrary to what one might expect. From the street there’s no flight of steps leading to an open courtyard fronting the mosque and reached form three sides like it’s with the Jama Masjid in Delhi. Instead Mumbai’s Jama Masjid is a quadrangular building enclosed by buildings opening into the streets.

Hidden from view of the street, an ancient tank lies behind a gate on the eastern entrance of the mosque and is approached past a courtyard behind the arched entrance opening onto the street.

The Jama Masjid was completed in 1802 after a Konkani Muslim merchant consented to its construction on his land in about 1775 provided the ancient tank located in what was formerly a garden was preserved intact. From this ancient water tank rise arches that support the mosque.

The Jama Masjid is located opposite Mangaldas Market at the intersection of the Sheikh Memon Street with the Princess Street and the Janjikar Street. The Crawford Market.is located to the south-east of where the Sheikh Memon Street terminates.

Looking up from the street, with my back to street vendors jostling for customers thronging the shops on either side of the Sheikh Memon Street, the Jama Masjid arrays in a series of angled terraces and balconies distinguished by decorative features. Strategically placed lights highlighted the features in the glow of the bustling night market. The domes of the mosque merged with the night.

The Jama Masjid extended the luminescence of Mumbai’s night street to the skies above.

In another time and context the towering minarets of the 19th century masjid might’ve been an extension of the sparkling jewelry in shop windows but today the minarets pushed against overcast skies under the watchful eyes of the Mumbai Police manning the barricades to the congested lanes while camped by patrol vehicles off the entrance to the Jama Masjid.

These are no normal times.

As the month-long dawn to dusk fasting in the month of Ramzan (Ramadan) drew to a close, Mumbai’s Muslim community thronged the markets largely around Pydhonie, Bhuleshwar, and along the Mohammed Ali Road and Crawford Market for last minute shopping on the eve of Eid-ul-Fitr before feasts and festivities kick off on Eid tomorrow. Clothes, bangles, and shoes, including false eye-lashes among other things flew off the shelves.

On The Road From Bharatpur To Deeg

2011-08-26T02:26:00.000-07:00

Deeg was not on the cards originally, not until we found we had time to spare in Bharatpur on a warm summer day in March some years ago.

Approaching noon, Tom and Anne had gone in search of the Indian Courser the bird-watching guide had promised to show them, disappearing from view along a rutted path that led off the narrow road meandering through the bird sanctuary while we waited under a Peepal tree watching a Tree Pie, its distinctive whites on the tail having betrayed its presence in the lush foliage it shared with a noisy Jungle Babbler unhappy at being abandoned by its six sisters, and an inquisitive Red Vented Bulbul that would turn its head at an impossible angle from time to time to ensure we were up to no mischief, straightening up each time I caught its eye accusingly.

The birds of Bharatpur, I would soon learn, left nothing to chance. With water scarce they could be excused their discretion.

Upon returning to the hotel for lunch halfway through the day following a fulfilling bird-watching trail in the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary it was suggested we try Deeg, the former capital of the Jat kings of the Bharatpur princely state, and under an hour’s drive from Bharatpur along the way to Alwar in Rajasthan.

On learning the palace at Deeg was worth going miles to see, we needed no further convincing and braced for the bumpy ride to Deeg, a little over 35 kms. away.

The road to Alwar cut through open fields, the landscape alternating between the green of standing crop, the driver pointing them out to be Sarson, and the grey of tilled earth awaiting sowing or one recently harvested.

“The Kharif season is a particularly busy time,” the driver explained, his eyes peeled out for tractors laden with sacks of potatoes rumbling past. “Typically Bajra, Jowar, Udad, Til, Moong, Chaura, and Makkai are planted in the Kharif season, though Makkai is not as favoured as the rest.

We passed more tractors ferrying potatoes piled high, often hearing them before they rumbled into view.

“Rabi usually sees Sarson planted though some farmers will plant potatoes and wheat while others will plant Masoor Dal.”

The number of tractors, and trucks transporting potatoes, a long line queuing up outside a storage facility in one particular instance, suggested that potatoes vied with Sarson as the preferred Rabi crop. The distinctive yellow flowers of the Sarson Ka crop lent the ubiquitous green a dash of sprite.

“Along with Sarson, farmers will plant green peas, and Chana, crops that need less water, requiring watering a mere 4-5 times. And usually it rains that much in the winter anyway,” he concluded.

The road to Deeg saw little traffic, made up almost entirely of tractors and trucks ferrying potatoes, and camels carting cattle feed along, their bulging loads chaffing under invisible constraints, inflating the bulbous loads further until the cart-load of feed swelled like a humungous water belly.

The camels nevertheless carried on gamely.

The fields were set back from the road but not by much. If farmers were working the fields they were not easily visible from the road.

However, at many places the fields were dotted by dried dung cakes arranged in circular piles raised waist high, sometimes higher.

The dung cakes the women were stacking high were relatively large compared to those one might see stacked up roadside in Maharashtra or Karnataka, and interestingly they were usually accompanied by kraal-like circular straw structures with tapering roofs fashioned like a toupee using what appeared to be bamboo shoots strung together and covered in dried straw.

