My mother was practical about many matters, and death was one of them. She may have feared it, but she taught me not to. I grew up with what I think is a healthy attitude towards death. I don't see what there is to fear about it per se. It's not something one can somehow avoid. In a way, one actually spends one's life preparing for death. Macabre thought, you say? Only to those who don't think about it, I'm sure. You can't be so divorced from reality as to imagine that death will not come to you. It's the not knowing what follows that is scary, perhaps. The possibility that nothing follows, perhaps. Loss of control is difficult to handle, and the end of life is pretty much the loss of all control, generally speaking.
I don't fear growing old, either. And if you see me hovering endlessly at the edge of the pavement when crossing the road, you will know that I won't give traffic a chance to bear down on me so there's that taken care of.
The thing that I have actually truly feared for many years is cancer. Because of two reasons - there's no way to prevent it, and there's no way to cure it. This is not to say that it's led me to live life in a state of fluttery trepidation, but yes - if you asked me what I feared, this would have been the answer. I say "would have been" because even that fear has, in a way, been and gone.
I always thought in terms of cancer happening to me. And somehow, that was the one thing that I had subconsciously braced for. If it happens to me, I thought, such-and-such is what I will do. I never thought it would strike closer than close - that it would manifest itself in the one person closest in my universe of family, my elder brother. For those with more than one sibling and a larger circle of immediate family, this may not connect. But my parents have been no more for over 11 years now, and considering I shed a spouse along the way, it's been pretty much my only sibling, and his wife and son, who have been there for me. And with him stricken, I have not a clue what to do.
I sometimes feel a little surprised at this. I usually know what to do. I'm the girl who has a flashlight in her handbag and for many years toted along a screwdriver as well, just in case. I'm the one whom people call with questions, the one someone said is "better than Google". A "situation" generally has me thinking of solution first and reaction later. But this one has been a low tackle that has brought me down. I should have an answer, a solution, a way forward to help him with. Instead, I find myself groping in dark space where I simply cannot see ahead.
How do you deal with something like this? I don't know. There is no one answer. You take one day at a time; one chemotherapy session at a time; one uneventful night's sleep at a time; one birthday, one Ganesh Chaturthi, one Rakshabandhan at a time.
It feels like I have a fist clenched tight within me, and that if I let go I may fall to pieces. That if I unclench, it will all crash down and all I will be able to say is "More weight." At times I feel that at some level I've taken all that can be taken, and nothing can touch me any more.
But then a sparrow alights on the window, and another. They're looking for a place to build their nest. I rig up a little thingumabob for them and hope they will take up residence. A pair of pigeons seems to have occupied the box I'd left for them outside a bedroom window, and the female is apparently hatching. I don't look too closely, for it alarms them. My compost bin is thriving with little creepies. Ah, putrefaction! "Treat!" say the mynahs.
The sun shines. Somewhere I hear a bulbul. Where there is life, there is hope.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Bombay: Resilient or complacent?
The laundrywallah handed me my ironed clothes the other day and said, "I don't see you around much." "Only on Sundays," I said, "that is the haalat (situation) of working people." He agreed, and remarked, "Achchha hai, kaam karne waalon ka dimaag khaali nahiin rehta. Yeh blast karne waale - khaali dimaag waale hain." ("It's good, a job keeps the mind occupied. The people behind the blast - they're idle minds.")
It has been over ten days since Bombay saw its most recent series of blasts, at Opera House and Dadar Kabutarkhana. I was in Bandra when it happened but I could so easily have been at Dadar. Friends from outside Bombay sent anxious queries by phone, email and Facebook, asking whether I and everyone I knew was all right. No one I know was hurt, but that doesn't detract from the rage and frustration one feels at being so assaulted, repeatedly.
Twenty-four hours after the blasts, Bombay was back on track. It would have been back 100% except for the heavy rain which hobbled some of the train services and hampered road traffic a bit. A day later, however, everything was as before. We went to work, we held meetings, conducted programmes, made appointments... Bombay is a city that does not stop. It can't afford to, and the people who live in it can't afford to either.
The fact is, we may not want to. I speak as one who was born in Bombay (Andheri East, to be precise) but grew up and grew into my twenties in Goa. So when I came to live and work in Bombay it was a conscious choice. The city's energy drew me; its acceptance of anyone and everyone, on one condition only - that they work their way in and up. Bombay is a city that gives you as much as you give it.
If I wanted to kick back and relax, I'd go to, say, Goa. Bombay is a city for those who move, and where you have to keep moving. Stand still and you may get trampled. It sounds cut-throat but it's reality for countless residents of the city. These are the people who "bounce back". Mainly because they don't have a choice, they can't afford to give up a day's salary or lose a day's worth of customers.
I live next to, work with, and see these people every day.
A single mother who struggles to stay on her feet but does it, with nary a wobble. Her kids adore her and her friends love her smile. Only she knows how hard it is to manage.
A boy carrying a load definitely more than his own weight, and so big that he can barely see the road ahead. But he has to deliver it somewhere, and he'll do it without falling, no matter how many privileged teenagers lost in their cellphone screens get in his way.
A young man in a railway carriage, late at night, selling small plastic items - not particularly extraordinary, except that he is toting his baby son on one arm. Did someone say "working father"?
A young woman whose husband works in the Gulf, who has bought a house of her own, and works three jobs as a domestic so that she can earn enough to contribute to the monthly instalments on the house.
An old woman who sells vegetables and earns her self-respect in the family where she lives with her son and daughter-in-law.
An old man who carries loads on a handcart though he barely has the strength to push it.
The securityman, the breadwallah, the cleaners, drivers, peons, secretaries who keep the wheels of working life going.
And us. People like us who say "Bombay is complacent" although if you stop to ask any of these people I've mentioned, not one will say they "accept" the situation. It's true that they may be inured to it. After the first shock of the initial attacks wears off, and one gets almost accustomed to being a target of terrorism, one does learn to live around these incidents. Life, after all, has to go on. But give each of them a weapon, literal or figurative, and you will have an army that can defeat the terrorists. The trouble is that no weapon is proof against the enemy within - our own elected representatives who fail their constituents, repeatedly and miserably.
It's not complacency, it's a lack of options. Give us a viable choice and I guarantee you, we will exercise it. Till then, our only option is to fight back by carrying on with life. They call it resilience. And that is what it is, until something stronger is available to us.
It has been over ten days since Bombay saw its most recent series of blasts, at Opera House and Dadar Kabutarkhana. I was in Bandra when it happened but I could so easily have been at Dadar. Friends from outside Bombay sent anxious queries by phone, email and Facebook, asking whether I and everyone I knew was all right. No one I know was hurt, but that doesn't detract from the rage and frustration one feels at being so assaulted, repeatedly.
Twenty-four hours after the blasts, Bombay was back on track. It would have been back 100% except for the heavy rain which hobbled some of the train services and hampered road traffic a bit. A day later, however, everything was as before. We went to work, we held meetings, conducted programmes, made appointments... Bombay is a city that does not stop. It can't afford to, and the people who live in it can't afford to either.
