Chal Baju Hutt!

Leaving Mumbai and moving to another city, Bangalore (Bengalooru for you, in case you are hyperventilating about the usage) was a life altering change for me. Culturally, spiritually, mentally, academically and physically.

Let's talk about the culturally part.

I came face to face with the following facts:

- Footpaths are not meant for pedestrians alone.

- You are equal to a low society disaster if you are walking on your feet on tarred roads.

- Traffic signals are pretty light posts that add some color to otherwise dull roads.

- Motorcycles are super-machines with the capacity to support three adults and two adults with four children too.

So guess what? Most of the times, I would be looking on, in stunned horror/fascination/etc, when I would see families of six pass me by on a Pulsar 150cc. I would be even more surprised when people in cars would bypass the signal red and drive on, expecting people to freeze on their zebra crossings. And of course, pedestrians who would show the hand to riders, walking on as if the approaching car, speeding at 60kmph would just bounce off and allow safe passage.

Hyderabad is another culture altogether. People are laidback and the traffic reflects that. how else do you explain being stuck in traffic for 40 minutes in exactly the same place and find out, when you reach the jam junction, that the only reason we all got held up was because three vehicles were wedged diagonally, each wanting to go in different directions, all men unready to back off and they fought for 20 minutes before the traffic cop stepped in?

And I remember my short trip to Delhi long ago - everybody worth any mention would stick their head out of the car window to holler - Tu jaanta nahi main kaun hu (You don't know who I am) - to all and sundry.

Am I glorifying Mumbai/Bombay? Well no...we do not have traffic that halts for aeons. We do not holler at each other. But we honk. Like our life depends on it. The traffic keeps moving, slow and steady, and you see the world pass you by in slo-mo, vendors manage to sell you pirated copies of expensive magazines (Esquire, The Time etc) and you manage to get out.

You know what's sad about Bombay? Totally? The thick smog you are going to inhale as you slowly move out of the jam. And the little street children who will come and beg at your feet. The women in rags who will try to sell you flowers that they gathered form the nearby graveyard, fresh and still not wilted. The beggar who will ask for loose change and spit on your windshield if you hand him a 2-rupee coin.

But the worse part? The worse part is when the news travels down the jammed roads that you and hundreds like you are stuck here because the railway station close to the road you are on is under high alert. When you hear that explosions ripped apart trains and people and lives. When you hear that members of a well known radical political party burned down buses and went on a public hooliganism rash to prove their point: no non-Maharashtrians in Mumbai.

The worse part is when you are stuck because politicians from the opposition party are lying down on the signal crossing, staging a rail-roko for some inane demand that doesn't affect lives in any significant way.

But of course, it is Mumbai. The best part about getting stuck with bad traffic is not always about a devolving culture and decaying ethics. Sometimes, its the victory march of the national Indian cricket team, driving from the airport to Wankhede stadium, to meet their supporters.

It is then that you don't mind being asked to hurry up and clear the way, when the heroes come marching in.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorders Of A Filmi Kind

Heard of that 'an itch must be scratched' phrase? Pretty interesting it is. Indians have many such itches :)

Cricket. Politics. Films. Film stars. Views on religion. Food. Sentiments. To name a few, serious!

This itch is about our movies. Across all the languages we speak in this country, officially or unofficially, the movie mania describes a typical Indian. We take our movies very seriously, we cry and laugh and quote them, we worship the stars, build temples in their names, pile to the temple if they injure themselves, sell tickets in black (although the movie script WILL NOT change if you see it on day 2, 3, 4, 5 etc, but what the heck?!), and of course, we have hello tunes that are popular songs, we hum them, we have reality shows and singing contests that run on the fodder that the film industry provides.

But is this post about Indian cinema? No. It's about Indian people.

Recently, I had the fortune (good, bad, etc.) to visit an Indian village - you know, those kinds they show in Swades, where dirty kids run in mud and dung and are fit as fiddles, their immunity levels super high, while we sneeze with allergy, and end up with food poisoning and viral infections. Despite sanitizing and all. The kind where there is no dispensary, no post office, but there is a liquor shop tucked in a dark alleyway.

The kind where there are no bathrooms and toilets in any house, where the lakes swell up with sewage, where children play all day and ride buffaloes to the fields.

Where there is no potable drinking water. But they all have a radio that plays the latest numbers from the regional movies. Where there are no good streetlights to save you from stepping on something fatally infectious looking. But the TV is a household companion and families cluster around it every night to watch Nagarjuna kill twenty people in one sweeping karate kick.

We city people, we are no less. A couple of us jumped out of the cabs we took to the village to dance in sunflower fields, Yashraj style, and some even broke into 'Tujhe dekha to yeh jana sanam'. Most of us took photos. Most of us played Antakshri. Most of us sang ourselves hoarse. Most of us wanted to go see a recent mega hit Telegu movie in a shady cinema hall for 50 buck tickets...although 15 out of 18 people did not understand Telegu. Big deal, they said. "Just laugh when the crowd laughs!"

