ISSTAND

As a student in a course that the Mumbai University loves to call BMM Journalism, I am constantly bombarded with ideas. Inspiring ones, depressing ones. Gory. Morbid. Intriguing. All of them either fit into the magic bullet section- quick and direct or the hypodermic needle type- slow and sleepy. Each of these ideas tug at me and say, “talk to me.”

One of the ethics that are embedded into journalists in the making is the ball talk about bias. You are supposed to be unbiased and non-allies to everything. Sounds like, “the customer is always right” That reminds me. India Today with a readership of 62,62,000 is considered a good textbook for budding journalists by many. Sure it has covered all of the events in India and internationally, but in the end it is nothing but a piece of the BJP’s mouth. Definitely right eh?

I ask myself. Will I make a good journalist? Will the background that I come from help me reach the target that I have or will it only put obstacles in my quest for growth? Where do I come from? What are my sensibilities? Whom do I represent? Am I sensitive enough to sufferings of the people or am I treading on their wounds? Do I sense the breach to dignity around me?

I am not really nervous, but sceptic? Yes. I wonder how much I am really in touch with reality. Am I just sleepwalking? And I wish I would be able to deal out an even-handed treatment to everyone and still give them enough space.

Frontline- the magazine from the Hindu threshold is applauded for the values that it holds. Yet again, Frontline talks what Uncle Marx used to talk years ago. Definitely left.

What really happens to our stand? Where do we put our feet down and stay where we are? Adamant. Stubborn to move. I say what I see. How do we really make our own stand when what we hear, see and read is treating us left, right and centre?

Bom(b) bahia

It is called a city that does not sleep. Now that is completely true. Mumbai does not sleep. What it does is snooze. Whenever she can, this lovely conjoined mass of land takes a break from whatever she’s up to and catches a quick forty winks. Her dwellers are equally busy. They do not even pause to breathe.

What used to be home for scores of fisher-folk is now home for people from all over the world. This cultural and economic hub attracts migrants from far-fetched places owing to its capacity to churn out jobs and accommodation for all of them. No wonder the political parties create a hullabaloo about people of the state not getting jobs as they were being given to outsiders. Known for its semi- extremist antics, a powerful party had propagated a campaign to drive away a certain minority group from the city. How much ever the people wax eloquent about the diverse culture and warmth of the place, tiny blobs of bitterness and unrest in the form of insensitivity and intolerance remains.

The city was called Bombay for much of the last four hundred years during which the British reclaimed lands from the sea and linked the seven distant, distinct. Islands that they were, into one large mass. The origin of the name is obscure, but is often said to come from the Portuguese phrase bom bahia meaning "good bay". The name Mumbai has been used in the main local languages for as long, and is ascribed to the local goddess, Mumba (aai means mother in Marathi).

The city is known for its heritage structures, which are of more interest to tourists than to the citizens. It is only when some odd cameraman frames a monument that people acknowledge the presence of such a structure. Eroded with time and weather and covered with multiple layers of bird droppings, these structures stand as examples of our shamelessness. A few lucky statues of important leaders get cleaned and polished as their anniversaries arrive! The variety in foodstuffs available is splendid too. Cuisines from all over the world are enjoyed with relish. With the dock nearby, fresh sea-food is brought into the markets daily. Vegetables are driven in from distant states. Migrant dishes have become routine components of tiffin boxes.


Here, it is a constant fight for space- the only thing that people here are short of- after time and money of course! The basic backbone- the transport system of the city, also called as its lifeline are the suburban trains. Commuters from far-off places bravely venture into these electric centipedes and travel for roughly two hours to their respective places of work and back home. Comfort zones get trampled upon, as they adjust and adapt to situations more favourable to them. Pushes, shoves and obscenities become a part of this unique experience. For most commuters the novelty has worn off. It is but a daily matter for them now.

News stories fight for space in newspapers. Film stars and business tycoons fight for photo- space in the media. Unlucky migrants fight for space to rest in. Even in tough conditions like these, good samaritans are generously sprinkled in the city. Ever ready to lend a helping hand- be it helping someone pick up fallen things or guiding blind people safely, they are there always without expecting anything in return. The floods that hit Mumbai last year proved to be the best example of this warmth. As people lay tired on railway stations, citizens got together to provide food and water to them. These teams also got together and collected clothes for the unlucky ones whose houses got washed away. A few do good things. The goodness follows, begets more. It spreads. Such is the magic of Mumbai.