The fact is, we may not want to. I speak as one who was born in Bombay (Andheri East, to be precise) but grew up and grew into my twenties in Goa. So when I came to live and work in Bombay it was a conscious choice. The city's energy drew me; its acceptance of anyone and everyone, on one condition only - that they work their way in and up. Bombay is a city that gives you as much as you give it.
If I wanted to kick back and relax, I'd go to, say, Goa. Bombay is a city for those who move, and where you have to keep moving. Stand still and you may get trampled. It sounds cut-throat but it's reality for countless residents of the city. These are the people who "bounce back". Mainly because they don't have a choice, they can't afford to give up a day's salary or lose a day's worth of customers.
I live next to, work with, and see these people every day.
A single mother who struggles to stay on her feet but does it, with nary a wobble. Her kids adore her and her friends love her smile. Only she knows how hard it is to manage.
A boy carrying a load definitely more than his own weight, and so big that he can barely see the road ahead. But he has to deliver it somewhere, and he'll do it without falling, no matter how many privileged teenagers lost in their cellphone screens get in his way.
A young man in a railway carriage, late at night, selling small plastic items - not particularly extraordinary, except that he is toting his baby son on one arm. Did someone say "working father"?
A young woman whose husband works in the Gulf, who has bought a house of her own, and works three jobs as a domestic so that she can earn enough to contribute to the monthly instalments on the house.
An old woman who sells vegetables and earns her self-respect in the family where she lives with her son and daughter-in-law.
An old man who carries loads on a handcart though he barely has the strength to push it.
The securityman, the breadwallah, the cleaners, drivers, peons, secretaries who keep the wheels of working life going.
And us. People like us who say "Bombay is complacent" although if you stop to ask any of these people I've mentioned, not one will say they "accept" the situation. It's true that they may be inured to it. After the first shock of the initial attacks wears off, and one gets almost accustomed to being a target of terrorism, one does learn to live around these incidents. Life, after all, has to go on. But give each of them a weapon, literal or figurative, and you will have an army that can defeat the terrorists. The trouble is that no weapon is proof against the enemy within - our own elected representatives who fail their constituents, repeatedly and miserably.
It's not complacency, it's a lack of options. Give us a viable choice and I guarantee you, we will exercise it. Till then, our only option is to fight back by carrying on with life. They call it resilience. And that is what it is, until something stronger is available to us.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Compost yourself
It all began with Orange Pekoe. My brother's mom-in-law dropped in at my flat yesterday - my first "visitor", although, of course, everyone else has been wandering in and out generally. This was a proper visit. We had tea and all. I made the tea with orange pekoe that I'd bought recently. I also have the strong CTC variety but since this was a late-evening cup, I thought I'd choose a lighter brew.
It's a leaf tea and after draining, the leaves looked so nice and, well, leafy, that I didn't feel like chucking them. My thoughts went back to the compost bin I'd had in Singapore, when I lived for a short while in a house with a garden. All one needs is a bin with a hole for drainage. My kitchen use is still small-scale, so I wouldn't even need a "bin". A tin would do, I thought. And there was one, just waiting for this opportunity - a steel tin that had become corroded in a spot on its bottom. I've bunged in the tea leaves and this morning's coffee grounds, then some potato and onion peels, and kept the tin on the terrace where it gets ample sunlight. The tin's lid serves as catchment for any liquid that drains out. I need to ensure it remains damp, and that Kaushalya - my daily - doesn't throw it out! A few weeks, a bit of turning, and if the birds leave it alone it should be a nice, dark mulch. If it fails I can always bung it at the bottom of a tree or one of the plants in my sis-in-law's garden.
If it works, I'll broadcast the results!
It's a leaf tea and after draining, the leaves looked so nice and, well, leafy, that I didn't feel like chucking them. My thoughts went back to the compost bin I'd had in Singapore, when I lived for a short while in a house with a garden. All one needs is a bin with a hole for drainage. My kitchen use is still small-scale, so I wouldn't even need a "bin". A tin would do, I thought. And there was one, just waiting for this opportunity - a steel tin that had become corroded in a spot on its bottom. I've bunged in the tea leaves and this morning's coffee grounds, then some potato and onion peels, and kept the tin on the terrace where it gets ample sunlight. The tin's lid serves as catchment for any liquid that drains out. I need to ensure it remains damp, and that Kaushalya - my daily - doesn't throw it out! A few weeks, a bit of turning, and if the birds leave it alone it should be a nice, dark mulch. If it fails I can always bung it at the bottom of a tree or one of the plants in my sis-in-law's garden.
If it works, I'll broadcast the results!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Yirrabat huxtable yorabata hay!
"Yirrabat huxtable yorabata hay!" started with a thread on a discussion forum hosted by expatsingapore.com. The poster said he had heard these words in a Peugeot car ad, and wanted to know what they meant. A couple of other posters provided more information: a link to the advertisement, and the revelation that the misheard words were actually "Tera husn bahut mujhe bhaata hai". I love good ads, and this one caught my fancy. Not only that, the mondegreen tickled me even more, so much so that I put the words on a t-shirt that I wear now and then even till date - seven years later.
That old discussion was fun, but no one may remember it. I do, thanks to "Yirrabat huxtable yorabata hay!" It's a yodelly yell, a celebratory exclamation with a joyous bounce which lifts my spirits. And the "huxtable" makes me giggle. Anything which does that must be good.
That old discussion was fun, but no one may remember it. I do, thanks to "Yirrabat huxtable yorabata hay!" It's a yodelly yell, a celebratory exclamation with a joyous bounce which lifts my spirits. And the "huxtable" makes me giggle. Anything which does that must be good.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Thane Return
It has been almost a month since I started working in Bombay, and two and a half months since I arrived from Singapore. Faster than the speed of light, or so it seems to me, I got a job (MUCHAS thanks to friends and ex-colleagues for the helping hands!), organised the train pass and the lunch dabba at the office, figured out the optimum train timings and the best route to the platform so as to avoid the riot-like rush on the overhead bridge, and learnt to navigate the by-now-familiar monsoon puddles too. It feels as if I've been here for ever.
Before moving back I wondered how I would take to it. Till now, I've only visited. True, I've plunged into the city with a steadfast sort of fervour every time, but always I knew I would be going back to Singapore. This time, knowing I would not go back, I wasn't sure how I would react.
