The Idea-smithy

On the first week of June, Mumbai welcomed the monsoon of 2008. I watched it arrive, alone…which is probably the best way, with the rain.

The skies heralded the season of water.

And then I watched the drops paint the sidewalk a shiny, sheeny gloss of life. (more…)

Jeffrey Archer on Landmark tour!

..proclaims a hoarding on Andheri Link Road a few feet before Infiniti Mall which houses the Landmark store. The lower two floors look fairly sane, I think to myself as far as weekdays go. Even the second floor which looms into sight as the escalator rides up looks remarkably normal. Then I notice the mountain of bags lying at the entrance. And I’m stopped by the polite but firm female guard who shakes her head almost sorrowfully and tells me that I cannot carry my battered copy of As the Crow Flies in.

I push my way past the jewelery counter, the New Releases rack and past the music section. Voila!! What’s a celebrity without the crowd? Archer has succeeded in drawing the mob to the store on a weekday. It’s so crowded that people are stepping on each other’s toes even among the magazines racks that signal the start of that heaven that is Landmark’s book section.

I slither through the crowd in a manner perfected by years of Mumbai train travel and end up right at the back, smushed up against Movies while Jeffrey Archer regales a crowd from a stage in what is otherwise the aisle between Maps and Language.

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The last fifteen days of summer!! Already the dark clouds have started gathering in the sky, heralding the onset of monsoon…very soon. *Sigh* Three months of muddy feet, browned clothes, greasy hair and the sniffles. The whole country thinks that rains are romantic and looks forward to the dark clouds with eagerness; I don’t. This isn’t a pretty city and it gets uglier in the rains. Trains stop, traffic stalls, roads flood and everyone’s passing colds to each other. Moreover it reminds me of that miserable time heralding the start of a new school year right after a delightful vacation. ‘Back to the grind’ is the overwhelming feeling I have right through Mumbai’s monsoon.

But today the sun shines and on Random Shuffle, I drift into the streams of

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say it’s all right

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun and I say it’s all right

What spells summer better than aamras? Succulent golden-yellow mangoes with their insides scooped out and beaten to smooth consistency. Sweet, so sweet that you can put the sugar-can away.

I stopped by this pavement stall last evening. It has been…oh, so very long..since I visited this place. Getting to be a real book-snob, are we, patronizing only the big bookstores? Yet, the bookseller recognized me in trice and his eyes bore no rebuke.

There’s one at every corner, if you know where to look and I’ve given away a few of my secrets before. This is (or used to be) one of my favorite haunts before convenience and credit cards took over.

From the evergreen Sidney Sheldons, John Grishams and Jeffrey Archers to the ubiquitous management books, this place still holds its charm. It’s hard to supress that innate sense of superiority in pulling out a book and placing it in the ‘right’ stack along with others in the genre. So pop fiction to the sides, classics in the middle, bestsellers on top. Then realisation strikes that the dynamics of cataloguing work differently in a street-stall.
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Long, bumpy rides in Mumbai’s bylanes bring you face to face with some terribly amusing sights.

Pssst….for those of you who can’t read in the Mumbai smog, it says,

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Blogging is exploding like no one’s business with every next net-connected person signing up for their own URL. It is great to have this kind of freedom of expression combined with the sheer reach of the internet. In the meantime though, it surely is imperative to remember such things as etiquette. Good behaviour isn’t just lip service, it goes a long way in making things run smoothly.

This is a list of some things that I’ve culled under the general idea of good blogging etiquette. Note, you are a blogger if you have your own blog and/or if you read and comment on other people’s blogs. Readers and commentors are as much a part of this space as the writers are. Most of these are probably really obvious especially to long-time bloggers. Yet I see so many instances of these being thwarted that I thought I’d just put up a general guide.

So here’s IdeaSmith’s guide to being a gentleman/ lady on the blogsphere:
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I remain a Mumbai train loyalist. Not only is the Mumbai Metropolitan Railway, the fastest way to get from Point A to Point B in Mumbai, it also gives you a slice of what I think of as ‘the real Mumbai life’. Frantic students cramming in seat-huddles tell you that the board examinations are around the corner. A bling-ey group chatters away about the wedding they’re off to in the matrimony season. Office-goers - peons, sales executives, doctors, journalists run shoulders (okay, bodies) in the nau-dabbon-ki-jalad-lowkulll.