This is a movie obsessed land. Above all arts, above music bands, above reality shows, above sensational news, above tragic news stories, above milestones achieved by the ruling government...above it all.

Show us one good movie, with some killer music from a Rahman, a Harris Jayaaj, an Ilayaraja, a Nadeem-Shravan, an Ismail Durbar, a Pritam. Some sappy story that reminds us of our mother/brother/father/sister/long-lost best friend/wife/girlfriend/husband/boyfriend/pet dog/stray cat. Get us to laugh and cry and that's it. You have a hit and we are followers for life.

Of course, there are those Kamineys, those Wake Up Sids, those Wednesdays. The genre isn't important - touch our heart and we are sold.

I am so freaking proud to be part of such a mad, mad, mad land where nothing makes sense but still falls in place all at once. Kahani thodi filmi hai!

Diwali Ya Diwala?

You got it right. I hate Diwali. Of course, I am a self respecting Indian, Hindu etc etc. but I abhor this so called festival of lights. It's more like the festival of smoke and explosions, methinks.

There are various reasons why they celebrate this festival - in the northern parts of this country, they say that Lord Rama came home after fourteen long years of exile with his wife Sita - to celebrate his return, the people of Ayodhya lit the city up with lights - diyas and deepams. Beautiful, that sight must have been, if you ask me. I adore diyas, little clay lamps with oil and a bright flame dancing on the wick, often set on rangolis, those floor designs with colours that liven them up.

In the south, primarily in Tamil Nadu, they celebrate the slaying of the demon Narakasura by Lord Krishna with lamps. Diwali also marks the beginning of the winters. My grandma says that the real reason why they light all those lamps at this time is to kill insects. Apparently, a lot of swallows and other insects are born in the season of receding monsoons and become quite a menace - come Diwali, we light lamps and these insects get attracted to the flame and hurl themselves, in a final act of impulse, straight into the flames. Dead. I love my grandma's stories.

Somewhere down the line, some idiot invented fire crackers - don't get me entirely wrong now. I love those chakkars and anaars (fountain...?) and those phuljharis etc. They are fun, look pretty, mostly noiseless too. I also adore those fireworks in the sky and I can look at those for hours.

But fire crackers...those inanely useless bombs, Lakshmi bombs and Gorilla bombs and the likes, just what use are they? Narakasura is dead so the sound isn't going to kill him. Lord Rama would go scuttling back into his quiet and peaceful exile in the forest if he heard one of those bombs explode. And no insect is dying to high decibel levels I am sure - I don't think they can hear either - blissfully deaf.

So what purpose are those bombs serving? They are heart-wrenchingly, ear-splittingly, nerve-wrackingly painful when they set off and I am sure if I were old and suffering from hypertension or heart disease or one of those things, I would by now be on my way to heaven or hell or wherever it is that we go to when we die.

I hope those monstrosities are officially banned - they contribute to sound pollution, they can make you go deaf too, and by the way, they almost shattered my window with the impact.

Which is why, I have a new agenda. Every Diwali, I will travel to either Jammu & Kashmir, North East of India or Kerala. Apparently, these places aren't big on celebrating Diwali and while other parts of my nation spend time welcoming Rama and worshipping Krishna and killing monsoon flies, I can go grab my share of peace and quiet and come back once the pandemonium passes.

Banana Skins

Let's clarify the headline right away so you can choose to either read this, openly or skeptically, or just move to the next blog on your reader. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar says that religion is like a banana skin. And spirituality the banana itself. The problem with this era is, people have thrown away the banana and are holding on tightly to the banana skin.

I agree. Now let's talk for a bit about what this made me think. Normally, when I hold a banana in my hands, I look at the skin. If I see a smooth, untarnished, fresh skin, it gives me some idea of the fruit inside. I take it that the fruit inside will be good to eat too. The skin is important, but secondary, nevertheless. The inside is all that matters.

But I still see the skin. Although I will remove it and throw it away later. I still see it. And I see around me, increasingly, people my age, people a little older than me, a little younger than me, are no longer proud of their banana skin-religions, or of other religions either. Religion is viewed as unnecessary, as a malady. Apparently, religion is a way to disguise fear, preference etc. It's sad, in a country like India, where its various religions are the ones that have added colours to its diversity.

Be it the colours of festivals, the sweetmeats, the clothes, the cuisine, the practices. Most of these vary from religion to religion, each diverse and beautiful in its own way. People are increasingly proud of saying they are atheists or agnostics, without even bothering to look a little deeper into the religions they were born into, the religions they are surrounded by. Without asking persistent questions.

Or I see fanatics, people ready to thrust their religions down others' throats, for various reasons. There is very limited balance, a healthy balance of respect for other religions and integrating them into our own lives and at the same time, following and understanding one's own. There are reasons of course...religion has been politicized and used and misused and abused.