The result has surprised me. Very obviously, being with family and in a loving and comfortable environment has eased the transition immensely. But I was anticipating at least some degree of adjustment. Perhaps it's because I kept an open mind, was even prepared to be disappointed - but I seem to have slipped right into the groove, heaving train rush and all. Waking up in time and getting out to catch the 9.03 or, if lucky, the 8.56. Crossing the road at just the right moment between opposing streams of traffic. Making sure I reach the office (sometimes I disappoint my sister-in-law by rushing out sans breakfast) and sign the muster before it is taken away and gets red marks in blank spaces against the names of those who didn't make it by the cut-off time. Practising (not yet perfected) the art of managing a handbag when both handbag and hands are pressed tight as tight can be in a crush of bodies and ponytails. Negotiating the old, ultra-steep stairs at the office which, I thought (seeing as the office is on the third floor), would help me lose some of my - generous word! - embonpoint. Unfortunately my colleagues bring in cake with calorific regularity and I have not been able to muster the strength to refuse them. I should just go for a walk every time it happens.
The friendliness of my colleagues and the workplace atmosphere has had a lot to do with my having "fitted in", I'm sure. Working in the Indian milieu is a pleasure I still consciously enjoy - being able to speak Hindi at will, use Indian idioms, and wear comfortable salwar-kameez without being asked why I'm dressed up (in "costume", as some would put it in Singapore). In Singapore, culture is very Westernised. In Bombay, I haven't yet worn my standard-issue grey office-girl skirt - one item which helped make me feel less different in my erstwhile home. Trousers and jeans cross the border freely, though.
A great deal of my fondness for Bombay seems to have to do with trains. In Singapore, the trains run swift and smooth. All you hear is a hum. Very occasionally, only at one or two points, one hears the "rat-tat, tat-tat" of wheels going over joints. It's a sound I love - a sound I miss so much I used to weep when I visited Bombay and travelled by train just to hear it. I still love hearing it, every day of the working week. Another of my train highs is when a fast goes past - either an outstation train going through the station, or two trains passing one another on adjoining tracks. You hear the horn first, approaching, getting louder; and almost before you know it the great creature is passing yours in a wave of rushing metal and blurred bodies in doorways. If there is no joint on the tracks, the sound is a swift zoom-whoosh; when the wheels go over the joints there is my beloved old rat-tat, tat-tat; rat-tat, tat-tat; and then it fades.
Another thing is that on visits, I used to head out by car, with the convenience of a driver so I had no parking worries and could flit around in airconditioned comfort. I can't use the car every day now because my brother needs it, and even if I could, or even if I got my own car, the work commute is just too long. Between Thane and VT, train is best. That's another difference between visiting and living - the fact that the grime and grit is a daily experience and not a temporary touristy reverse-snobbish indulgence. The daily commute has its downs - nonstop pouring rain during the thick of the monsoon, delayed trains, bus breakdowns, occasionally even verbal abuse from male commuters when they can get away with it. I may well change my mind eventually but all this has not yet begun to bother me. Somehow, the goal seems more important than the means.
It's all still new enough that I savour the taste - and the convenience - of breakfast from the corner sandwich-walla near the office, and all but restrain myself from falling with mewls of joy onto the tea that arrives regularly at my desk, a far cry from insipid tea-bag brew in the office pantry. Working in Bombay is very different in several other ways from working in Singapore too, but that, I'm sure, goes for every place. I think with fondness of the dizzying variety of food and drink that Singapore offered, but I don't hanker after it. When I go back (as a visitor, this time) I'm sure I'll fall on all that too, with joy and delight and unseemly wantonness.
Singapore is a land of conveniences, all right, but why don't I miss them? Perhaps it is because I've attuned myself to being "Indian". Singapore - I spent nigh on ten years there - seems like a film I watched and enjoyed. Now I'm out of the cinema hall, dodging the puddles and autorickshaws, and steering clear of the BEST buses. I have not forgotten that you never, ever argue with a BEST bus.
The last time I did all this was when I worked at Lower Parel and stayed as a paying guest or PG ("lodger" to my British friends) at Bandra, and then at Mahim. But that was in the second half of the '90s - 12 years ago. Not only was the commute short, I also worked the odd hours of the newspaper world - starting in the afternoon or evening and ending in the wee hours - so I didn't brave the rush hour. Now, my knees feel far older than the rest of me does, and the rest of me just doesn't feel like doing the night shift any more. Still, I seem to have borne up pretty well so far, fingers crossed.
I had hoped to find a personal source of support by this time, but it hasn't happened yet. I'm hopeful of meeting someone when the time is right, however, and in any event confident enough that even if I don't, it won't be the end of the world.
Often it seems - still - that I've stepped out into space and am navigating new territory with every step. At times I feel - still - that it is dark out there, that the flashlight illuminates only enough for me to take the next few steps. I put my foot forward firmly, however, and as for support - why, my fabulous family is there!
Before moving back I wondered how I would take to it. Till now, I've only visited. True, I've plunged into the city with a steadfast sort of fervour every time, but always I knew I would be going back to Singapore. This time, knowing I would not go back, I wasn't sure how I would react.
The result has surprised me. Very obviously, being with family and in a loving and comfortable environment has eased the transition immensely. But I was anticipating at least some degree of adjustment. Perhaps it's because I kept an open mind, was even prepared to be disappointed - but I seem to have slipped right into the groove, heaving train rush and all. Waking up in time and getting out to catch the 9.03 or, if lucky, the 8.56. Crossing the road at just the right moment between opposing streams of traffic. Making sure I reach the office (sometimes I disappoint my sister-in-law by rushing out sans breakfast) and sign the muster before it is taken away and gets red marks in blank spaces against the names of those who didn't make it by the cut-off time. Practising (not yet perfected) the art of managing a handbag when both handbag and hands are pressed tight as tight can be in a crush of bodies and ponytails. Negotiating the old, ultra-steep stairs at the office which, I thought (seeing as the office is on the third floor), would help me lose some of my - generous word! - embonpoint. Unfortunately my colleagues bring in cake with calorific regularity and I have not been able to muster the strength to refuse them. I should just go for a walk every time it happens.
The friendliness of my colleagues and the workplace atmosphere has had a lot to do with my having "fitted in", I'm sure. Working in the Indian milieu is a pleasure I still consciously enjoy - being able to speak Hindi at will, use Indian idioms, and wear comfortable salwar-kameez without being asked why I'm dressed up (in "costume", as some would put it in Singapore). In Singapore, culture is very Westernised. In Bombay, I haven't yet worn my standard-issue grey office-girl skirt - one item which helped make me feel less different in my erstwhile home. Trousers and jeans cross the border freely, though.
A great deal of my fondness for Bombay seems to have to do with trains. In Singapore, the trains run swift and smooth. All you hear is a hum. Very occasionally, only at one or two points, one hears the "rat-tat, tat-tat" of wheels going over joints. It's a sound I love - a sound I miss so much I used to weep when I visited Bombay and travelled by train just to hear it. I still love hearing it, every day of the working week. Another of my train highs is when a fast goes past - either an outstation train going through the station, or two trains passing one another on adjoining tracks. You hear the horn first, approaching, getting louder; and almost before you know it the great creature is passing yours in a wave of rushing metal and blurred bodies in doorways. If there is no joint on the tracks, the sound is a swift zoom-whoosh; when the wheels go over the joints there is my beloved old rat-tat, tat-tat; rat-tat, tat-tat; and then it fades.
