"Murder" I wrote...

When I woke this morning, I saw a murder. Right outside my living room window! It was bad enough that today, being a day after India's 64th Republic Day, there were no newspapers! But to see a murder?!!

Thankfully, this was an unusually quiet murder - no noise, at all. You could actually hear a pin drop. 

The wife, in the kitchen, getting my morning dose of filter coffee  made a lot of noise when I called her to see what I was seeing - "Rohini", I called, "come here, look out of this window. There's a murder happening right now!" So she came, noisily, eyes blazing full on, all agog and excited.

"Murder?" she asked, "What murder? Where?" 

I pointed. Outside my window. There's that rain tree? I said "Look, there?"

Her voice went up a few more decibels. A higher octave altogether. "What?! Those crows?!! I can see only crows!" 

So I asked her, laughingly, "How many do you see?"

There were a large enough number to safely say that one needed more than the fingers of both hands..... perhaps around 15 or 16. So I said to her, "What do you call a large number of crows?"

Those wide eyes went impossibly wider, that voice even one octave more as she did a small gig in excitement.... "Aaaaaaaaahhhaaaaa?!! A MURDER of crows?!!!!"

My coffee tasted a wee bit more fresh this morning. :)

Rage - Rediscovered

Try as I might, I seem unable to read a newspaper these days without some reference to a brutal rape somewhere in India/Bharat. Don't know about you but I have somehow unconsciously blocked my mind/heart to the numbing pain - blame it on media overkill, blame it on helplessness, whatever.

And yet, through the thickened layers of cultivated insensitivity, one small sentence seared all the way deep into a numb soul...... a THREE year old girl, raped by an unidentified man, lured by an offer of a chocolate.... the newspaper report said: The victim said that the man took her to the compound and "did bad things to her"

Jesus, forgive me, but if I ever lay my hands on that man......... how does one even begin to understand how one can even think of raping a child of that age? A few days back I wrote an apology for a lost rage? 

That rage is back, fully afire, blazing, seeking an outlet now - bloodthirsty now! HOW can anyone think of raping a child???!!!!!

Where has that rage gone that used to burn within

Why am I dispassionately now? What prison

do I inhabit that cuts me off from the storms around?

Why this silence? Where is that fury, where is the sound

of gnashing teeth and clenched fists of rage?

Why do I not bash in, on TV, those talking heads

Why do I not even care to watch those threads 

of discussions on rape, murder, pillage and loot

but choose, instead, to escape, to blindly scoot

into a world of make believe laughter?

   

Candles have burned across this land, burned

a million hearts with youthful hope and churned

the dreams of an Indian spring - in my Autumn 

loneliness I seek a darkness in the weary bottom

of my heart unable to bring a glow alive.

Where once I raged and plotted five hundred thirty four 

timeless deaths I now sit back and merely pour

myself yet another peg of Scotch and sagely nod

to myself and pray to a nameless unfriendly God

to salve this nation, to salve my empty soul.......

A nameless woman died a shame filled death

  Countless times, over and over again she will die 

    In Delhi, Mumbai, Jhajjar, Kochi, India, Bharat

      Wearing provocative clothes when she's even barely three?

         Inciting lust even when she's sixty plus and grey

           While God men dispense advice free and Gods desert us

              While leaders deny what's under our noses

                 While a nation that's young and in a hurry demands instant justice

An ageing, middle aged man like me continues to search 

for a misplaced, mislaid rage that seems to have vanished.....

......... into thin air, evaporating like a camphor that did not burn.

"Mumbai's Best... " Contest!!

Even Bal Thackeray (may his soul smile on me from up above) will endorse this statement....

"Mee Mumbaikar", not because I have been living here for more than 25 years (have just done barely half that number) but because I know Mumbai like the back of my hand... and, if you count all the zillions of hours that I've spent sitting in my car waiting for the damn traffic to move the next 43 inches, and give credit for that as double overtime, I guess I cross that 25 year margin rather comfortably...

All those hours of gazing out of my car windows have gone into watching "Life In A Metro".....

• painted toe nails, colorful shoes, 
• people spitting pan out of buses, cars, bikes, cycles the works, 
• happy young couples in the back seats of taxis doing things that middle aged married couples wouldn't in their bedrooms while the taxi driver wears a look of utter stoicism on his face.... 
• A young man, obviously on Vijay Mallya's stuff, step out of his car in the middle of one of the absolutely worst-est traffic jams at Everard Nagar and do an impromptu Bollywood dance number while his slightly more sober friends watched with irritation - he was GOOD, I swear
• drivers, people like you and me, displaying road rage and stepping out of their cars and engaging in a display of vocabulary that is at once entertaining as well as "enrichingly colorful",
• cops doing their unholy thing
• Ambulances incing their way through the worst possible snarls while patients inside possibly knocking on Heaven's Pearly Gates and saying "Hello" to St Peter or Chitragupta...
• BEST buses, in the same horrible traffic, beautifully honking and smoothly sailing past cars, bikes etc, for all practical purposes behaving like a two wheeler.....

and, in all these years of getting to know Mumbai and Mumbai's God forsaken roads, I've also come to a level of intimacy with the pot-holed stretches.

Mumbai's roads are built with a recipe that will make a Tarla Dalal blush...

Ingredients Required:

1. A mindless BMC bureaucrat
2. A corrupt Corporator (any variety - Congress, BJP, Sena, etc)
3. A smattering of corrupt contractors
4. An apathetic citizenry
5. Labourers - women, usually from outside Maharashtra, around 50, required to work.
6. "Supervisors" - men, from the same general locality as item 5 above, around 4 or 5, required to stand around wearing hard hats (and hard o*s, as they ogle at "item" 5 above)
7. Pieces of dysfunctional machinery.
8. Several "Men at Work" signs, partially faded and totally untruthful.
9. "Scaffolding/Partition sheets" that are around slightly over shoulder height - to give "lip service" to court injunctions.
10. Complete absence of supervision by the engineers concerned.