Not all roofs tapered, some were rounded, resembling split coconut shells upturned on the floor. Likewise, the shoots strung and strengthened using dung plaster were used in raising the circular walls where bricks were not used for the purpose.

On the roads in the north of India, no driving experience is complete without drivers astride the jugaad smiling and waving out to inquisitive travellers fairly half-way out the window at their first unexpected encounter with the jugaad, that signature improvisation of the pumpset engine, or the one sourced from a 350 CC Royal Enfield Bullet, and fashioned with wheels and a carriage hammered together at a local garage to transport villagers between population centers, its exposed entrails adding to its aura.

We passed many jugaads on our way to Deeg, and I cannot remember seeing any sporting a number plate. A sleeker alternative would've stuck out like a sore thumb in the rugged landscape.

Deeg lay ahead as the heritage of the Jats, and a chapter from India’s history, beckoned.

I lay back in the seat and watched the landscape saunter by as the road slipped between the wheels ever so slowly.

Related Links:

1. Bharatpur's Wandering Waterhen.

What Elephants Eat, Dogs Don’t

2011-08-18T07:05:00.000-07:00

But What Human Beings Eat, Dogs Eat Too.

So, I could understand what these three dogs were hoping for when they lined up in front of this lady at the Dubare Elephant Camp on the river Cauvery in Coorg.

And each time she laid her hand into the food she had bunched up in a piece of paper, the three dogs stiffened up as if preparation to race each other for the morsel the moment she cast it in their direction. They held their ground, unmoving, concentrating on her every moment as she tucked into the goodies, oblivious to the enquiring presence of three hungry dogs.

And each time she brought her hand to her mouth to polish off a mouthful of food, six alert ears straightened up even further as if to make certain she was prepared to eat it and wouldn’t spit some their way.

And when they heard her munch on the food, the six ears relaxed just a wee bit before the trio cocked their faces to one side, eyes alert, as if to say “Really, you didn’t throw us some!”, not that they saw anything differently from an angle but probably in disbelief that nothing came their way.

And so they waited, and waited, and waited, without luck. For all the lady knew, they didn’t exist. That must be some hunger, I thought, to feel nothing about six eyes watching your every move and not acknowledge their presence in any way let alone share some of it for, this was no ordinary place where they could move on and find a shop to wait by where people stepped up to buy food and hopefully share with them some. This was nearly in the middle of nowhere, bounded by the river at one end, and a forest on the other, with life limited to housing quarters for the forest staff.

Nevertheless I understood why the dogs waited out their time at the lady’s feet as she tucked in her food.

Because What Human Beings Eat, Dogs Eat Too. At least most things, that is.

But What Elephants Eat, Dogs Don’t Eat. At least most things, that is. Surely not, Ragi balls.

So it was all the more reason why I was mighty surprised to find this dog below waiting in front of the elephant as it fed at its eating place.

Because What Elephants Eat, Dogs Don’t.

Ekdantha, or The Single Toothed One, was done with his bath in the river, and it was time for his breakfast of jaggery, and Ragi balls at the feeding area.

He stood still as the mahout fed him jaggery, and later allowed visitors to feed him some, including the large Ragi balls.

And in all that time, the dog stood to attention as Ekdantha ate his breakfast, reaching with his trunk for Ragi balls while lifting it to open his mouth for chunks of jaggery.

What was she thinking wanting to share in the elephant’s breakfast! Not surprisingly, nothing came her way.

Maybe Ekdantha knew that dogs don’t eat what he does, and hence didn’t throw any morsel her way.

Now that would be something.

This wise old dog below stood in silence, gazing at the river, or across it. I couldn’t tell for sure. But he neither waited in hope in front of human beings nor in front of elephants. Only hopeful of somehow finding his way across the river someday so he could have more options to try his luck with finding food.

Now that’s something to wait for and be hopeful about. After all, wisdom from age teaches one of the things to choose to wait for, and the things to be hopeful about.

Interviewed on BlogAdda: In the PART I of my interview they published today, I talk of my early influences in the context of travelling, the move to Mumbai from Goa, my reasons for starting blogging, the story behind the name: Windy Skies, and much more. It's a privilege to be featured by them, and has been a pleasure answering their questions.

Click to read PART I of my interview. Any feedback on the interview you might want to share, bouquets or brickbats, I’d be more than happy to see it on the BlogAdda interview page, and hopefully here as well.

PART II of the interview will be featured the next week. Thanks for reading, and for reading this space all these years.

Tiranga, The Indian Tricolour

2011-08-15T15:42:00.000-07:00

The Indian flag. The Tricolour. The Tiranga. Tiranga Zhanda.

While some will wear it on their hearts, some will wrap it around their wrists, and seem to embrace it, like they would their own. In colours that bind, emotions of a country run.

Yet others will fly it on their rides about town, letting the breeze make its presence felt as it unfurls the flag for all to see so it can wrap the colours about it and dance in the street. The breeze, ever the flirt.

Still others will grace their glass windows with the Tiranga so that no reflection of those passing by is bereft of an identity, not on this day, never.

Then there’re those who will fill the colours with air, so while they sit together, they threaten mischief should they get in their mind to float away with the clouds.