Another thing is that on visits, I used to head out by car, with the convenience of a driver so I had no parking worries and could flit around in airconditioned comfort. I can't use the car every day now because my brother needs it, and even if I could, or even if I got my own car, the work commute is just too long. Between Thane and VT, train is best. That's another difference between visiting and living - the fact that the grime and grit is a daily experience and not a temporary touristy reverse-snobbish indulgence. The daily commute has its downs - nonstop pouring rain during the thick of the monsoon, delayed trains, bus breakdowns, occasionally even verbal abuse from male commuters when they can get away with it. I may well change my mind eventually but all this has not yet begun to bother me. Somehow, the goal seems more important than the means.
It's all still new enough that I savour the taste - and the convenience - of breakfast from the corner sandwich-walla near the office, and all but restrain myself from falling with mewls of joy onto the tea that arrives regularly at my desk, a far cry from insipid tea-bag brew in the office pantry. Working in Bombay is very different in several other ways from working in Singapore too, but that, I'm sure, goes for every place. I think with fondness of the dizzying variety of food and drink that Singapore offered, but I don't hanker after it. When I go back (as a visitor, this time) I'm sure I'll fall on all that too, with joy and delight and unseemly wantonness.
Singapore is a land of conveniences, all right, but why don't I miss them? Perhaps it is because I've attuned myself to being "Indian". Singapore - I spent nigh on ten years there - seems like a film I watched and enjoyed. Now I'm out of the cinema hall, dodging the puddles and autorickshaws, and steering clear of the BEST buses. I have not forgotten that you never, ever argue with a BEST bus.
The last time I did all this was when I worked at Lower Parel and stayed as a paying guest or PG ("lodger" to my British friends) at Bandra, and then at Mahim. But that was in the second half of the '90s - 12 years ago. Not only was the commute short, I also worked the odd hours of the newspaper world - starting in the afternoon or evening and ending in the wee hours - so I didn't brave the rush hour. Now, my knees feel far older than the rest of me does, and the rest of me just doesn't feel like doing the night shift any more. Still, I seem to have borne up pretty well so far, fingers crossed.
I had hoped to find a personal source of support by this time, but it hasn't happened yet. I'm hopeful of meeting someone when the time is right, however, and in any event confident enough that even if I don't, it won't be the end of the world.
Often it seems - still - that I've stepped out into space and am navigating new territory with every step. At times I feel - still - that it is dark out there, that the flashlight illuminates only enough for me to take the next few steps. I put my foot forward firmly, however, and as for support - why, my fabulous family is there!
Friday, April 23, 2010
Blink decisions
"What the heart knows today, the head will understand tomorrow." I came across this early in my teens and have remembered it often over the years. It's a one-line case for following one's instinct, which - as research has borne out - is the sum and culmination of our learning, experience, memory and survival skills.
The instinctive reaction is often dubbed "first impression" and sometimes ignored on that basis, but it shouldn't be. Last night I read a book that makes the same case - Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I read Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Outliers a couple of months ago, when Blink was being read by someone else in the family. Quite simply it says what we know but don't often follow up on - that our instinct is usually right. We need to learn to recognise and listen to it, however, and know how to make it work to our best advantage. Marketing "professionals" - unfortunately - may never see the case for Blink, because there are usually no pie charts and statistics to bear it out. Still, it works.
I've had a Blink moment in the very recent past, when I learnt that my brother in Bombay was seriously ill. I was thousands of miles away in Singapore, and of course hotfooted it to Bombay. At the same time I decided, pretty much in the blink of an eye, that I would move back and live in Bombay near my brother and his family. I didn't stop to evaluate this decision - I just proceeded more or less headlong to put it into action. There was no question about it in my mind. If I had stopped to "think" about it, there would probably have emerged a compelling case for me not to relocate, but my Blink "reasoning" - as it were - puts up an equally compelling argument for relocation.
So here I am, I've stepped out into space and can only see about as far as the beam of my non-Union-Carbide-powered flashlight can reach. Still, somehow, it all finds me unafraid. I think I've done the right thing, Blink-wise.
The instinctive reaction is often dubbed "first impression" and sometimes ignored on that basis, but it shouldn't be. Last night I read a book that makes the same case - Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I read Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Outliers a couple of months ago, when Blink was being read by someone else in the family. Quite simply it says what we know but don't often follow up on - that our instinct is usually right. We need to learn to recognise and listen to it, however, and know how to make it work to our best advantage. Marketing "professionals" - unfortunately - may never see the case for Blink, because there are usually no pie charts and statistics to bear it out. Still, it works.
I've had a Blink moment in the very recent past, when I learnt that my brother in Bombay was seriously ill. I was thousands of miles away in Singapore, and of course hotfooted it to Bombay. At the same time I decided, pretty much in the blink of an eye, that I would move back and live in Bombay near my brother and his family. I didn't stop to evaluate this decision - I just proceeded more or less headlong to put it into action. There was no question about it in my mind. If I had stopped to "think" about it, there would probably have emerged a compelling case for me not to relocate, but my Blink "reasoning" - as it were - puts up an equally compelling argument for relocation.
So here I am, I've stepped out into space and can only see about as far as the beam of my non-Union-Carbide-powered flashlight can reach. Still, somehow, it all finds me unafraid. I think I've done the right thing, Blink-wise.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
On looking at old photographs when grief is still new in the heart
--
Pain and love
Mingle in the sweet, sharp
Slice of the knife
--
Pain and love
Mingle in the sweet, sharp
Slice of the knife
--
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Meeting Shantaram
This was written in November 2005, shortly after I ran into "Shantaram" as described.When you are in Colaba, you go to Leopold’s. At least for a chai, if not a drink. It’s a place to meet people or just be alone in a crowd, watching and being watched. And if you’re lucky, you might meet a famous author.
After a day of playing tourist in my favourite city, Mumbai, I dropped in at Leopold’s in just such a casual fashion. Beer gleaming golden before me on the marble-topped table, I looked around – you always look around when at Leo’s, as regulars call it. A pony-tailed head, partly seen, caught my eye. Pony tails for men have apparently gone out of fashion – this was the only one in the place. The head, hair slicked back tight, looked familiar.
Could it be, I wondered. Not 20 minutes ago, I had strolled through the back streets of Colaba wondering which of the many old buildings could have housed the wicked, mysterious Madame Zhou, Shantaram’s nemesis.
A reckless, holiday feeling took me to his table. “Excuse me, are you Shantaram?” I had meant to say his real name, but this worked – he blushed, grimaced and laughed. It was indeed Gregory David Roberts.
He grinned cheerfully for the camera and when I asked if I could meet him again with a copy of the book to sign, he said he would be at Leo’s the next day too. Four thirty, he said.