And speaking of dabbas, how about the other dabbas? The ones carrying piping hot nourishment, lovingly made by mothers and wives and cooks across the city and delivered Just In Time for lunch to their hungry patrons? To the uninitiated, the dabbawallas are a network of deliverymen who carry lunchboxes from homes to offices and back using a never-fail above-world-class system of colour coding. An Ivy League US b-school used them as a case study and the concept has picked up much visibility since then.
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Raj Thackeray has just been arrested and is being driven to Vikroli for the court hearing. Now what? Let’s see. This titbit has enjoyed much more publicity in the past week in Mumbai than the falling temperatures, the art festival and all such mundane things as national news.

The television channels are running a continuous clip of him getting into the van and some twenty-odd (?) policemen getting in after him. One supposes even they are relieved to be able to air something other than,

*MNS chief to be arrested.*

and

*Raj Thackeray may be arrested.*

Viewers are also advised to be cautious since the city is on tenter-hooks, anticipating protests from his supporters. Well, we’ve been waiting for the axe to fall for a week now. Had this been pulled too long, we may as well have been bloody witnesses to protests against inaction.

It’s nearing five now and there’s no telling whether the roads now will fill up with angry protesters, violent mobs or petrified citizens on their way back.

The one thing I’m thinking now is - do the paranoid anti-terrorism campaigning superpowers know this feeling? Perhaps not - constant unease doesn’t make the same headlines that sporadic terror does.

The auto-rickshawalla who ferried me today interrupted my morning reverie with

Why are the shops not open yet? Has something happened in the night?

Of course he was from Uttar Pradesh, an uttar bharatiya, probably the one group that’s even more terrorized by organized politics than the Muslim community right now.

Congratulations, Mr.Thackeray, you’ve guaranteed yourself top-of-mind recall in the Mumbai mind for awhile to come. Uh, until someone else decides to play Big Bully in the Island Playground, that is.

On Sunday, violence erupted in Mumbai (not again…). Taxi-drivers, paan-wallas and ‘outsiders’ (read UPites and Biharis) were the target of assault by frenzied MNS supporters. In an is-it-related-or-not incident, Amitabh Bachchan’s house was attacked the next day, spurred by resentment towards his move to set up a girls’ school in Uttar Pradesh rather than Maharashtra.

I was at home on Horror Monday (Can we call it that? - We’d probably have to name at least one day each month for the sundry episodes of communal clashes that errupt so frequently in this so-called cosmopolitan metropolis). The news channels had a field day running and re-running the clips of a taxi-driver being dragged out of his car and beaten to pulp and soundbytes with the public expressing their outrage at this breach of peace.

Yesterday a reader wrote to me saying that he’d dropped into my blog for news on this event and was disappointed to hear me talking about art and festivals instead. Point taken. I’m part of that unconcerned, educated upper-middle class elite that tut-tuts about the ruin our politicians are bringing to the country and then does nothing about it.

To be quite honest, I don’t know what to say. On one hand, we’ve gotten practically used to cricket pitches being dug up, shops shut down, bandhs called, trains delayed, people being beaten up by the saffron brigade. And then there’s the reality that the news channels rarely, if ever, cover the truth as is.

As a point of fact, I travelled across the city yesterday and today. For all purposes Mumbai is its usual bustling, thriving self. It’s like it might not have been at all.

And then I wonder, how does the driver of the taxi I’m in, feel? Is he really waiting for the signal to change or is he actually casting a wary eye around at would-be attackers? How about the doodhwala by whose doorbell ring we can set our alarm clocks? To be here at 5:30 a.m. I only wonder what time he’d have to get up. The much-maligned autorickshaw-wallas?

At the end of all that, I wonder, does it matter? Does the MNS or Shiv Sena before them really believe that they can ‘rid’ Mumbai of its outsiders? More likely, no one’s thinking or caring about that far into the future. It’s the here and now. Any publicity is good publicity, be it ever so blood-spattered.

And guess what - it’s the lower extremes that get the cut, like extensions getting pruned away. Who cares, they’ll grow back tomorrow! So while AB gets his security beefed up, our roads are awash with lingering fear writ large on the faces of nameless people who make this city run.