Until then they’ll sit tight in the breeze the fan whips up in the ceiling.

To be reminded of why we work, some will, like at my place of work from before, adorn the cubicles with the colours of India. Take pride in your work, the country will take pride in you. Not that any of us needed the prompting. But then you never know, not for sure at any rate.

On the street I revel in the flashes of the Indian Tricolour. The streets remember because they cannot afford to forget. Others maybe. But not the streets. No, not the streets.

The history of the Indian flag is like the history of India itself, of choices, and compulsions, in equal measure. The Indian flag evolved with the times, reflecting its times, the struggle for independence from British rule.

From its earliest form in 1906, when it was said to be first hoisted in Calcutta’s Parsee Bagan Square, bearing three horizontal strips of red, yellow, and green, with Vande Mataram gracing the centre, followed by the unfurling in Berlin in 1907 of the flag changed to bearing one lotus instead of eight from before, the rest changing into seven stars denoting the Saptarishi, then the one in 1917 hoisted by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Annie Besant during the Home Rule movement, bearing five red and four horizontal strips alternately, to the one in 1921 during the AICC session in Vijaywada when Gandhiji advised the youth bearing a new flag design to include white to represent all other communities in addition to the red and green the youth had used to denote the two major communities, Hindus and the Muslims, with the spinning wheel or Charkha at the center, the Indian flag has evolved significantly, events shaping it in as much as it went on to shape events once it became a rallying cry for India's independence from British rule.

It was in 1931 that the flag denoting the three colours, saffron, white, and green, with Gandhiji’s spinning wheel at the center, was adopted by the Indian National Congress party by passing a resolution to the effect, eventually becoming the basis of the national flag that we see today, those I saw on the street earlier in the day.

The only change from then being, Mahatma Gandhi’s beloved spinning wheel, the Charkha, was replaced by the Chakra (wheel) from Emperor Ashoka’s Lion Capital dating back to 250 B.C. The Chakra is also known as Ashoka Chakra. Its significance is central to Buddhism as the Dharmachakra or the Wheel of Law.

Sometimes, when I look at the wheel now, the Ashoka Chakra, in the centre of the flag, a mild tremor runs down the length, for it reminds me of the moment I stood beside the enclosed square in Sarnath (Uttar Pradesh) and peered into the enclosure protecting the original pillar that once held aloft Ashoka’s Lion Capital when he installed it in 250 B.C. in ancient Sarnath, where Lord Buddha preached his first sermon following his enlightenment in Bodh Gaya,.

I remember standing there a long time, gazing at the pillar shorn off its magnificent Lion Capital showing four lions in four directions, now housed in the museum across the road from the enclosure. The base of the pillar, shorn of the regal Lion Capital looked forlorn.

I could’ve reached and touched the jagged edges, remnants of the destruction known to have been wrought over Sarnath by Islamic hordes who rode in to grind into dust India’s ethos and supplant their own twisted one once they had destroyed India's culture, and its civilizational basis derived from an ancient religion. India has lost much. India has survived much. And is surviving much. Now.

I had attempted to make sense of the edicts Emperor Ashoka had issued on the pillar, only succeeding in the translation provided on a board nearby. The edicts on the pillar were in a language I did not understand.

It was hallowed ground, no less, where history, antiquity, and the birth of the very essence of Buddhism intersected to form a glorious memory of our travel to Sarnath.

Later, we had trooped to the museum to admire the Lion Capital. It was a stirring sight, its significance as the National Emblem of the Republic of India was not lost on me. I was not allowed to photograph it. I wish I could’ve.

Make time and visit Sarnath someday. It’s a long way off for most of us, but I’m glad I could. I feel you would feel the same as well. That moment was my tryst with history, antiquity, with Buddhism.

I felt the same way when I meandered in Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, lolling about the cottage where Mahatma Gandhi lived with his wife, Kasturba Gandhi.

It was quiet when we made our way up the steps, across the platform, past the Charkha (spinning wheel) outside the kitchen before stepping into the courtyard flanked by bare rooms, where Kasturba once lived. Sunlight streamed through the window when I stepped into her room, marking the window on the floor, the protective grills slanting across the floor before lengthening as the Sun began to drop anchor behind the horizon.

Make time and visit Sabarmati Ashram someday. Once there, meander, and reflect. Let time wash over you. Many things you know as facts from history today will take on a deeper meaning once you’re there. Take it from me, you will see some things differently.

On our way out I passed the Charkha (spinning wheel) again. The platform was empty. The platform Gandhi would use in his time there to meet with ashram inmates and visitors.

Now when I look back, after Sarnath and Sabarmati, after first adopting the spinning wheel in the Indian flag, then replacing it with Wheel of Law, I cannot help relate the circle of life to the Chakra (wheel). So much of Hindu thought revolves, not only as in a circle, but as a path of return, along the same curve it had set off on. Back to where it had started from. Back to its reason for existence. Yes, back to its reason, even if there’s much that changed along the way.

The centrality of the absolute is so prevalent, absoluteness so desired. And I see it in the initial adoption of the Charkha, the wheel, even if the significance of its role in awakening India lay in self sufficiency it represented and not in any philosophy pertaining to life or the wheel of life. Gandhi believed that self sufficiency co-relates to independence, one reason why he was for including the Charkha in the Indian flag. Charkha, in effect charting your Karma.

