Things To Not Do In Mumbai

Inspired by this list, I put together my own things to not do in Mumbai. My list isn’t even remotely as funny as his though I hope it’ll be just as useful. Considering Satish got to 84, you’d think I’d have a tough time coming up with more. But they don’t call this the big, bad city for nothing. So here’s my take. Please do NOT do the following, for your own safety, sanity and that of other citizens of this city:

Trains

Image via Wikipedia

1. Travel by train wearing open sandals. The ladies’ compartment does not include ladylike behaviour, unless that means wearing pointed heels.

2. Travel by train wearing make-up. It’ll get mashed in, rubbed (the wrong way) and put you in spotlight of the squatters on the train floor and make them yell that you should travel by taxi instead.

3. Board the first-class ladies compartment in the middle of the bogey. The station loos are always located right where these stop and it’s next door to the general compartment that houses the besur bhajan brigade. Take the compartments at the ends instead.

4. Cross the Western/Central train line at Dadar. The human traffic is always madness and this is the proverbial LOC of the two lines. No one on either side likes the other and the hapless ones who have to cross over are considered traitors by both sides. Instead use the bridge connecting Elphinstone Road and Parel stations.

Other commuting

5. Get into a bus where you’ll have to stand or sit near the aisle for long. The conductor is a pervert, the co-passengers are perverts, the seatees are perverts. It’s a blanket rule. Trust me, you don’t want to test this one.

6. Tell an autorickshawalla at Bandra station to take you to the landmark that your friends tell you. They never know cafes, restaurants, movie theatres, halls, gymkhanas or colleges. They also don’t know the road names that the signboards carry. Bandra autowallas only know Linking Road, Hill Road, Ambedkar Chowk and Pali Hill.

Image via Wikipedia

7. Take a route you last used over six months back. Account for potholes (of course…think what season this is), sudden one-way signs and the omnipresent metro/walkway dig-ups which will ensure rerouting and increase in fare and time of travel.

8. Promise to get ANYWHERE in this city in less than an hour. It has taken me upto 20 minutes to cross a block and a half from my place. Yes, walking is an alternative. Watch for broken road-bricks, dug-out piles of mud, gargantuan water puddles and dog poo.

Shopping

9. Window-shop in Lokhandwala. It’s bloody Dilli out here with every jerk on the road leering at you and the shopkeepers smiling honey until you turn away, after which they shout venom.

10. Smile at the staff at any of the Fame cinemas. They will take it as a sign that they can rip you off or at very least throw attitude at you.

11. Ask any of the staff at Big Bazaar or Food Bazaar where anything is. If you get an answer at all, it will be a wrong one and will only make you travel from one end of the store to another without finding what you want. (I’ve been pushed around from ‘Dairy products’ to ‘Meat & Poultry’ to ‘Confectionary’ to ‘Packed Foods’ to ‘Jams & Ketchups’).

12. Eat any food in a mall, even a food-court satellite of a popular chain. There’s a considerable drop in quality and even freshness. You’ll get evil-smelling panipuris from Kailash Parbat stalls, mouldy sandwiches by the coffeeshops and muddy-looking watery choley by Only Parathas.

Other

13. Carry a handbag that can be yanked off easily on the traffic-side of the road. Temptation is always indulged in, in PickpocketCity. Handbag on outer-corner and with flap inside.

14. Travel anywhere without change. Coins of Rs 1 and 2 are prized commodities especially if you take public transport. The thumbrule is that no one has them so if someone owes you one, act like the devil till they get it for you. You can be sure they’d do the same if the roles were reversed.

15. Park a nice-looking car in a non-paid-for location and expect it to look as pristine dent-free, scratch-free later. I’m positive there’s an underground nexus to harass carowners to ensure business for garages/repairmen and paid parking lots.

And with that added to Satish’s list, we make a total tally of 99 DON’Ts in Mumbai. *Sigh* This is depressing. It makes me wonder why anybody wants to live in this city at all.

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• Grand Theft Autorickshaw
• Juhu Beach
• Coup In The Ladies Coupe

Life means more

24 hours just never seem to be enough in this city, you know? Every minute, every day feels like you’re running just 10 minutes behind. The one bit I really agreed with this otherwise horrific movie on, was the tightly managed shuffle for space and time. There’s a Rahul (Sharman Joshi) in every Mumbaiker. Managing a social life is always a joke – other people’s or your own!