He was a little late, but with the many activities he’s juggling, that’s not surprising. Roberts stepped out of a taxi, waved vigorously at someone, and walked into Leopold to an appropriately coincidental toot from one of the faux-vintage trumpets for sale on the pavement just there.
A flourish of words
Roberts usually sits at “his” table, against the far wall under a couple of evocative old beer posters. But he stops at ours today for the promised signing. A bold hand, a flourish of words and an extravagance of curlicues covers the title page; he writes so hard the pen stabs through the paper.
A journalist is going to call him any moment for a phone interview, he says. She does, in a minute. She asks standard “celeb” questions – where he eats, what he reads, what he’s writing next. He talks about working to help the slum people among whom he lived. He’s setting up a mobile clinic for them, helping build a village school and a pucca house for the parents of the tourist guide who is one of the main characters in Shantaram. But he won’t say which village: “If I tell you, and if you print it, and hordes of people visit there, and perhaps one of the visitors harms someone from the village – I don’t want to be responsible for that.”
But the journalist he’s talking to has not read the book, so a lot of what he says means little to her. He laughs ruefully about this, later. “I have people coming up to me and saying ‘I haven’t read your book but I hear it is wonderful’,” he chuckles.
The story of Shantaram is in the process of being made into a film, with Johnny Depp playing Roberts. What does he think of that choice? “I chose him,” he says. “Several actors called me, interested in the lead role after they read or heard about the book, and of them all I picked Johnny.” A fitting choice; I can’t think of anyone who could become the character, either. Roberts writes with a Mont Blanc pen that Depp gave him.
The script? He’s worked on that himself as well. And in the pipeline is a sequel to Shantaram, but before that is to come a book of poetry, and after that a novel based on the poems in that book.
Roberts says he sleeps very little – about three hours a night – as a consequence of having so much to do. There is, of course, mountains of email – he reads everything but cannot reply to all of it.
He has ordered coffee – “Milk, very hot. Verry hot, okay?” he tells the waiter – and it arrives, milk-and-water, presumably hot enough, in a mug and three little sachets of Nescafe. Roberts is on the phone by now, so I tear open the sachets for him.
Among other things he’s doing to help people in this little pocket of Bombay is set up micro businesses and put part of the profits back into the community. There are already two barbershops in the Fort area, in South Bombay near Colaba. There’s also a shop customising Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycles.
It was a Bullet that Roberts hired in Goa to look for Karla. But so many of the people in the book are fictional. Qasim Ali. Khaderbhai. Prabaker the tourist guide. They are composites of the many people Roberts met and grew to know and like. And Karla, the woman Roberts falls for? I don’t ask about her, or about the dangerously attractive Abdullah Taheri, or the many events in Shantaram that seem so tantalisingly familiar, the more so because the locales, the air, the smells, the emotions are only too well known to those of us who have lived in Mumbai.
The book tugs at one’s emotions in more ways than one. “Layered” – as Roberts terms it – into four parts, each part has its own strata of structure, and each chapter follows a certain rhythm. This degree of organisation is in fact necessary when trying to even fathom, let alone portray, the polyglot chaos that is India, and especially Mumbai.
The only way one can make sense of the chaos is to turn philosopher – which might explain why many Indians are only too willing to hold forth on life, the universe and everything at most given times. Roberts too has a theory about things.
“Society is judged human or civilised based on how it treats women, indigenous people, poor people and convicts or criminals,” he says. “If society treats them in a humane, dignified, in a respectful way – only then can you say it is a civilised society.”
Awful things
Roberts wasn’t treated this way when he was down and out and poor, living in the slum. Many awful things happened to Shantaram – prison in New Zealand and then in Mumbai, where he was subject to severe torture and humiliation, and fighting in adverse conditions in Afghanistan. Then followed prison in Germany, where his story, his manuscript, was seized and destroyed by prison guards. Twice.
For a writer, that last seems the most terrible. But when I ask him what was the worst of all the things that happened to him, he says: “The hardest thing is to forgive. Not forgiving others – that comes. Once you decide to do it, you free your mind of the hatred, then you can forgive.”
But he has not forgotten the injustices he himself did to others, long years ago – something he speaks about in the book as well.
“The hardest thing,” he says, “is to look in the mirror and forgive yourself for the things you do to others.”
There is a wealth of compassion in his eyes; at the back is the knowledge that sometimes forgiving oneself is not just difficult, it is impossible.
Picture taken by Rahul Goswami.
(First posted on anothersubcontinent.com.)
Friday, January 1, 2010
'Not a city for losers'
For Mid-Day’s anniversary issue, July 1998. Bombay had been renamed Mumbai, but Shobha was not yet Shobhaa.
If Mumbai is the city of glitz, then Shobha De is its virtually undisputed queen. Her novels wouldn’t be the compelling reading they are if they were not set in this chaotic, pulsating city. And the Shobha syndrome wouldn’t have affected any other city as much as it has this maverick place.
Is the place, then, part of the personality? A chat with the pop writer reveals what she thinks of the city, and why she loves it so much.
How much is Mumbai a part of Shobha De?
Let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t have been me, for better or worse, in any other city in India. I don’t think I would have written the way I do, would have had the opportunities I got, the same kind of options and choices — which to me is really what defines the spirit of the city; that you can be who you are, what you are, and the only limits you set for yourself are those that you impose, and your imagination imposes. It’s a city that respects professionals, with no gender bias, and that in itself is saying a lot. I mean, I can’t imagine a Shobha De in, say, Allahabad, or even Delhi.
For whatever it is that I represent, it wouldn’t have been possible in any other city, no other city interests me as much. This has been the city of my formative years, of my organic growth, it defines me in every which way and I hope I define it too.
Wouldn’t this have happened if you had settled in any other city?
Definitely not. There are aspects of other cities that intrigue me, that I’d like to tap into at some point in my writing. But in all my novels Mumbai has not been merely a locale, it’s been a character. It’s a visible, throbbing, real presence, as important as the people I’m writing about within its context.
And it’s perhaps the only city that does not bore me for a minute. I like it in all its moods. I like it in whichever avatar it presents itself to me. There’s nothing I find even offensive about it. I’m more forgiving because I understand the city. Any other city gets my hackles up: when I go to Delhi I’m instantly on red alert. With Calcutta, of course, there’s a sentimental and emotional reason for my liking the city and accepting it. Technically it is my maike so when I go there I go into my Bengali bohuma mode – and mood.
But if there was a second city option I think for me it would be Pune. Bangalore collapsed into its own black hole and no longer is what it once was. There was a very young spirit to Bangalore which is no longer there – it’s like any other overcrowded polluted city. Pune retains its Maharashtraness, which is what I respond to on a very subliminal level. Though it is now becoming a Sindhi enclave, much to my regret, even so when I go there I feel very much a Maharashtrian. Whereas in Mumbai I don’t feel I belong to any particular community, the atmosphere here is so amorphous. You just feel a ‘Mumbaiwaali’, which is no slot other than the uniqueness of being a Mumbai person.