The Chakra. Yes. The Chakra that adorns the Indian flag now. Dharma Chakra. The Wheel of Law. Dharma and Law. Potent.

What you see, you understand. What you understand, you do not forget – Sarnath, Ashoka’s Pillar, the Lion Capital, the Wheel of Law, and Sabarmati Ashram, Gandhi’s Spinning Wheel, the Charkha.

You remember because you cannot forget; you remind so it will not be forgotten; you remember because you will not forget; you remind because it should be remembered; you remember because you should not forget.

You. Me. I. They. Him. Her. Them.

All.

Saffron. White. Green. The colours of the Indian flag are a construct of the nation. They’re not colours that run. They’re colours that’re resident. Colours that inspire. Colours that remind. Colours that’re reminded.

The Indian flag. A rallying cry.

I’m reminded of my idealism growing up, of school, of the flag hoisting ceremony, of the goose pimples as desh bhakti songs lifted the atmosphere, blanking out the Sun at times, at other times piercing the monsoon clouds, thundering in the head until the ears rang to the unifying cry, and the heart swelled with pride, a time to remember the sacrifices made, of the sacrifices to be made, a time when I recognized my country in the flag, and the flag in the country, and the people in its colours, and colours in its people. That was the time. Yes. That was the time.

School time, a time when the closest we came to cynicism was if we carried the Oxford Dictionary along, else it was an alien concept.

As a symbol of unity, the Indian flag is singularly important.

A flag is the face of the faceless. Like me. In it, the multitudes rally around an idea. The idea of India. Of an India. Of the India.

It is a living, breathing thing. Today of all days. Today. Yes, today.

A Raised Hood And Many Folded Hands

2011-08-04T22:32:00.000-07:00

The over-bridge connecting the railway platforms one, two, three, four, five, and six at Borivali Railway Station is usually crowded, conveying travelers between platforms in the same rushed manner as conducting them toward the exit to the east where they’ll descend the stairs to platform six before exiting the station.

Anxious to board the trains announced on the speaker or hurrying to exit the station to beat the rush heading for scarce rickshaws or buses outside, travelers will rarely break stride or cast a glance elsewhere before making their way about, unless an exception waylays them.

And today it appeared in the form of a firm voice emerging from the corner of the over-bridge, calling out even as the crowd moved and broke ranks in an age old Mumbai tradition –

“Today is Nag Panchami, today is Nag Panchami”.

It’s just as well she called out because the coiled Cobra (Nag) in her basket was barely visible in the flowers and garlands covering it, the raised hood barely noticeable along the curve of the projection.

She sat with the cane basket holding the Cobra, most likely made from copper, at her feet, her hand at the ready by a tin of milk she served up on the metal Cobra’s hood from a metal stirrer wound with cloth to soak up milk, in the same motion a passing traveler made in bringing up a coin as an offering to the serpent on the auspicious day of Nag Panchami, among the first festivals gracing the month of Sravan.

On Nag Panchami day, devotees offer milk, not necessarily in the belief the Cobra will drink it but more from the symbolic value associated with milk as a revered offering to deities on auspicious occasions.

“Today is Nag Panchami, today is Nag Panchami,” she called out each time a rush of passengers made their way up or down the stairs. Some folded hands in prayer in front of the Cobra, revered in Hinduism as much for protection from its lethality as for its role as a protector, depending upon the contexts it’s seen in or assigned.

Short of time as they go about their daily lives, it suited many travelers to pay up and have milk offered on their behalf to compensate for their inability to make time to visit a Shiva temple and offer milk to the Nag (Cobra) themselves. Meeting half-way is cultural. The middle path is comforting.

She called out again.

“Today is Nag Panchami, today is Nag Panchami.”

Her voice had begun to crack from calling out all day.

As I took the stairs down, it became apparent yet again how a city bursting at its seams will seek to delegate faith for want of time. And in doing so it reveals how, even when pressed hard consistently, it will seek to hang on to tradition in a desperate attempt to retain what remains of an identity derived from the culture of a people, of a past, for an uncertain future.

Note: Shortly, I’ll post on Nag Panchami celebrated at Borivali’s Omkareshwar temple, and Jogeshwari’s Jagdamba & Kalabhairav temple.

A Matter Of Chance

2011-07-31T13:42:00.000-07:00

Ahmedabad. 2011.

Slung over the shoulder
A kite rides his back,
Where, in another time and age,
A quiver of arrows might have.

Where circumstances offer choices
They’re his to make,
But were destiny to shape circumstances,
It’d be his fate to endure them.

Prem Utsav 2011 - Munshi Premchand Theatre Festival at Sathaye College

2011-07-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

Prem Utsav 2011 is currently underway at the Sathaye College Auditorium in Ville Parle (E), Mumbai. Over ten days, Mujeeb Khan’s theatre group, IDEA, is staging 75 plays adapted from Munshi Premchand’s works, ending July 31st, on the legendary Hindi and Urdu litterateur’s birthday. It’s an experience like no other. Go over and watch them.