Careful planning makes it possible to strike up a close friendship, despite the stretched-to-snapping-point schedules. How? There’s the mammoth time-budgeting through the week for the one day when one can get out of office in time to reach place A at the same time as the other person. Of course place A is only the least inconvenient meeting spot for the two people, not necessarily delightful in its sights or other attractions. And then there’s the fact that this rendezvous may happens about 2 minutes away from what is euphemistically known as ‘the ungodly hours’.

But all efforts bear fruit as my date swishes onto the kerb Superman style just as my taxi pulls up or I jump onto the footboard (Spiderwoman like?) of the exact compartment in precisely the same train my friend is taking! Yes! Commuting is indeed a social occasion in Mumbai!

I appease my I-hate-Mondays whininess with the thought that I do after all have a whole lot of people I’m going to be meeting during the week. The fact is that I do. And how surprising is that in a city that’s known for its crowds? Mumbai doesn’t make me particularly religious except when it comes to the near-holy adage that

IdeaSmith proposes, Mumbai disposes

Thus work spillover cuts into drinks with friends, which must be compensated for on another day. But what the hell, there was the half-hour phone call in the middle of the day with buddy about a relationship emergency.

So drinks-with-friends on Tuesday turns into the Wednesday play that you had planned to review on the weekend. Fantastic, you’d never have managed tickets otherwise! That now leaves us with the problem of…ah, what to do with:

1. Today’s original plans 
2. Evening free on weekend
3. Person who was supposed to accompany you to the play

You’re just going to have to shift that mid-week coffee with former colleague into an hour-long phone call on the commute tomorrow. And drop best friend a message to explain why your line’s going to be busy and to discuss her new dress with you on email instead.

The second is the least of anyone’s concerns…if a concern at all, since time, like space is at a premium in this city. The last– ah, that’s tricky.

• Movie? (Nothing great showing. Who wants to see SRK’s abs again? And Ranbir Kapoor isn’t that cute)
• Drinks? (Work the next day! “I don’t drink!”, no good pubs in the vicinity)
• Shopping? Works very well if said friend is female. Works reasonably okay if said friend is male and in dire need of new clothes, gift for mum. We trade favours.
• Dinner? Boring option, safe option, but always an option.
• Watch the play again. Last resort but think of it as the price to pay for getting off the guilt of ditching them earlier and their not being able to catch it later.

That’s taken care of. Lock kar diya jaaye. So the first concrete block is laid on your weekend calendar. What of the rest? It’s amazing how quickly things fill up.

There’s the old school friend, now in town whom you haven’t managed to meet in 4 months.
There’s that non-promoted, surprisingly good movie that you must catch, even if you have to get up early to see the morning show.
There’s the city spot that you’ve been dying to visit ever since it stopped raining for photography.
There’s your grand-uncle who you want to sit down and write a real letter to, since email is only a word to him.
There’s shopping for a gift for a birthday around the corner.
There’s errands to be run, bills to be paid, cleaning to be done.
There are also a zillion books to be read and more getting written every day!!!! Honestly, sometimes I worry about how I’m going to find time to buy those books, let alone read them (never mind even afford all of them).
And finally…if there’s an hour free somewhere, there’s always somna for this sleep-deprived populace.

*Sigh* The thing about having a lot of options is that you don’t always get to exercise all of them! Life is about trying though. Always for more.

Home, beautiful home

Be it ever so dirty, polluted and crowded, there’s no place like amchi Mumbai!!!!!
Need I say more? If a picture speaks louder than a thousand words, here’s two thousand then!

 

I forgot that I sometimes detest pink when I saw this…

 

Running late

You know what it’s like to wake up in the morning to a blaring alarm and you wonder what sort of perversion in the human mind permitted the invention of such a torturous experience? Till you remember that you set the alarm.

You know what it’s like to bounce out of bed in feigned energy in an attempt to ‘kickstart’ the day and start your yoga to muscles so stiff, they may as well wrap you in plasti-shield and hang you up to display in the butchers’ market?

