You know, there’s this thing Delhi and Bombay have about each other. People from either burg take great delight in sniping at the other. And when His Editorness asked me to write a Capital Letter, methinks the man was hoping I’d write a Delhi Sucks piece and earn some hate mail to put some spark into his life. But I won’t. Why make a Delhiwalla happy?
Oh darn. That truce didn’t last long, did it?
Ah well, at least it’s out of the way. And I can confess that I’m actually rather fond of old Smogville-on-the-Yamuna. The bits of it that I have seen that is.
Yeah, your city is so darn large. Bombay may stretch interminably northwards, but, because of its geographical constraints, it is a slim city, seen from a plane. Delhi sprawls outwards in every direction, horizon to horizon, a giant amoeba that seems to be gobbling up, nay assimilating, UP, Haryana, burping, taking a wee nap and then looking speculatively at Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal.
Sorry, carried away, wasn’t I?
Like I was saying, I haven’t seen vast swathes of the city. On my first visit, as part of a dance troupe—yes, honey, that was a long time ago, stop prodding my paunch—we were give an off-day from rehearsals and taken off on a lightning tour of the city, herded from monument to monument, with, every little while, getting Rashtrapati Bhavan pointed out to us without ever seeming to get any closer to it, leaving me with a deeply ingrained feeling that everyone went around in circles here and I’d never be able to find my way around, ever.
That feeling of disorientation has never quite gone away, though over subsequent sojourns one has acquired a slightly better idea of the geography. Heck, I have even, quaking in my flip-flops, sweaty-palmed, driven around the city. Bombay’s traffic is merely a perpetual traffic jam, and once you come to terms with that, it’s all part of the routine. Delhi’s drivers, aided by Delhi’s lovely roads, are in a league of their own for sheer fershlugging bloody-minded lunacy. But of that, much has been written, so one shall swiftly move on to.. No, wait. Those roads. Can we have some of them, please? Just a wee bit of the Ring Road? You’re hardly going to miss it.
And while we’re swapping, I’d like to get some of those majestic buildings, those parks, that feeling of space (I have slept in Bombay bedrooms smaller than the bathrooms in most Delhi houses). Oh yes, and a wee bit of your winter, preferably with a few of those foggy days you folks do so well. You can keep your summer, though. We’ll trade you some of our monsoon. But perhaps not. I don’t think you chaps really know how to deal with rain: I saw rickshaws pulled over to the roadside, hazard lights flashing on every car during a piddling half-hour shower the other day.
We—and I speak now for the rest of the country too—would also like some of the sporting action (and stadia), and the buzzing literary scene you have going.
No? Selfish sods, you lot.
I’ll just have to come back now, won’t I?
Published in Outlook City Limits, Delhi, October 2007, in a section called Capital Letters.
Outlook City Limits
Showing posts with label Outlook City Limits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Outlook City Limits. Show all posts
Monday, 1 October 2007
Friday, 1 December 2006
Shazia Mirza, live
Shazia Mirza played to a packed house at the Juhu Mocha. And I mean packed!
Seats had filled up long before show time. People continued to push their way in: celebrities-in-their-own-right lined up six-deep in the back row; Page 3 People sat on hastily-provided cushions in the front; others squeezed in with friends, four butts on three chairs, local train style; the more athletic perched on window sills. A group of people who insisted on standing in the centre aisle turning a deaf ear to impassioned whispers from behind to sit the f*** down were finally shamed into doing so by the star of the evening. Those who could not bluster their way in watched live video in the open-air area. (Which accounts for two large tripods set up in the middle of the aisle, effectively blocking the view for a large swathe of the audience, causing even more rumbles of dissent.)
Ms Mirza took a short while to find her rhythm; she seemed unsure of her audience, and in the first few minutes, made a few patronising references that stiffened quite a few backs. As the evening progressed, there were other moments when people did not quite know how to react. Partly, I guess, we’re not used to performers using adult language, speaking of sexual acts and dissing their parents (sometimes, all three in the same sentence!) in the relatively intimate confines of a live stage act. Still, one would have thought we’re pretty used to effing and blinding in our day-to-day interaction, and we’re reasonably broad-minded about sex. But perhaps it is more that we, even the relatively worldly-wise sampling that came to the show, aren’t quite used to comedy routines that poke fun directly at us. We’re happy enough with the slapstick, mimicry and the lame witticisms of cricket commentators. But enough already with the sociology.