If I needed any further confirmation that Mujeeb Khan was charting a path of his own and playing by his own rules, I didn’t have to wait beyond the minute after the lights went out at five minutes past eight to realize it myself.

Last weekend, just as the sixth and the last play of the second day at the ongoing Prem Utsav 2011 in Ville Parle (E) got underway at the Sathaye College auditorium, I’d noticed the artistes of his theatre group, IDEA, filter into the rows to the front, free of the costumes of parts they’d essayed through the evening in a series of plays dramatized from Munshi Premchand’s stories.

I sighed in silence. So, there would be no curtain call, no names of artistes read out to the audience to the sound of applause at the end of each play, nor at the end of the day. Until then I had hoped to learn of the identities of the artistes against the roles they had performed if only to applaud the verve they had brought to each of the six plays staged that day.

They had performed spiritedly even though they had struggled occasionally to come to grips with the language of the legendary Hindi litterateur, a finesse in nuances and tone never easy to master in today’s age of Bambaiyya Hindi of ‘Kya Bey, Kettey Bey and Tu Kaiko, Mee Baiko’ variety, but at no point had they flagged in their enthusiasm or loosened the grasp of their characters, essaying their roles with a passion that must’ve done their mentor and teacher, Mujeeb Khan, proud as he looked out the window of the projector room to the back, his eye as unwavering upon his wards performing on the stage as over the audience engrossed by the unfolding drama.

For, when I returned on day four of the ten day theatre festival celebrating Munshi Premchand’s works he remembered me as the ‘person who was photographing scenes from the plays the other day’. Mujeeb Khan apparently misses nothing in his presence. Bearded and clad in a kurta, his fingers were quick and his gestures, expansive as he made his point to the actors on some aspect of his craft.

There was applause aplenty at the end of each of the six plays staged at the auditorium, just that the actors would remain nameless to the end, the audience having to make do with a sheet of paper listing names of all student artistes involved in the 10-day theatre festival, oblivious of the parts they played in each of the plays.

Apparently Mujeeb Khan placed greater emphasis on the staging of the play, the characterization of roles, the timing of dialogue delivery, and their precision within the constraints of the Hindi language of the late 19th and early 20th century, possibly of greater significance than the names of artistes. He takes much pride in his wards. And I assume the reverse to be equally true.

Moreover there was no curtain for a ‘curtain call’. The end of each play was sounded by an echoing gong that followed a lights out lasting marginally longer than those between a change of scenes within a play. It took the audience some time to distinguish between the two but not after they’d applauded prematurely in the lights out between scenes with the applause they had reserved for the end of play.

But no one minded it. The scripts were taut, the actors dedicated, and the performances energetic, making up for the occasional slip; the themes Munshi Premchand wrote about of the India of his time remaining as relevant to the times of the audience as his own even if their prevalence was not as pronounced an urban reality as it was in the milieu Munshi Premchand grew up in in the present day Uttar Pradesh to the north of India.

In my interview with Mujeeb Khan when I returned to Sathaye Auditorium two days later to ask him a few questions about his craft and his mission, Mujeeb Khan would characterize Premchand’s themes as ‘timeless’. He was right.

Poverty, Widowhood, Child Marriage, Feudalism, Worker Exploitation, Alcoholism, Relationships, Greed and the like are enduring in their centrality to society, and equally independent of time, geography, and milieu. Munshi Premchand’s skill lay in the persuasive way he wrote about them, constructing stories that draw readers into the narrative, living the characters in their moments of despair, enlightenment, and deliverance.

The entry was free. Mujeeb Khan explained it away saying his theatre group wanted to bring Munshi Premchand’s works to the people and had no wish to ‘sell’ Munshi Premchand. Just as Premchand’s works were ennobling for their themes and treatment, so was Mujeeb Khan’s intent, and dedication. Different, surely.

The Sathaye Auditorium is located in the campus of Sathaye College on Dixit Road and seats 150+ Mumbai theatre enthusiasts, small by Mumbai theatre standards but significant for its existence as a part of the college.

Soon after the three of us made our way to Sathaye College, at walking distance from the Ville Parle (E) railway station, theatre goers began to filter through the gates. A security guard sat in a white plastic chair by the board listing the schedule of plays for each of the ten days of the theatre festival, answering queries from visitors as to the starting time.

“It’ll start at 5:30 pm,” he said without tiring of repeating it each time someone stepped through the gate.
“Are there tickets for the show?”
“No, the entry is free. There’re passes though,” he would reply.
At which some got flustered at not possessing passes for the shows. It’s easier buying tickets at the counter than chase after passes for entry.
“Where does one get the passes for the shows?”
“There,” the security guard pointed to the door of the auditorium.

Dutifully, people stepped up to the door and pulled at the handle. The door would not budge. A little later, another theatre-goer pulled at the door handle. It still would not budge. The attempts stopped only after someone who knew better informed the others that entry is first come, first serve. And the doors retained their handles.

Eventually I did not see any passes given out and we got in without any. I assumed passes would be of use in the event the auditorium was packed to capacity. It wasn't that day.