I’m just wondering if the welfare of Maharashtrians is the cause, is anyone thinking of what’s happening within the state? But I suppose dying farmers aren’t as catchy a story. So much easier to just grab a punching bag.

In a related aside, do read this post and the comments that follow. The image I’m carrying in my mind is of a fat goose that lays golden eggs. Everyone’s trying to get a piece of it and brush off everyone else’s hands..and so what if the goose is strangulated in the process?? That’s Mumbai.

I’ve spent the entire weekend at Kala Ghoda!! I’ve been a regular visitor to the festival these years and thus far my KGAF experience has been limited to perusing the sidewalk outside Jehangir Art Gallery and ooh-ing and aah-ing about the artwork. This year I’m super-excited this time round because of my increased participation. Like last year, I’m writing for the Kala Ghoda Gazette and for the first time I’m actually participating in the events. You can see my more detailed account of the events here.

The Festival is in its 10th year of existance. In the past years I’ve seen a gradual decline with the one rather regrettable year where all I remember of it was a row of food stalls (though my first experience of Kheer Kodom from Sweet Bengal did leave sweet memories). However it looks like the Black Horse has given itself a good shake since last year was an improvement. And this year is positively mind-boggling!

We enter to a cacaphony of lost kids’ announcements flanked by a tent that reveals several messy-fingered children running around wearing Surf Excel ‘Daag achche hai’ tee-shirts. A painting competition is in progress one presumes. There is also a huge whiteboard for kids to express themselves.

We walk around the various art installations and I’m alternately amused and annoyed. I hear one man tell another

Kuch bhi bana dete hai yeh artist log!!

referring to an exhibit of a buzzing mosquito/fly/insect made of metal wires and sundry parts. A girl is posing over a painted motor-bike in a corner while her friend takes a photograph. I resist the urge to yank her off it and tell her that it’s an exhibit in an art festival, not a prop in a photographer’s studio. I wonder what the artist must feel.

The crowds are thronging the food stalls and the stage. That’s quite descriptive of Mumbai, I think. Roti ke liye kuch bhi karega and Tamasha dekh! are this city’s twin motivations. I remember an episode from one of the years past, watching an angry man screaming at the waiters in one of the food stalls.

Call the manager!!! Yahan food khaya yesterday and dysentry ho gaya!

I was amused and not in the least bit sympathetic. Such a ” ” I thought, to eat food off the street as part of an ‘experience’ and then complain about the quality. Where does he think he is - the Reagent? Besides I added as an after-thought, only one of those types would fall sick eating roadside food. After all my gastroentitis attack last year happened after consuming a spinach pasta at one of Bandra’s fancy restaurants not my usual evening bhelpuri off the roadside. Even so, I sniff my plate cautiously before ordering what I hope is a ’safe’ plate of kebabs.

Along the way I bump into familiar faces - colleagues, friends, fellow-bloggers. The culturally-conscious circle in Mumbai is a small tight knit group and bloggers are an even smaller fraction of them. The crowd is almost as interesting as the exhibits with stiff MBA-types (from Nariman Point one presumes) jostle with arty jhola-toting bohemians and inter-mingle with a lot of foreign tourists. Kids are running helter-skelter everywhere and I imagine that their parents are going to have a hell of a time explaining some of the photographs and exhibits on display.

Don’t read that aloud! That’s a bad word (from the photo-exhibit on Mumbai’s train graffiti)

Yes, that’s a fan. Hmm, it does look like an insect. Because the artist thought so, that’s why!! It’s called Modern Art (shakes head and moves away)

The Dilliwalla with me soon gets bored and wants to push off and watch a movie instead.

Yeh kahan mele mein leke aa gayi, yaar??!!

And his rueful expression is so comical that I concede, though not before sampling a panipuri and buying something from the blue pottery stall. On the way, I’m approached by several strangers attempting to recruit me into protesting against garbage dumping in India, preventing smoking, helping children and supporting battered women. I wonder what their connection with art is but I guess good causes need more force of will than invitations.

Before we leave, I manage to get a bird’s eye view of the next act on stage. And I think, my friend would never understand why the festival means so much. In a city that’s eternally chasing dreams that keep getting broken, that tries to burn the candle at every end possible and make them all meet as well, where even the air looks dirty……..art can remind us of beauty, of joy, of expression and also…to laugh at ourselves. It’s a Mumbai thing, after all.