You know what it’s like to run out of your bath and discover you are 5 minutes late? 5 minutes!! Do you know what 5 minutes look like? I’ll tell you….

5 minutes are the breakfast you would have had in comparative leisure, when you think of the bites of lunch that you will bolt down before a meeting, tea that you will have no time to walk to the vending machine for, the sandwich that the canteen runs out of just before you place your order and dinner that you will nibble at, in what is technically part of tomorrow. 5 minutes.

So last-ditch attempt, you grab a soggy sandwich – your jackpot if you make it to the lottery of a seat on the train.

The autowallah gets to keep the change because you have no time to collect it.

The creep on the bus gets a bonus hard-on squashed up against you since you didn’t have time to wait for a less crowded bus.

And you watch your precious seconds melt away as the senior citizen in the aisle, ambles to the door, patiently sorts through old ticket stubs before handing one over to the TC. And you stop yourself just in time, from thinking the unthinkable.

As you run, you feel your legs start to cramp and remember…that…damn…with your blood pressure, you aren’t supposed to stay hungry OR stressed OR tired. Bully for you, the doctors may as well tell you not to live.

So as you watch the station indicator blink the next train due any minute, telling you that missed yours…and before your eyes, your day collapses like a stack of dominoes even before it has ‘officially’ begun, you wonder…
….why one of those damn bombs didn’t go off in the compartment you were in?
….why you don’t fall off the on-time train and hit your head on the tracks?
….why you don’t get put out of your misery forever?

Do you know what that’s like?

I don’t believe you do. When I read this tomorrow, I will wonder what sort of demented stranger thinks such things. And I’ll be annoyed at the man who steps on my foot in the bus, the girl who barges into the auto that I was actually closer to. I will frown disapprovingly at the evident annoyance in my co-passanger’s face when the old gentleman up ahead climbs down with painfully rheumatic feet. And I will wonder…

Where has all the humanity gone?

Because remembering would mean judgement, remorse, slowing down? Who’s got the time? I’ll probably be running late if I did. Otherwise as well.

Magical new cure for AIDS

I’m curious. Is this really possible? While I have great respect for alternative medicine, as far as I know, we don’t have a real cure for AIDS as yet. What do you know…I just stumbled onto the latest promise to come out of the Island of Dreams!

The board says,

Invention of Unani formula for HIV/AIDS

HIV positive patients repeatedly recorded negative by DNA-PCS Antigen test. The latest molecular diagnostic testing in HIV/AIDS after the treatment.

26421610 / 93246625 

Hakh Medical foundation

I couldn’t read the rest either, craned neck and all. Oh, by the way, I spotted this notice stuck to the ceiling of a local train.

Footprints

Do you see mud and sludge?

I see the footprints of hundreds of busy feet that walked before me.I see history being created….little histories, not major sagas. Just the history of ordinary people living ordinary lives.

I see their footprints as erasable and forgettable as them. But not unseen. I saw them, after they had passed. I saw them, I did. I see my own footprints layering over theirs, left behind to be seen perhaps by someone else? Or overlaid by yet more footprints.

We are a city of ordinary people and dirty buildings. No grand monuments or pretty scapes, no great people breathe here (and I’m not talking about Bollywood, Page 3 and the glitterati).

I first blogged under the moniker of ‘Just a statistic’. That I still am. One of the teeming masses in this vast mechanism called Mumbai. So many people enter this city everyday with a dream, hoping to leave a mark behind on the world. Seeing these soon to be washed away imprints on the station floor made me wonder whether anyone here really does. And whether it matters. The real Mumbaikers, the citizens, the salt-of-this-earth is just moving mud on the railway platform. And then we’re gone.

Coup in the ladies’ coupe

One little corner in the newspaper tells of a tussle between women commuters and the Mumbai railway authorities. Apparently as a part of a new range of services on Mumbai’s Harbour line, the earlier timetable has been altered. The hitherto 9:14 a.m. Vashi-CST local was advanced by one minute. Not as big a deal…what’s in a minute? (Pah, ask a regular train commuter but we won’t get into that now). The big deal was that three rear compartments that were earlier reserved for women were scrapped.