Strung between supports framing the approach to the door opening into the auditorium were motifs from Munshi Premchand’s milieu – kerosene lantern, woven baskets, and a tarazu. The latter was a constant in the undercurrents his narratives wove for, in the end, realization, and repentance had to balance out the straying from the righteous path for the message to go out.

The scales of justice had to tilt the right way. It was in the journey bridging both ends of human character, including the greys in between, that Munshi Premchand’s masterly portrayal of the human condition was essayed. And which Mujeeb Khan had sought to dramatise. He had come a long way, and he had a long way to go.

Blowing in the breeze, a large banner hung from the trees along an open area where students were busy playing football in their colours while cadets stood to attention to one end. A group of student cadets, probably from the NCC, had hop skipped through slush with rifles held over their heads. The rifles were vintage, most likely Lee Enfield .303, at least from where I stood in the distance. I couldn't be certain.

The banner depicted a montage of images ranging from a farmer scouring the skies for signs of rain from his parched fields, a hangman stringing up nationalists from Indian Independence movement, fields under plough, monuments, temples, and Mahatma Gandhi, each a context in Munshi Premchand's writings.

It had just rained and K and V had disappeared to a roadside tea stall for a glass of chai each before returning just as the bell sounded and the door opened as theatre enthusiasts drawn by Munshi Premchand’s aura trooped into the small auditorium.

The next two and half hours skipped time as the six plays staged in succession brought a whole gamut of human condition alive, bringing to life India’s legendary Hindi and Urdu littérateur and his sensibilities while trammeling the composure we had stepped in with, twisting and straightening it at each turn.

It was an evening to remember, and an experience to cherish.

The plays we saw that evening: (1) Pashu Se Manushya Tak, (2) Zindagi Aur Maut, (3) Pachtaava, (4) Boodhi Kaaki, (5) Prem Ka Uday, and (6) Sampadhak Moteram Shastri.

Note: In the next installment I’ll post the pictures from the above plays with brief story outlines.

Plays Scheduled for 28 July: (1) Mandir, (2) Tyagi Ka Prem, (3) Masoom Baccha, (4) Dhithkar, (5) Sava Ser Ghehu, (6) Nimantran, and (7) Jihaad.

The theatre festival opens each day at 5:30 pm, and continues until 31 July, 2011.

IDEA – Ideal Drama and Entertainment Academy.

Ganapati Idols Idle Streetside In Mumbai

2011-07-24T07:38:00.000-07:00

If Mumbai needed any further reminding of the approaching Ganesh Chaturthi festival, the makeshift structures made of bamboo supports lashed together and alternately covered by plastic sheets and the occasional tarpaulin now cropping up on roadsides with colourfully done Ganapati idols on sale do an effective job of reminding the city that its most cherished, dutifully celebrated, and much revered deity, Ganapati, pot belly and all, is due a visit to their homes.

I’d have to stretch my memory to recollect any other Hindu deity as creatively rendered as Ganapati or Ganesha as the elephant-headed God is known. If he didn’t occupy the minds as much he wouldn’t find himself skillfully rendered in mediums ranging from plantain leaves, coconut shells, rava ladoos, to wood, Plaster of Paris, and clay among other material. It obviously helps to have a trunk as his most distinguishing feature.

For the sake of Ganapati, the devout will banish fish and other non-vegetarian food from their house until the time he occupies centre stage in the house, preening in decorated luxury while neighbours troop in for his blessings, and the modak of course. It's another matter however, like they say of Goans good-naturedly, that hardly has Ganapati been borne out the front door to much merriment and tears alike, the fish comes in the backdoor!

Across the road in Vile Parle (East), just as we approached the railway station yesterday, headlights from the traffic streaming past lit up the Ganapati idols on sale at a roadside shelter manned by a woman busy on the phone fielding enquiries for the Ganesha idols on sale while her assistant was showing a couple around the place. They had a difficult time choosing from the shapes and sizes on display, each as endearing as the next.

Soon, as the days pass and Ganesh Chaturthi draws near the idols disappear as families take the deity home to continue their love affair with harbinger of good.

And somewhere trackside, only interrupted by the local trains hurtling past, youth from shanties and slums neighbouring the railway tracks will be drumming away in small circles, practicing for the return journeys Ganapati will make, back to the earth from whence he sprang into the Indian consciousness.

Note: On the highway between the western suburbs of Borivali and Jogeshwari, workers in makeshift tents are busy at work on Ganpati idols, adding finishing touches before putting the Ganapati idols on sale.

Note: This year the Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations will kick off on September 1.

Related Posts

1. The Last Journey Of The Elephant-headed God

The Burden Of A Hundred Tunes

2011-07-13T19:08:00.000-07:00

Framed by arches of the David Sassoon Library across the street from where he stood facing the road, the flute player held fort with his tune on the pavement outside the Jehangir Art Gallery, an impromptu stage he chose to lend his burden of carrying a hundred unsung tunes on his shoulder.

Circling around Mumbai’s celebrated Art Space, the pavement conducted the moving mass of Mumbai’s humanity along in choreographed chaos not unlike a river in spate breaching its banks to the terrifying scream of its intimidating silence wreaking unsuspected violence from the force of its unrelenting movement forward.