Why has Mumbai succeeded so much as a city?
It takes its chances, it has a cutting edge to it – it pushes you to your limits. It’s not a complacent city, it’s not a city that’s tolerant of failure. It’s not a city for losers, which is the tough part, because it’s very make-or-break, and it’s not kind to those who don’t make it. You don’t really stand much of a chance unless you’re perceived as successful. Which is why people try harder, which is why the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well today. People cannot afford to be lazy, or smug, because there are always ten others standing right behind, ready to trample over your body and dance over it in their rush to get ahead. So it keeps you on your toes, and I like that quality. I would hate to be in a rut, because to me, complacency is death.
How much is Maharashtra a part of Mumbai’s psyche?
This is a cliché but needs to be said over and over again: Mumbai in no way metaphorically or even physically has any but a tenuous link to Maharashtra. Mumbai is really many cities within a city and many cultures within these seven islands that are so loosely linked. It exists on so many different levels, seamlessly and simultaneously. That is what makes the city so fascinating for someone who observes social change – that it is unpredictable at all times. There’s no one label you can stick on it. I like its diversity, its plurality. I like its energy, its ferocious spirit of enterprise, its evil underbelly, its rough edges. I like it because it’s crude and vulnerable at the same time.
And its gloss?
The gloss, I think, is largely exaggerated. I don’t really perceive it. There’s more grit than gloss. And that is again one of the tricks that Mumbai has successfully pulled off on the rest of India – an image of glamour and gloss which is grossly exaggerated.
Does Mumbai have what you could call a literature of its own? Is there something like a city’s literature?
I don’t think Mumbai has been exploited at all, in literary or even cinematic terms. When I see films made out of New York, or Rome, or Paris, or San Francisco, where the city comes alive in all its beauty, maybe its grottiness, but still it’s palpable. You can sense the city. I don’t think we’ve managed to tap into that. It has happened in regional writing, in Marathi or Gujarat, but not in English, and for some reason we’ve shied away from exploiting the potential of the city. Even our cinema doesn’t reflect that. What it does reflect is a Punjabi version of Mumbai. Most of the film makers are from the North and they come with a certain vision of Mumbai which they then recreate in their studio sets, but it’s not Mumbai at all, it’s Haryana with a Mumbai veneer; which is very disappointing. The mean streets of the city are never exploited. Its bazaars, its buzz, its contradictions, its strange landscape which is bizarre by any standards – we have the neo-Gothic, and the Marwadi Gothic and the Parsi Gothic and the wadas. Even the architecture of the city is so eccentric. It has not been captured, either in writing or in cinema.
Do you think it’s because nobody has really tried or is it because of the city’s elusive quality?
With a skilled pen, the elusive quality should not be difficult; it should be inspirational. The elusive quality should be the challenge. It is, for me, but then my forte is different, I’m not a descriptive writer. For me it’s dialogue and people, and having a ear for conversation and for characterisation rather than long, descriptive, narrative passages. So though I try I don’t think I’ve succeeded to the extent that the city deserves. In the hands of a far more descriptive novelist it could...
Who do you think would fit the bill?
Well, Vikram Chandra has attempted it, and successfully so, but even then he’s not quite ... we need a Pico Iyer, but a Pico Iyer who resides in Mumbai, not who comes here as a tourist and does a take on his American vision of the city — which is what he has done, and eloquently, but it’s not an insider’s look at Mumbai, it’s through American eyes. He is an Indian writer but who’s lived all his life in America. Salman Rushdie has done it, too, but again his Mumbai is a nostalgic Mumbai, he doesn’t know what contemporary Mumbai is.
A lot of the writing about Mumbai has been nostalgic.
Yes, fifties and sixties Mumbai. Rushdie’s portrayal of the city in the sixties would be hard to match, or compete with, but I’m talking about the nineties Mumbai, which is harder to define because it’s still a Mumbai that’s happening, that’s finding an identity, finding its feet, and has not yet defined itself. Whereas it’s very easy to place Mumbai of the sixties – the parameters were better defined.
Do you think Mumbai will remain in this uncertain state, or will it find its character and grow into it soon?
I think it’s a city in flux at the moment, there have been far too many upheavals. I perceive a strong sense of insecurity, there’s an identity crisis. Mainly because it’s grown beyond reason, beyond imagination, beyond proportion, it’s like a pressure cooker about to explode. It’s difficult to find the appropriate peg under these circumstances. It’s a little disorienting even for its own people to know where they stand in the context of the city because there’s so much change, and I think there is a feeling that we’ve been left behind somewhat, even in the glamour stakes. What the city is clinging to is its filmdom status. So long as Bollywood rules, Mumbai is okay. But otherwise, whether it’s fashion or even business, a lot of it has moved out. There are other power centres now; in fact, each metropolis has developed its own set of celebrities and people who are feted in their own cities. They don’t any more peg their success and self-worth onto how Mumbai perceives them, which has caused the shift. Look at Delhi, today it has marginalised Mumbai on so many levels, including in areas which Mumbai used to think of as its own – fashion being the main one.
Delhi has its young, very upwardly mobile crowd, there’s a lot more visible money, people are flaunting it, there are more options. When you’re judging a city by its status symbols, Mumbai is emerging rapidly as a poor relative. That has shaken its confidence, and of course we’ve had unfortunate incidents, our gangland wars ... there was a time when Mumbai aspired to be New York or London, but now it’s heading to be the new Chicago. I don’t think that’s what we had bargained for, that wasn’t our aspiration. That has disappointed people.
How much do you think the attempt to give Mumbai a Marathi identity is contributing towards this?
It’s a very artificial imposition, like a bandage you’re putting on the city, saying that whatever the wounds underneath, this should take care of it all. It doesn’t work like that. People have to feel it from within, it’s not something you can induce. I don’t even see why it’s necessary. Mumbai’s strength has always been its cosmopolitan character and if you take away from that, I think Mumbai will be the loser. We don’t need to confuse people with this kind of labelling and pigeon-holing.
Mumbai has been a free-floating city. It should be left to go about its business, which is really to make money, to contribute to the country’s income tax coffers. We should just be allowed to get on with that, because at the end of the day it’s the bottom line that counts. What is happening is cutting into that bottom line, which means that people are going to start questioning whether this is really the ideal environment for business. And if that is eroded then there is nothing left in Mumbai, nothing else to fall back on.
Do you think making Mumbai a state would help?
I am all for it. I think it would free it of various constraints. Also I feel it has received very offhand treatment from the centre. It has never been given priority status. We deserve better infrastructure, considering what we contribute to our national economy. It’s amazing that a series of chief ministers have not seen it as a priority, to improve the basic standards of living in the city, and make life easier for its people, in basic areas. We’re not asking for anything unreasonable or unrealistic. Commuting itself has become hazardous and time consuming. So how is a business nerve centre of our country going to function and compete in an environment that’s so hard-driven, if we don’t have the tools with which to compete?