Ms Mirza played the crowd expertly, and once she segued into her regular routine—with, it must be said, a few repetitions and occasional checking of set notes—helped along in no small part by a face that exudes mischief even when being insulting, the initial nervous titters soon yielded to honest guffaws. Her act is based around her life as a British Muslim woman, and is laced with scathing comment on men, conservative attitudes and family life. Her cheery willingness to make herself the butt of her own jokes notwithstanding, she seems to have made herself quiet a few enemies. Undeterred, she uses her hate mail in her routine, laughing at stuff that would probably drive me to seek anonymity behind purdah.
The audience lapped it all up. And Ms Mirza, did she enjoy herself? It was a roaring success, she told me in an email. And she’ll be back; she has offers to perform in Goa, among other places.
Published in the Times of India / Outlook City Limits Mumbai, December 2006.
Tags: Outlook City Limits
Seats had filled up long before show time. People continued to push their way in: celebrities-in-their-own-right lined up six-deep in the back row; Page 3 People sat on hastily-provided cushions in the front; others squeezed in with friends, four butts on three chairs, local train style; the more athletic perched on window sills. A group of people who insisted on standing in the centre aisle turning a deaf ear to impassioned whispers from behind to sit the f*** down were finally shamed into doing so by the star of the evening. Those who could not bluster their way in watched live video in the open-air area. (Which accounts for two large tripods set up in the middle of the aisle, effectively blocking the view for a large swathe of the audience, causing even more rumbles of dissent.)
Ms Mirza took a short while to find her rhythm; she seemed unsure of her audience, and in the first few minutes, made a few patronising references that stiffened quite a few backs. As the evening progressed, there were other moments when people did not quite know how to react. Partly, I guess, we’re not used to performers using adult language, speaking of sexual acts and dissing their parents (sometimes, all three in the same sentence!) in the relatively intimate confines of a live stage act. Still, one would have thought we’re pretty used to effing and blinding in our day-to-day interaction, and we’re reasonably broad-minded about sex. But perhaps it is more that we, even the relatively worldly-wise sampling that came to the show, aren’t quite used to comedy routines that poke fun directly at us. We’re happy enough with the slapstick, mimicry and the lame witticisms of cricket commentators. But enough already with the sociology.
Ms Mirza played the crowd expertly, and once she segued into her regular routine—with, it must be said, a few repetitions and occasional checking of set notes—helped along in no small part by a face that exudes mischief even when being insulting, the initial nervous titters soon yielded to honest guffaws. Her act is based around her life as a British Muslim woman, and is laced with scathing comment on men, conservative attitudes and family life. Her cheery willingness to make herself the butt of her own jokes notwithstanding, she seems to have made herself quiet a few enemies. Undeterred, she uses her hate mail in her routine, laughing at stuff that would probably drive me to seek anonymity behind purdah.
The audience lapped it all up. And Ms Mirza, did she enjoy herself? It was a roaring success, she told me in an email. And she’ll be back; she has offers to perform in Goa, among other places.
Published in the Times of India / Outlook City Limits Mumbai, December 2006.
Tags: Outlook City Limits
Monday, 16 October 2006
BEST days
We moved to Bombay when I was ten. I missed the old place, as I’d missed others as we moved from city to city, but as young lads do, I made friends fast—school chums, colony playmates, tuition pals.
It’s not as easy to make new friends when you’re older, in a new place; I know that now. For my parents, old pals from our home town were a link to their youth. The only such lived in Colaba and we in Chembur. And so, ever so often, we’d do our mini-expedition into South Bombay. For a middle class family, a taxi all the way was an indulgence. My brother doesn’t have the use of his legs, so the local trains, with the foot overbridges, and of course, the crowds, were too much of a hassle. So we took the bus.
The most convenient was the 8 Ltd, which then, as now, ran between Chembur’s Ambedkar Udyan and Flora Fountain. But then, the busses that plied the route were all double-deckers. The pollution, we quickly discovered, gave me blinding headaches when I travelled the lower deck. So I would be handed my ticket money and packed off to the top. (My parents and brother didn’t have the option; carrying John up the narrow stair to the top was difficult.)
Those rides were my introduction to the larger city beyond the lazy tree-lined avenues of Chembur. Over the years, I’ve got to know many other sides of this vast metropolis, but so many of those first impressions still define it for me.
Alone in the top deck, without Dad to point out the sites, I learned to orient myself in the city. Street signs were way too small to read from a moving bus; many were obscured with cloth banners and branches and, besides, the names weren’t the ones that I found on the old map I pored over, and they weren’t the ones that the conductor bellowed as he rang his bell. Commerce, on the other hand, can always be relied on for visibility. So shop signs, and even better, banks (because they put their branch names on their signage), those temples to Mammon, helped me figure out the geography of this city of money, the city Dad had moved to, to give me a better start in life.