And like a hapless tree caught in the middle of a strengthening river, the street-side flautist stood alone among his tunes, gathering his melodies around him into embracing his isolation on a busy street.

With the flute pressed to his lips, the flute player had emerged from the Pavement Art Gallery that runs along the length of the K. Dubash Street in the Kala Ghoda precinct, barely breaking his stride past framed paintings of hopeful artists mounted along the open stretch, scarcely interrupting his tune along the way, hoping to interest passersby into lending a home to his many flutes that jabbed the sky indignantly at the indignity of lacking embraces.

But then Yeh Tho Mumbai Hai Meri Jaan.

As his tunes flowed outward they wrapped around passing feet without managing to slow them down, lingered by conversations without succeeding in pausing them, floated alluringly past reading eyes with nary a glace gracing them, dodged impatient taxi drivers unmoved to the passing melody, stepped past speeding traffic, and circled around invisible wakes of passing humanity in the hope a tune would find a home in an earnest ear, and a flute, a new shoulder to lean against.

Time fled past. The day grew shorter by the minute. The melodies wound hopelessly by. And a not a single flute left his shoulder.

The soulful melodies that issued forth from him thinned out before he let the flute drop, turning his head to scan passing humanity for passing interest. There was none.

Framed by the Bombay of yesterday, with time having chipped city sensibilities to the functional, the promise of possibilities the city once held out to street-side melodies had met their end in the reality of the irrelevance of the individual, and individuality.

Turning on his heels he returned the way he had come, seeking deliverance for his flutes at another street corner.

The search for acceptance circles around without ever completing the circle.

Sunday Lunch

2011-06-27T12:37:00.000-07:00

Kolkata. 2009.

The school caretaker holds out two polythene bags to his wife at the doorway of his residence located to one corner of the school courtyard. His cat follows him to the door, out of habit and purpose, equally.

One bag holds tomatoes and greens, and the other, fish. The courtyard is swept clean and quiet. The platforms in the shade are empty of students.

Later he basks in the winter Sun with the cat at his feet. It is Sunday morning and they both have time on their hands, and paws, to pause with the Sun and reflect with the shadows while awaiting lunch.

M.F. Husain, Grahak Panchayat, And A Rainy Day

2011-06-16T09:19:00.000-07:00

A little under two years ago, on a rainy day similar to those buffeting Mumbai for over a week now, I stepped out of the office with my colleagues for a meeting with office bearers of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (L.I.C) in Worli.

Grey skies had blanketed the city and the rain fell intermittently. While there was respite from the skies between spells of rain, there was no respite from the pall of windswept grey and black umbrellas deftly negotiating other umbrellas passing them by, the black adding to the overall gloom, with the occasional colour floating about in the street failing to break the impasse.

After the pounding through the year, roads clung on to puddles of water, seeking relief from the humidity of a long summer. Commuters exercised caution in choosing the puddles to leap over and the puddles to walk through, often choosing the latter to avoid leaping over a puddle only to land in another with a splash.

The much trumpeted Bandra – Worli Sea Link had opened to traffic a little over a week ago, connecting Bandra to Worli across the Mahim Bay. At over five kilometers the cable-stayed bridge over the Arabian Sea had attracted joy riders soon after it was thrown open to the public, with thousands lining up for a drive in the hope they would experience the roiling sea under them from the safety of the sea bridge.

But Mumbai being Mumbai, priorities soon rearranged themselves, with matters of urgency and compulsion taking over the need for joy rides between Worli and Bandra, with the exception of those with time on hand.

As we huddled into the office transport, matters of work took a backseat in the time leading up to the moment the car lined up with the bridge over a violent sea. Rivulets streamed down the windshield, glazing over the yellows of Traffic Policemen posted on the bridge into images brushed over with effects in image software. With windows rolled up we rolled onto the bridge in a cocoon of silence save the occasional banter, the pattering of raindrops and the whooshing of rearing waves muted to the ear even as the eye sought to recreate it.

Shortly we sped over seemingly innumerable spans supported on piers before approaching the massive central tower rising into the sky, the cables descended at angles, turning the cable-stayed portions on either side of the approach into a pleasing geometry.

A few quick turns negotiating the traffic barricades and we were on the home stretch before exiting the bridge on the Worli side in quick time. I was disappointed over passing it so quickly, and I hadn’t even got a good, long, hard look at the sea as we passed over it. For a moment I doubted if it was over five kilometers long before my colleagues laid my doubts to rest. It was 5.6 kms. long.

Upon entering the main concourse of L.I.C.’s office building I was struck by how high the ceiling was. With Worli home to large corporations, private and public, the L.I.C building was in keeping in the style of buildings fashioned in Worli in the decades before modernity and transparent open spaces sectioned along temporary lines and reflecting facades came to influence architectural space in newer constructions elsewhere in Mumbai. This looked, felt, and even smelt like Babu space except for a large painting nearly rising to the ceiling behind the receptionist. It was a 1963 Husain.

Not that I needed confirmation to the fact. The lines, the colours, the figures, even if a mystery to those not well informed about the Mumbai art scene, like yours truly, pointed to Maqbool Fida Husain, or M.F. Husain as he is better known in India, or rather was known in India before his passing away in exile in faraway London a little over a week ago, just as the monsoons rumbled into Mumbai ahead of time early this month.