Why haven’t you gone into script writing for films?
There are several offers but I haven’t come across a project that is attractive to me. I personally believe that we are ready to do, within the commercial format, films which have some degree of credibility and which are sophisticated and mature in content. There is room for that kind of cinema along with the fluff and juvenile fare. There can be something like cerebral entertainment, films that make you think but which are not arty films, like The Usual Suspects, or Seven – or just about any film that starts Robert de Niro or Al Pacino, films featuring men and women of a certain age which aren’t mindless. No film maker seems ready to try.
I remember a project some time ago, to do a script keeping Amitabh in mind. I met Amitabh and I told him that if anybody could make that switch and do the kind of roles that a Paul Newman, or a Dustin Hoffman, or a Robert de Niro, or Bruce Willis is doing – they’re all seen as super heroes. They’re all at a stage in their lives where they call the shots. Films, scripts are written around them, which suit their age and their status, and he is the one person who could make the difference and lead us into a new millennium doing the kind of films that suit him. But he’s not ready to do it. Even if the script is written around a hero in his fifties, he will still want to be teamed with a girl in her twenties, and that defeats the very purpose of projecting a mature kind of a package, which I believe the audiences are ready for.
So I wouldn’t want to do a film just for the heck of it. If it was something which I believe could pull off, and which would use whatever potential I have as a storyteller, then I would jump at it, but not just any old script that comes my way because I don’t think I’m sitting in a mithai shop distributing laddoos to all who come by with the right amount of money.
The all-pervasive spirit of Mumbai can best be expressed with this little episode which occurred even before the meeting with Shobha. When Mid-day called her home for an appointment, her first question was, What is your deadline? Quizzed about this, she admits that thinking this way is not even second nature to her any more; it’s her way of life.
I’d be dead without time management. At any given moment I’ve got fifty balls up in the air, and if even one of them falls I’ve had it. These are the kind of pressures that Mumbai does impose – or you choose to impose on yourself. It’s been the pace of my life for far too many years, I wouldn’t know how else to do it. Prioritising is very much a part of living in this city. I think that’s how it works for all those of us who have fifty balls up in the air; we’ve all become expert jugglers and tightrope walkers. That’s what the city demands.
(First published in Mid-Day, Bombay.)
If Mumbai is the city of glitz, then Shobha De is its virtually undisputed queen. Her novels wouldn’t be the compelling reading they are if they were not set in this chaotic, pulsating city. And the Shobha syndrome wouldn’t have affected any other city as much as it has this maverick place.
Is the place, then, part of the personality? A chat with the pop writer reveals what she thinks of the city, and why she loves it so much.
How much is Mumbai a part of Shobha De?
Let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t have been me, for better or worse, in any other city in India. I don’t think I would have written the way I do, would have had the opportunities I got, the same kind of options and choices — which to me is really what defines the spirit of the city; that you can be who you are, what you are, and the only limits you set for yourself are those that you impose, and your imagination imposes. It’s a city that respects professionals, with no gender bias, and that in itself is saying a lot. I mean, I can’t imagine a Shobha De in, say, Allahabad, or even Delhi.
For whatever it is that I represent, it wouldn’t have been possible in any other city, no other city interests me as much. This has been the city of my formative years, of my organic growth, it defines me in every which way and I hope I define it too.
Wouldn’t this have happened if you had settled in any other city?
Definitely not. There are aspects of other cities that intrigue me, that I’d like to tap into at some point in my writing. But in all my novels Mumbai has not been merely a locale, it’s been a character. It’s a visible, throbbing, real presence, as important as the people I’m writing about within its context.
And it’s perhaps the only city that does not bore me for a minute. I like it in all its moods. I like it in whichever avatar it presents itself to me. There’s nothing I find even offensive about it. I’m more forgiving because I understand the city. Any other city gets my hackles up: when I go to Delhi I’m instantly on red alert. With Calcutta, of course, there’s a sentimental and emotional reason for my liking the city and accepting it. Technically it is my maike so when I go there I go into my Bengali bohuma mode – and mood.
But if there was a second city option I think for me it would be Pune. Bangalore collapsed into its own black hole and no longer is what it once was. There was a very young spirit to Bangalore which is no longer there – it’s like any other overcrowded polluted city. Pune retains its Maharashtraness, which is what I respond to on a very subliminal level. Though it is now becoming a Sindhi enclave, much to my regret, even so when I go there I feel very much a Maharashtrian. Whereas in Mumbai I don’t feel I belong to any particular community, the atmosphere here is so amorphous. You just feel a ‘Mumbaiwaali’, which is no slot other than the uniqueness of being a Mumbai person.
Why has Mumbai succeeded so much as a city?
It takes its chances, it has a cutting edge to it – it pushes you to your limits. It’s not a complacent city, it’s not a city that’s tolerant of failure. It’s not a city for losers, which is the tough part, because it’s very make-or-break, and it’s not kind to those who don’t make it. You don’t really stand much of a chance unless you’re perceived as successful. Which is why people try harder, which is why the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well today. People cannot afford to be lazy, or smug, because there are always ten others standing right behind, ready to trample over your body and dance over it in their rush to get ahead. So it keeps you on your toes, and I like that quality. I would hate to be in a rut, because to me, complacency is death.
How much is Maharashtra a part of Mumbai’s psyche?
This is a cliché but needs to be said over and over again: Mumbai in no way metaphorically or even physically has any but a tenuous link to Maharashtra. Mumbai is really many cities within a city and many cultures within these seven islands that are so loosely linked. It exists on so many different levels, seamlessly and simultaneously. That is what makes the city so fascinating for someone who observes social change – that it is unpredictable at all times. There’s no one label you can stick on it. I like its diversity, its plurality. I like its energy, its ferocious spirit of enterprise, its evil underbelly, its rough edges. I like it because it’s crude and vulnerable at the same time.
And its gloss?
The gloss, I think, is largely exaggerated. I don’t really perceive it. There’s more grit than gloss. And that is again one of the tricks that Mumbai has successfully pulled off on the rest of India – an image of glamour and gloss which is grossly exaggerated.
Does Mumbai have what you could call a literature of its own? Is there something like a city’s literature?
I don’t think Mumbai has been exploited at all, in literary or even cinematic terms. When I see films made out of New York, or Rome, or Paris, or San Francisco, where the city comes alive in all its beauty, maybe its grottiness, but still it’s palpable. You can sense the city. I don’t think we’ve managed to tap into that. It has happened in regional writing, in Marathi or Gujarat, but not in English, and for some reason we’ve shied away from exploiting the potential of the city. Even our cinema doesn’t reflect that. What it does reflect is a Punjabi version of Mumbai. Most of the film makers are from the North and they come with a certain vision of Mumbai which they then recreate in their studio sets, but it’s not Mumbai at all, it’s Haryana with a Mumbai veneer; which is very disappointing. The mean streets of the city are never exploited. Its bazaars, its buzz, its contradictions, its strange landscape which is bizarre by any standards – we have the neo-Gothic, and the Marwadi Gothic and the Parsi Gothic and the wadas. Even the architecture of the city is so eccentric. It has not been captured, either in writing or in cinema.