I’d have charged to the front of the bus, of course, to pretend, when I thought that no one was looking (I was all of ten, after all) that I was the driver. With the wind blowing in my face, I’d mark off the areas we passed through: the bottleneck just before Sion, where now a flyover doesn’t seem to have helped matters; then Sion Hospital, and King’s Circle, which in all the years since, I still haven’t been in; and the broad sweep of road before Dadar’s huge traffic island; and the road narrowing again; and the confusing jumble before I found Byculla, marked by a Chinese joint visited once and forever imprinted; and then the church, and another hospital before the chaos of Mohammad Ali Road, with its fragrant set of restaurants, before VT, which was my mark to reluctantly make my way to the lower deck. And then we’d take a taxi to my parents’ friends home, within sight of Radio Club, where the adults would chatter away, and I’d be waiting to get home.
We’d head back, usually, at night. The return journey started at Electric House, with the 6 Ltd. Unless it was very late, in which case Dad would splurge on a taxi. As much as I dredge my memory, I don’t recall much of those return trips. I guess I slept through them, because all I recall is a blur of light and speed. In later years, I’ve come to know those sights better, as the boy-who-had-to-be-at-school-by-seven changed to the man-who-worked-into-the-wee-hours-by-choice.
And, ever so often, just for the memory, I take a bus back through the length of the city, even it means I have to change to another one to get me home, across the creek.
Published in Outlook's City Limits Mumbai, October 16th, 2006.
Tags: Outlook, Outlook City Limits Mumbai
It’s not as easy to make new friends when you’re older, in a new place; I know that now. For my parents, old pals from our home town were a link to their youth. The only such lived in Colaba and we in Chembur. And so, ever so often, we’d do our mini-expedition into South Bombay. For a middle class family, a taxi all the way was an indulgence. My brother doesn’t have the use of his legs, so the local trains, with the foot overbridges, and of course, the crowds, were too much of a hassle. So we took the bus.
The most convenient was the 8 Ltd, which then, as now, ran between Chembur’s Ambedkar Udyan and Flora Fountain. But then, the busses that plied the route were all double-deckers. The pollution, we quickly discovered, gave me blinding headaches when I travelled the lower deck. So I would be handed my ticket money and packed off to the top. (My parents and brother didn’t have the option; carrying John up the narrow stair to the top was difficult.)
Those rides were my introduction to the larger city beyond the lazy tree-lined avenues of Chembur. Over the years, I’ve got to know many other sides of this vast metropolis, but so many of those first impressions still define it for me.
Alone in the top deck, without Dad to point out the sites, I learned to orient myself in the city. Street signs were way too small to read from a moving bus; many were obscured with cloth banners and branches and, besides, the names weren’t the ones that I found on the old map I pored over, and they weren’t the ones that the conductor bellowed as he rang his bell. Commerce, on the other hand, can always be relied on for visibility. So shop signs, and even better, banks (because they put their branch names on their signage), those temples to Mammon, helped me figure out the geography of this city of money, the city Dad had moved to, to give me a better start in life.
I’d have charged to the front of the bus, of course, to pretend, when I thought that no one was looking (I was all of ten, after all) that I was the driver. With the wind blowing in my face, I’d mark off the areas we passed through: the bottleneck just before Sion, where now a flyover doesn’t seem to have helped matters; then Sion Hospital, and King’s Circle, which in all the years since, I still haven’t been in; and the broad sweep of road before Dadar’s huge traffic island; and the road narrowing again; and the confusing jumble before I found Byculla, marked by a Chinese joint visited once and forever imprinted; and then the church, and another hospital before the chaos of Mohammad Ali Road, with its fragrant set of restaurants, before VT, which was my mark to reluctantly make my way to the lower deck. And then we’d take a taxi to my parents’ friends home, within sight of Radio Club, where the adults would chatter away, and I’d be waiting to get home.
We’d head back, usually, at night. The return journey started at Electric House, with the 6 Ltd. Unless it was very late, in which case Dad would splurge on a taxi. As much as I dredge my memory, I don’t recall much of those return trips. I guess I slept through them, because all I recall is a blur of light and speed. In later years, I’ve come to know those sights better, as the boy-who-had-to-be-at-school-by-seven changed to the man-who-worked-into-the-wee-hours-by-choice.
And, ever so often, just for the memory, I take a bus back through the length of the city, even it means I have to change to another one to get me home, across the creek.
Published in Outlook's City Limits Mumbai, October 16th, 2006.
Tags: Outlook, Outlook City Limits Mumbai
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