The Gods must have conspired in bridging the two events with a common element, the Mumbai monsoon.

The only paintings I’ve admired of M.F. Husain’s are those of the horses he painted, the lines, the strength in the lines, and the mood made for an arresting pause. Of the rest of his paintings, limited to those I’ve seen exhibited in galleries and in print, I rarely found any that distinguished itself to a layman eye, more likely ordinary than not, contrary to what many others might feel. In time I came around to believing that their value lay more in the construction of the M.F. Husain brand than any inherent elevating characteristics.

I turned my gaze at the M.F. Husain on the wall.

Dulled by inclement weather outside, the lighting struggled to reveal the painting from where I sat on the sofa with my colleagues, waiting to be summoned to the meeting.

Curious, I got up from the seat and walked up to the painting. A form rising above the masses before him revealed itself holding up what appeared to be the Sun while looking to his right at musicians playing musical instruments.

In the foreground, probably seeking a face to the faceless masses in a throng, he shows a family. For a moment I stand there, attempting to make sense of M.F. Husain’s painting from the early 1960s. I make no headway except for returning my eye to the hordes or masses populating the scene.

If the musical instrument in the scene, most likely a Tanpura or maybe a Sitar, held in the classic pose of an accompaniment in a Hindustani music recital, is meant to lend a religious significance to the gathering of the masses at the feet of the one holding up the Sun or a ball of light, I wouldn’t know for certain. My guess is as good as yours.

Whether he meant for the imposing figure holding up the ball of flame to be a leader of sorts, I cannot be sure but wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be holding light to the masses, showing them the way out or a way forward. I could only imagine the intent.

The only certainty, if I can lay claim to it, is the gathering of the masses, and to an extent the notion of a leader rallying the masses about him, either to lead them on, or give them an audience.

And before the day was out, additional elements I happened upon in the landing by the stairway before we got called to the meeting, soon knotted themselves into a narrative around the masses, and a leader. It was as unlikely a coincidence as it was an unlikely analogy. Ah! The dots one will connect when waiting to be called to work!

Where the concourse opened into the landing leading to the staircase, several writing/display boards were stacked up against a wooden cabin fashioned in the space below the staircase, each writing board belonging to a pressure group organized as an employee union, and serving as notice boards for union demands, appeals, and announcements laid in chalk, with the exception of Grahak Chalval. Grahak is Hindi for customer while Chalval is Marathi for movement. Customer Movement.

The announcement in chalk read:

*Happy News* *Happy News*

For L.I.C. Employees

By Courtsey of Grahak Chalval

Montex Wrist Watch Offer

On Purchase of One Wrist Watch
Get Another Wrist Watch Free*

Leather Belt Rs. 250/-
Metal Belt Rs. 300/-

Offer Date: 13 July – 17 July
Time: Between 12 pm – 3 pm

While I had read about Grahak Chalval before I was surprised to find its presence prominently announced in a Govt. institution. No other Govt. office I had visited before bore Grahak Panchayat’s presence as prominently as at the L.I.C. office that day, in fact there was no visible presence.

Grahak Chalval is a consumer co-operative movement that emerged in the unlikely event of angry residents in Pune burning down a warehouse suspected of hoarding essential household commodities, inconveniencing consumers by creating artificial shortages aimed at hiking prices. The year was 1974, and Bindu Madhav Joshi was witness to the frustrated mob running amok.

Bindu Madhav Joshi, hailing from Pune’s Brahmin community distinguished by its stellar contribution to the Arts, the Academia, Administration, and Social movements, combined with other young social-movement minded Brahmin youth, including Sudhir Phadke and Pu La Deshpande, to raise in consumers an awareness about their rights and help check their exploitation by traders, eventually founding Grahak Panchayat to achieve his objectives.

He mobilized ‘Buying Groups’ comprising members who bought commodities on behalf of consumers before distributing them at their doorsteps on a ‘No Loss – No Profit’ basis, ensuring the benefits of collective buying power while putting a check on trading malpractices formerly visited upon individual consumers. Families benefited from the discounts the ‘Buying Groups’ managed on their behalf, easing financial constraints in the process. It was a rather unique co-operative movement.

Bindu Madhav Joshi’s movement eventually expanded its scope to safeguard consumer interests in a variety of matters affecting consumers, showing them the pitfalls to avoid, the rights to exercise, and the way forward.

As we prepared to take the lift, I couldn’t help notice the parallel between my interpretation of M.F. Husain’s rendition on canvas in the reception and the genesis of Grahak Chalval, the canvas of a painter converging with the reality of a social activist rendered in the consumer movement serving the masses.

In the video below, hear Bindu Madhav Joshi inform and caution consumers of the pitfalls to avoid when buying goods in the marketplace, even advising them to bargain at the counter, reminding them that the Consumer Is King.

Further Reading:

1. Mumbai Grahak Panchayat Website.
2. How The Consumer Movement Started, Outlook Money, 1998.
3. Grahak Chalval, A Unique Co-operative Movement, The Hindu, 1999.
4. Customer’s King Turns 80, Loksatta, 2010.