Procedure to be followed:

1. Identify a perfectly fine, functional road with smooth traffic.
2. Dig it up, taking as much time as possible, using dysfunctional machinery, hard working labourers and self indulgent supervisors. Note, carefully, contractor is expected to be conspicuously absent. 
3. Once the road has been dug up badly, leave it to marinade for 3 weeks. Contractor is consistent in remaining absent and/or absconding (in all probability reacting chemically with Item 2 of "Ingredients Required")
4. Pray to the Gods for rain so that the inconvenience can be raised manifold times "n"
5. Apathetic citizenry are now permitted to curse, grumble, scowl, argue and get into heated debates - this process can be initiated at any point from Step 2 onward and can continue without end. 
6. After a good 3 - 4 weeks of citizenry mumbling/grumbling and reaching boiling point (note: this stage will be characterised by strongly worded protest letters in various "Letters to Editor" columns, TV News Channels, RTI applications) contractor will make a physical appearance. 
7. Heightened activity - even "Supervisors" begin to show some movement, usually characterised by barking orders at already working women, creating an audible sense of activity, a smokescreen that may be mistaken for work.
8. "Men at Work" signs get a fresh coat of paint.
9. Dysfunctional machinery get temporarily repaired, drums of bitumen are poured into open furnaces, black smoke and soot interact with pedestrians, bikers, bus passengers, etc in a secular manner treating all alike regardless of caste, creed, sex etc. (Note: apathetic citizens inside air-conditioned cars/buses remain relatively isolated from this mess as usual)
10. Asphalt is carefully laid, ensuring that there is no level ground. Concave patters are discernible on Day 1, second half, truly the work of a master contractor.
11. In few cases, the road is actually made of concrete - longer lasting (the inconvenience to apathetic citizens, I mean - not the road itself)
12. If road = concrete, 3 more weeks of marinading the newly laid surface in water, a process called "curing".
13. During "curing" (mark the difference in the pronunciation of the 2 similar spelled words) "labourers" may be observed indulging in activities such as bathing, nursing tiny toddlers, etc. Mark the heightened state of inactivity of supervisors during this stage as they stay frozen, watching labourers activities. This period is extremely important, to generate more tiny toddlers for the next project.
14. Slowly the "lip service" height scaffolding is removed (this has served a dual role - a lip service shade/shelter for Item No 5 to perform their ablutions with a modicum of privacy). The newly raid road begins to appear. 
15. Fully 4 months after the 2 week long project commenced, citizens breathe (not soot, grime or dust) a sigh of relief. 2 minute journeys that used to take 40 minutes now revert back to 2 minutes.This blissful period lasts for 3 weeks.
16. By the end of the 3rd week an entirely unnecessary and redundant traffic light appears. 2 minutes journey now becomes 5 minutes, and then slowly expands. Apathetic citizenry mumble, grumble and curse. And finally get used to it. (This is an important stage, it keeps recurring)
17. Around 29 - 38 days after the road is opened, Procedure No 1 is repeated, to be followed by Procedure Nos 2 to 16. Again, and again, in a virtuous cycle.

In a nutshell, that is how we do things.

As a result, I have a fairly automatic understanding of which potholes, caused by either perfectly concave asphalt roads poorly laid - or, concrete roads, dug up again and again - with "temporary repairs" using that wonderful device called paver blocks - I now know which are the "best potholes" on Mumbai's roads.

However, let's make this interesting - I'm inviting nominations from you. Which, in your opinion, is the "best pothole" in amchi Mumbai? Early bird prizes to be won (a free ride over that pothole, in my suspension damaged - but airconditioned - car, a bone jarring ride at the highest possible speed of 10 kmph!)

Write in, soon. Before another, bigger, better, newer pothole is created!

Sats

  

Escape

Many years ago while still an impressionable youngster in high school I read a line "Patriotism is nothing but loyalty to a piece of real estate" or something to that effect. 

So, a "Madrasi" from before it got Chennaied, a "Mumbaikar" who arrived long after the quiet and cowardly burial of Bombay, someone who is even guilty of that biggest of all treasons, a South Indian who's equally comfortable with a Punjabi breakfast of a Rajasthani/Gujarathi "thali" as with a Matunga "Mumbai rice plate"....

Yes, if I was given an opportunity to re-settle myself outside this blessed land of 33 lakh crores of Gods and Goddesses, I honestly would not hesitate. 

Which corner of this wide wide world would I go to? Obviously somewhere to a land where English is spoken - though not necessarily the exclusive language. Where roads are good; where power supply is something that can be taken for granted the way we take the air that we breathe; where the police are at one's service and not there to bully one or extract some hafta; where, poor diabetic me can use a "Public Convenience" without feeling my breakfast come gagging up my throat while I am trying to become "convenient" (what a euphemistic word, that!) - that wish list could go on and on, endlessly. 

So, quiet, forgotten, down under New Zealand seems idyllic... or perhaps Hawaii? Or do I need to access Platform 7 3/4 and escape to the world of Hogwarts....

Where a Vasant Dhoble or a Bal Thackeray or an Akbarduddin Owaisi or a Narendra Modi or a Mamta Banerji.... may perhaps not qualify for even a tourist visa...

Into that heaven of freedom, my Lord, let me escape :)