The unforeseen response to this change was that the women commuters rallied together in protest. First they complained to the Central Railway authorities and then, receiving no response, acted in the most effective way possible. They just wouldn’t let the men get into the compartment.

In response, the Central Railway sources said that:

The special compartments for ladies have not been scrapped, but have been allotted to the 8.16 am Panvel-CST local. This train reaches Vashi at 8.47 am, but women commuters may not be aware of it. The complaints of women commuters are under consideration.

A quick reminder to the Central Railway that this is not the same thing since the train gets in a full half-hour earlier. The dynamics of crowding, peak hours, office schedules are completely different on this side of 9 a.m.

I’m quite happy to report that today’s news says that Central Railway has given into the request to retain the ladies compartment on the now 9:13 am Vashi-CST local. The article also adds that the men are not very happy with the decision. Understandably so. I know the trains are probably the most crowded, grueling experience of everyday survival that a Mumbaiker faces. Every inch of extra space is precious.

On the other hand consider this. A regular train has three compartments for women – 2 second-class and 1 first-class. That’s only on the Western line while the Central and Harbour both have half a compartment each to the first-class. And these in a train that has 9 or 12 coaches. No woman in her sane mind would get into the general compartment, during peak hours even though it is available to commuters of both sexes. So the entire female commuter population is crammed into those 3 compartments.

I need mention here that it is a common male misconception that women travel in complete luxury in the ladies’ compartment, ‘especially in first class’. We do not. And I know this because I’ve traveled in the general (commonly misunderstood as the ‘gents compartment’) and the ladies compartments (first and second class) at all hours of the day. Men haven’t traveled in the ladies’ compartment. If they had, they might have found reason to revise their opinion. I can tell you stories of vicious fights breaking out mid-journey. It mayn’t seem like much but sandal heels, umbrella points, the catches on purses all becomes weapons of warfare in this struggle for space. Not that we have much choice. The average woman commuter would much rather face these than be brushed up against 50-odd strange men in the general compartment.

Everyday that I travel in the train reminds me of how much more ferocious women can be when it comes to getting what they want. And contrary to popular perception, the first-class is actually the worst of the lot (with Western line bringing up the gruesome lead). Manicured fingers clutching sleek mobile phones turn into claws when they’re inside a railway bogey. Attitudinally this set is by far, the bitchiest, most venomous of all travelers I’ve seen. If I had to lay a bet on which section of Mumbai’s travelers would be most likely to push their fellows off a moving train and also the least likely to help someone in need, it would be the first-class ladies’ compartment travelers on the Western line. Far from luxurious, we travel in crowds and hostile ones at that. Once again, I know I’m right because I travel by all three train lines. And so I think that while everyone in this city could use some extra space, our need is greater.

I am deeply injured by the fact that the ladies compartment on every train on every line is placed right in front of the stinky toilets. Obviously someone has to be positioned there but I just wonder why the only place allotted to us has to be put right there. I mean, we don’t even have the choice of another dabba. What’s worse, these are invariably at the ends of the carriages so miss getting into one and you’ve missed the train. So stay equipped for a long trek to the other end of the platform or to the staircase. The Railway network is hardly women-friendly so enough with the accusations of being pampered, already.

May I also add that I’m thoroughly impressed by the effort on the part of the ladies who spoke up for what they needed and got it? I am not going to get into the justification of why and how women become like this (That’s for my other blog, not this one ). I am after all one of them as well, being a regular on the trains. Let’s just say that life isn’t hunky-dory in our red or green-striped part of the train world either.

Refuge

Wet weather, cold drops trickle down the back of my neck. And the roads are slippery.

The nasty wet rain says to me,

Oops, I missed a spot!

in mock-sheepishness.

And so you did!!

I mock-retort back and supress a smile.

There are places even the rain can’t get you!!!!!

~o~o~o~o~o~o~

And I’m basking in all the lovely sunlight that’s we’ve been having the past couple of days and feeling soooo good about it! Not so fast though…the last time we had one of these spells, I did a virtual whoop-dee-doo…and quite immediately the rains were back. So here then, while whooping silently, is a picture to remind me of one more horrendous monsoon survived!

Welcome, welcome back sunshine!

Network clash

So this is why we’re having trouble making connections?