Which is why, when a Muslim friend, travelling with me in the company cab, informed me on Ramzan that she was waiting to break her fast so she could go dance in the Dandiya Raas with her friends, I was thrilled. It sounded like a breath of fresh air after a long and tiring journey via a polluted road. Okay, sad analogy that but you get it.

Maybe there's some hope. Maybe more people will start becoming spiritual and wise and love their religions and respect others' too. Maybe my friend will be accompanied by her entire family one day. Maybe, my Hindu granduncle will understand his son's need to do the Roza every year. Maybe they will start letting my Sikh friend attend the mass at the church she so adores without demanding she convert.

Maybe we will all turn human one day. And maybe, that day, there won't be questions about man's Godliness.

Ek Khiladi, Ek Hasina Aur Pasina

Disclaimer: The name of this post should become obvious ONLY towards the end of the post.

I saw this Tantra t-shirt in Bombay/Mumbai on a recent visit to my 'home-town'.Here's how it looks (with due respect AND credit to whoever took this photo).

You know what's awesome about this T? It's mind-numbingly, heart-breakingly, gut-wrenchingly true. We do travel like that, day in, day out, packed in like sardines - Shashi Tharoor

must travel in a Mumbai local once and then tweet about it. I hope the Railway ministry wakes up and does something...

But more importantly, I hope they find a sensible solution to limit the number of people who make their way to Mumbai every day. That city is turning into an over flowing drain and trust me, I hate saying this as much as you have hated reading the last few words.

So, coming back to the topic of travelling with strangers everyday, sharing varying degrees of physical intimacy, can be, to say the least, traumatizing. Like this time, I thought I would give P a taste of what a 'packed' train is like. Why? Well, long long ago, before we got married, he looked into what I thought was a relatively empty train, gaped in shock and said - OMG, this is so crowded!!

I just gave him an incredulous look and decided, experience is the best teacher. So in we went, in a 10.20am local, travelling 60kms in a span of 1.15hrs and by the time we got out, we didn't look like we had bathed that day...my clothes were okay (I was wearing those crumple crepe dresses :P thank goodness) but P looked like he had wrested the ocean (salty and wet).

One particular episode, I remember with stunning clarity. There was this old uncle-type who got in, and stood right above where P was precariously perched on the fourth seat. Nice man. And he perspired profusely. A big drop of perspiration sat on his elbow, threatening to plonk right on top of P's head, while I looked at it, a look of fear and revulsion on my face.

I kept nudging P to dodge or tell the man to wipe it off. P being a very decent, gentle soul, felt it would be offensive. But he gave in, asked the man to wipe himself, very very politely. He obliged, but before he could dab at his sweaty elbow, another man brushed inside and did the honours, wiping it off with his own shirt, happily unaware of his random act of kindness.

Personally, I think its a great lesson in very lofty spiritual values, such as oneness, equality and acceptance, to be able to participate in this means of travelling everyday. Can't believe I did it. And most likely to never do it again. After six years of such painstaking 'tapasya', I am highly enlightened.

Chai Piyo, Kaam Karo

And that means, "Drink tea, do your work." Lame sounding in English when translated like that but I am just being direct!

This is an ad that has been on air for a while, the Jaago Re sequel, to put it straight. The old ad asked us to wake up, drink tea, and go vote on the election day.

The new one says that if anybody asks you for a bribe, refuse, give them a cup of this tea, ask them to drink tea and work. Why tea? A bribe is referred to as 'chai-pani' in Hindi. 'Tea 'n' water'.

Nice ads. My husband (TH/P) adores the ad. So when the police official decided to pay us a visit (to verify my address, for name change, post marriage etc), we were a bit worried.

Would he ask for a bribe to verify my existence in this house?

P immediately suggested we make him a cup of tea and say 'Chai Piyo, Kaam Karo', full-on styled after the ad. I laughed. Sometimes, he is adorably innocent. Nevertheless, I wondered if I have tea leaves at home, considering that we are not great tea drinkers.

The policeman arrived. And I realised I had no milk at home. Black tea?? Ew! What a thing to give! So I got out my Khus/Vettiver/Poppy seed extract and tossed it into a glass of cool water and set it in front of the man, while he scanned through my documents.

I replayed the scene in my head while he scanned.

"Khus piyo, kaam karo"...? Didn't sound too right.

The man lifted the glass, sipped on it, while P looked on too.

"Yeh kya hai??" (What is this??) he quipped.

"Khus, isse sharir aur dimaag thanda rehta hai." ("This is khus, it keeps the body and mind cool.") That was P's reaction. I wanted to giggle so I went inside.

The man verified and confirmed my existence and made me put a thumb imprint in place of the signature. I told him I could sign. He said I still needed to give an imprint. I did. i never thought I would do that and I wondered how people who are not literate must feel while doing the same - highly vulnerable.

Apparently he liked the khus. And we did not have to say 'Khus piyo, kaam karo".

Positive stories never seem to get reported, do they? Here's my bit. To the policeman that did his job, without chai, pani etc. And to the security system that i still, hopefully, and hopelessly, trust.