Simple Pleasures Of A Mumbaikar

An empty local train.
A new shortcut that your rickshaw driver knows.
A cab driver that never says no to 'leydees log'
Those perfect chappals for 'Onlyrupees100madam'
Overhearing someone else's love story in a bus.
BRTS.

Mumbai Streets, At 4 am.
Cafe Kino, before it got jazzy.
Cheap movie tickets & popcorn that doesn't cost more than 30 bucks.
Lemon tart at Gaylords, Churchgate.
and the perfect combination of a teekha-meetha pani puri.

Marine Drive during the monsoons.
NCPA's '2.5 square feet of grass'
Elaichi Cutting.

TV Censorship-None The Wiser

Something I wrote quite a while ago which got lost along the way... Here it is for what its worth


In a recent newspaper article,it was reported that the I&B ministry has
banned FashionTV(FTV) for a period of ten days. This was because the channel
was accused of airing images of 'semi-nude women' on the ramp. The Ministry
stated that the visuals were 'denigrating women and were not suited for unrestricted
public exhibition'.




Switch to any TV guide section of the news paper, or take a walk through any neighbourhood in
a Mumbai suburb. Banners and hoardings of seedy men and women are plastered across them-namely- Rahul Mahajan, Misti Mukherjee and other such creatures of the night. These banners scream out the success that these buffons have had across the silver screen.


In what warped world is Rahul ka Swayavar decent family viewing and FTV not?
Rahul Mahajan has been accused of wife beating, drug overdose and has recently acquired
a passport to go on his honeymoon on submission of a bond of Rs 5 lakh to the courts.


At least FTV is upfront( quite literally) about what they have on offer.

In the hideous disaster that was Rahul ka Swayamvar,Rahul, aka Prince (c)Harming
was transformed from pumpkin to golden chariot to sweep away any eliglible woman.

How ? What ? when Why? On what basis does censorship work?
Guess we're none the wiser

Worth A Read

Beautiful poetry I came across recently.
Best Served with: Lazy Sunday Morning
Serving recommendations:Sunlight streaming through the windows and coffee piping hot.
*****************************************************************************

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.

-Art as Flirtation and Surrender, Rumi
--------------------------------
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

-Spring Giddiness, Rumi
------------------------------------------------
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—
Lean on a garden urn—
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

-La Figlia che Piange, T.S. Eliot

Flyyoufools.com

Came across this really funny website while trying to distract
myself from the fact that I have exams in about 3 days.
Humorous, sarcastic and totally random, www.flyyoufools.com provided
me with much comic relief!


Check it out:
http://www.flyyoufools.com/gay-discrimination/

New avatar!

My blog has a new avatar!
Picture courtesy- the very creative Simran Sahi!
Check out her blog:http://aloosepage.blogspot.com/

Kiddie talk

Overheard this in a swimming pool the other day:

Boy #1: Aye moti! You'll fall off the float!
Girl #1: Chup bet, tu kala.
Girl #2: Kala! hahaha! Kala , kala Barrack Obama!
*General laughter*

It made me cringe, smile and raise my eyebrow all at the same time.
Cringed at the implication,
Smiled at the innocence
and raised an eyebrow ( 7 year old kid-Barrack Obama?!?!)

Didn't know I was capable of reacting in multiple ways.
Raised with complexes of 'fair and lovely' ever since our childhood,
do all Indians have an unconscious racist streak in them?

Sound observations

Shooting a documentary really makes you aware of your surroundings.
Is the light okay?How quickly is the sun going to move? Does the colour get balanced out somehow in the frame? Is that too dull a background?Are the sound levels okay? Wait a minute!
What's that humming sound ? Do we have to wait for it to go?

Wherever we went,no matter when and where we were shooting, this
humming noise seemed to follow us.There was nothing we could do about it.All we had to do was just wait it out.Eventually, we figured out what it was- A construction drill.

They say every city has its distinct sound and smell. For Mumbai, that
sound would definitely have to be the construction drill. The sign of the city's desire to grow bigger, better, bolder and possibly more efficient.

At first we thought we had bad luck, but then we realised that this sound was pretty much everywhere.Take a look around you.Construction sites are springing up around every corner and in the suburbs,there's a new mall practically every week, not to mention the mess that the metro digging and construction is causing.

Now one could look at this from different angles.
1.Where is all this money coming from?
2.How are real estate, infrastructure projects sold and bought in Mumbai?
3.Shouldn't there be restrictions on the number of drills going into the earth at the same time?
4. What are the noise pollution levels like in the city?
5.Is Mumbai planning it development?

While all of the above are running through my mind, the question I'm asking, is
How sustainable is this?

Most of Mumbai consists of reclaimed land anyway and every year we get a friendly reminder from mother nature about how 'planned' this ' 'development' is. The monsoons wreck havoc across the city, leaving parts of the city submerged for days.There aren't enough water outlets to allow excess flood water to flow back into the sea and every year they seem to be getting narrower and narrower. All this in the name of infrastructure and making Mumbai into a 'global city'.( whatever that means)

As cliched as it might sound, isn't this going to come back to bite us in the ass?
Why do we as a city not seem to learn or care about past mistakes?
In the 'fast pacedness' of city life, I don't know if we seem to be caring enough about the things that really matter.

What are the things that really matter anyway? Feel free to let me know.