Reminds me of that Pepsi/Coca-cola war some time back. What do you think? Was this deliberate?

City of one

Friday evening and I was leaving work. Later than expected, about 3 hours later than I’d have wished. I got into the cab and paused for those brief seconds that are those rare occurances in a Mumbaiker’s day when he or she thinks of absolutely nothing. Then snapping back into action, I pulled out my phone and dialed. At any point of time, I have a list of people that I absolutely have to call/ call back and have not had the time to, earlier. Connectivity is only leading to disconnectivity. I tackle these calls on the otherwise unproductive commute.

Network not available.

Oh damn, did they suddenly take my ISD facility off? Must remember to check. Ah, well, next number.

User busy.

Damn, this must be the middle of day rush for his workday. Will have to call later on my way back.

Ring ring ring…

Meeting? Date? Train? Loud nightclub? Who knows? At least the call went through….she’s just going to have to call me back when she sees the missed call. And I hope I hear it when she does.

Now what?

And that is when it hit me. I was flying over the flyover. It always felt like flying. At least it used to, when I used to look out of the window and actually see things. That’s why it is called a flyover, isn’t it? Because you fly over it. Instinctively I reached for my scarf to tie my hair out of tangles’ way. And then impulsively I let it be….who’d notice, it is supposed to be wind-swept anyway!

The back of the taxi was silent. The traffic to my right but blurring faintly. The bright lights…street lamps, hoardings, car headlights moved to me and brushed past. I can’t explain it. Perhaps I had just chanced on a rare moment of perfection in this perfection-obsessed but so-very-imperfect city. We were cruising along just at the right speed, not so slow as to stretch my miniscule patience, not fast enough for it to seem like reckless driving. Just the right pace to watch the city approach and pass me by as I passed it by.

I thought of my friend who moved into the city a few months back. Over a conversation of why she quit a promising job and a fun city, she told me that she was trying to make a fresh start after breaking up with her live-in boyfriend. I nodded sympathetically, thinking of memories ingrained in places that we’ve shared with other people. But she corrected me when she said,

You know, in most places, it really hits you how lonely you are, how much you miss having someone…anyone. But in Mumbai, you don’t. It is hard to be lonely here.

Suddenly all this while later, I understand. It isn’t that there is a lot of companionship here, it is just that you don’t miss it. Friends lay scattered across the globe or even in the same city, it’s like they’re all on different planets. Relationships, like everything else are finite, limited and on-the-go. And yet, work is a balm to injured egos and thwarted affections. The daily bumps and scratches of commuting dull the pain of loss.

But above all….if there are cities made for lovers, places meant for families, Mumbai is the place for individuals. You are permitted to be as mundane or as extraordinary as you want. There is enough to replace what people in other places call the best things in life. It hits you in the middle of a perfect moment when you realise that you have no need, no desire to share it with any particular person. You are complete in yourself and the moment. Why then am I writing this here? Yes, perhaps I do need to share the experience….but rather than hold it in a quiet, intimate bond with another person, I throw it out into the faceless open of strangers. What was lived, was mine alone and the experience can be shared with anyone, everyone. Everyone is equal and hence no one is special. I feel complete in myself and in the moment.

Loneliness after all, is an incompleteness, a feeling of being stretched, of being one person having to fill the space meant for two. But I don’t feel that way very often. If anything, true Mumbaiker like, I am constantly trying to fit too much into too little. A lot of ideas into one blog, a lot of sharing in one timed conversation, a lot of friends into one limited social circle, a lot of living in one small life. I am so much more me than I have the time or energy or space to be.

You can’t lose yourself in the crowd here, it just just you and you as far as the eye can see. Your choices, your opportunities, your alter egos, your mistakes, your rewards, your life.

That beggar at the signal, is who I am glad not to be. The laughing couple is who I have been once, but so long ago that it is like childhood memories, so sepia-tinted thta I am not sure if they actually happened or I just imagined it. Even memories I have to places I shared with loved ones, are so steeped in tender emotion, so special, never shared, never to be shared with another person.

If there ever was a place to learn the value of solitude, to start to fall in love with yourself, it is this. True, it really is hard to be lonely in Mumbai. This is a city for one.