Do you think it’s because nobody has really tried or is it because of the city’s elusive quality?
With a skilled pen, the elusive quality should not be difficult; it should be inspirational. The elusive quality should be the challenge. It is, for me, but then my forte is different, I’m not a descriptive writer. For me it’s dialogue and people, and having a ear for conversation and for characterisation rather than long, descriptive, narrative passages. So though I try I don’t think I’ve succeeded to the extent that the city deserves. In the hands of a far more descriptive novelist it could...
Who do you think would fit the bill?
Well, Vikram Chandra has attempted it, and successfully so, but even then he’s not quite ... we need a Pico Iyer, but a Pico Iyer who resides in Mumbai, not who comes here as a tourist and does a take on his American vision of the city — which is what he has done, and eloquently, but it’s not an insider’s look at Mumbai, it’s through American eyes. He is an Indian writer but who’s lived all his life in America. Salman Rushdie has done it, too, but again his Mumbai is a nostalgic Mumbai, he doesn’t know what contemporary Mumbai is.
A lot of the writing about Mumbai has been nostalgic.
Yes, fifties and sixties Mumbai. Rushdie’s portrayal of the city in the sixties would be hard to match, or compete with, but I’m talking about the nineties Mumbai, which is harder to define because it’s still a Mumbai that’s happening, that’s finding an identity, finding its feet, and has not yet defined itself. Whereas it’s very easy to place Mumbai of the sixties – the parameters were better defined.
Do you think Mumbai will remain in this uncertain state, or will it find its character and grow into it soon?
I think it’s a city in flux at the moment, there have been far too many upheavals. I perceive a strong sense of insecurity, there’s an identity crisis. Mainly because it’s grown beyond reason, beyond imagination, beyond proportion, it’s like a pressure cooker about to explode. It’s difficult to find the appropriate peg under these circumstances. It’s a little disorienting even for its own people to know where they stand in the context of the city because there’s so much change, and I think there is a feeling that we’ve been left behind somewhat, even in the glamour stakes. What the city is clinging to is its filmdom status. So long as Bollywood rules, Mumbai is okay. But otherwise, whether it’s fashion or even business, a lot of it has moved out. There are other power centres now; in fact, each metropolis has developed its own set of celebrities and people who are feted in their own cities. They don’t any more peg their success and self-worth onto how Mumbai perceives them, which has caused the shift. Look at Delhi, today it has marginalised Mumbai on so many levels, including in areas which Mumbai used to think of as its own – fashion being the main one.
Delhi has its young, very upwardly mobile crowd, there’s a lot more visible money, people are flaunting it, there are more options. When you’re judging a city by its status symbols, Mumbai is emerging rapidly as a poor relative. That has shaken its confidence, and of course we’ve had unfortunate incidents, our gangland wars ... there was a time when Mumbai aspired to be New York or London, but now it’s heading to be the new Chicago. I don’t think that’s what we had bargained for, that wasn’t our aspiration. That has disappointed people.
How much do you think the attempt to give Mumbai a Marathi identity is contributing towards this?
It’s a very artificial imposition, like a bandage you’re putting on the city, saying that whatever the wounds underneath, this should take care of it all. It doesn’t work like that. People have to feel it from within, it’s not something you can induce. I don’t even see why it’s necessary. Mumbai’s strength has always been its cosmopolitan character and if you take away from that, I think Mumbai will be the loser. We don’t need to confuse people with this kind of labelling and pigeon-holing.
Mumbai has been a free-floating city. It should be left to go about its business, which is really to make money, to contribute to the country’s income tax coffers. We should just be allowed to get on with that, because at the end of the day it’s the bottom line that counts. What is happening is cutting into that bottom line, which means that people are going to start questioning whether this is really the ideal environment for business. And if that is eroded then there is nothing left in Mumbai, nothing else to fall back on.
Do you think making Mumbai a state would help?
I am all for it. I think it would free it of various constraints. Also I feel it has received very offhand treatment from the centre. It has never been given priority status. We deserve better infrastructure, considering what we contribute to our national economy. It’s amazing that a series of chief ministers have not seen it as a priority, to improve the basic standards of living in the city, and make life easier for its people, in basic areas. We’re not asking for anything unreasonable or unrealistic. Commuting itself has become hazardous and time consuming. So how is a business nerve centre of our country going to function and compete in an environment that’s so hard-driven, if we don’t have the tools with which to compete?
Why haven’t you gone into script writing for films?
There are several offers but I haven’t come across a project that is attractive to me. I personally believe that we are ready to do, within the commercial format, films which have some degree of credibility and which are sophisticated and mature in content. There is room for that kind of cinema along with the fluff and juvenile fare. There can be something like cerebral entertainment, films that make you think but which are not arty films, like The Usual Suspects, or Seven – or just about any film that starts Robert de Niro or Al Pacino, films featuring men and women of a certain age which aren’t mindless. No film maker seems ready to try.
I remember a project some time ago, to do a script keeping Amitabh in mind. I met Amitabh and I told him that if anybody could make that switch and do the kind of roles that a Paul Newman, or a Dustin Hoffman, or a Robert de Niro, or Bruce Willis is doing – they’re all seen as super heroes. They’re all at a stage in their lives where they call the shots. Films, scripts are written around them, which suit their age and their status, and he is the one person who could make the difference and lead us into a new millennium doing the kind of films that suit him. But he’s not ready to do it. Even if the script is written around a hero in his fifties, he will still want to be teamed with a girl in her twenties, and that defeats the very purpose of projecting a mature kind of a package, which I believe the audiences are ready for.
So I wouldn’t want to do a film just for the heck of it. If it was something which I believe could pull off, and which would use whatever potential I have as a storyteller, then I would jump at it, but not just any old script that comes my way because I don’t think I’m sitting in a mithai shop distributing laddoos to all who come by with the right amount of money.
The all-pervasive spirit of Mumbai can best be expressed with this little episode which occurred even before the meeting with Shobha. When Mid-day called her home for an appointment, her first question was, What is your deadline? Quizzed about this, she admits that thinking this way is not even second nature to her any more; it’s her way of life.
I’d be dead without time management. At any given moment I’ve got fifty balls up in the air, and if even one of them falls I’ve had it. These are the kind of pressures that Mumbai does impose – or you choose to impose on yourself. It’s been the pace of my life for far too many years, I wouldn’t know how else to do it. Prioritising is very much a part of living in this city. I think that’s how it works for all those of us who have fifty balls up in the air; we’ve all become expert jugglers and tightrope walkers. That’s what the city demands.
(First published in Mid-Day, Bombay.)
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