Yesterday, that very magical city experienced yet another bout of shockers. Seven bombs exploded in local trains at peak hour, when scores of Mumbaikars were returning home after a busy day. Exactly four hours later, the railways sprang back to life amid the cheers of a hundred commuters. Such is the magic of Mumbai!

When Bluto Wins Olive....

"Yay statement that cannot be true..wor which is yexxagerated to provide yeffect is called hyperbole..." rambles on an English language teacher who has her roots down south.

You think there really is some serious problem with the title eh? Something like, "Kahaan raja bhoj, kahaan Gangu teli?" B for boisterous, boorish, bane, boring, braggart and brawny. And B for Bluto. And P for Popeye and P for Perfect.

Well, things like these do happen. Is this age called 'Kalyug' or something? While Popeye goes unnoticed but ear-marked by Bluto fer a nice bash, the bloody MF of Bluto has photos of him and Olive in his bedroom in front of his mirror. Bloody show off, eh, Bluto?

Olive's got nothing to say, other than, "hey honey, show me the money." Others, she calls them, "Baby."

Yeah. Olive's kidding. Literally.

And as fun and frolicking goes on in Bluto-land, patience reigns in the distant, abstaining world of Popeye. Spinach wants to get the better of him soon, but Popeye holds back. "It aintz time yet," he says.

WE??? Rude??? Bh*****d

A trip to my native place- Kerala, this summer proved to be quite an eye-opener. It wasn’t just a sightseeing trip. It was a month of what we call as ‘happy realization’, the realization that the people of Kerala could do with some more of genuine hospitality instead of the plastic show-off, the painful understanding that my kith and kin be a little more sensitive and less callous.

Picture this. One fat man sits on a wooden crate by the roadside- probably sight-seeing. Beside him, another man smokes a beedi, with one leg propped up on the wall behind him. A scooter comes by, loaded with cardboard boxes. As it just passes these men, one of the boxes fall down. As the poor rider gets down, hauls the scooter onto the stand and comes to pick up his unlucky luggage, the smoker and the other man do not even flinch as they stare at the box and its owner alternatively.

And they say Mumbai is the rudest city! Each city has its own cultural mix, mannerisms and spirit. What the Mumbaikars miss out in their day-to-day life, they make up when there is a crisis. Remember the deluge last year? Did the Reader’s Digest see the spirit of Mumbai then? Did it see how people helped each other and made them feel comfortable even as they spent three days away from home?

There’s no reason to create such hullabaloo over such an incompetent research by Reader’s Digest. Arcopol Chaudhuri, a BMM student in VES College, Chembur, says,

"I believe in individualism. You cannot generalise a city's manners by studying certain examples. Survey and research studies results are published everyday in journals the world over. Why make a big fuss over a survey?"

Space is what we need here. External space. Space inside the minds, to facilitate cloudless thinking. Do we believe in what the survey said n agree that we indeed are uncouth and rude? Or do we be what we are and do what we have always been doing? Let us all be good Samaritans and direct lost people onto their destinations, help disabled people cross roads, hold doors open or chairs ready fro people and never forget to say the magical words of “sorry” and “thank you.”

RELATIONSHIP STATUS : Committed

There is lot of hoopla among peers. The reason is a new website, a kin of Google named Orkut. It is the usual networking website, where you share your address books and get connected with friends from other people's addresses. The site will soon be the number one dating scene (or is it already??)

Name, Age, etc etc is good. Then comes the fun part. Relationship status. Now Orkutji (lol, like AB used to address the Linux in KBC as computerji!!) gives you various options. Single, Committed, Open Relationship etc etc. There are scores of public profiles marked "committed" and i am no one to question them. It is thier life and they can do whatever they want to do. But at least respect the Oxford English Dictionary that defines commit as promise, entrust, pledge and deliver.

Now i decided to question the definition of the "committed". I have stated my relationship status as committed. Committed i am. To myself. A cause. To see myself BIG. A self made promise that i have to somehow make up for the two years that i wasted. Don't know how. But, guess have to do it. Its hard. But a little "committment" from my side will do it right?

Well, this time too, i dunno wat point i wanna make, blabbering on.

What'z thez pointz?

Height Of Boredom

Vacations are on and so is the heat. and there is nothing to do and it feels like bullshit (when outside, i would better say bail ko goo, but here i think i can write what i want) This afternoon, me and few of my chums got together (yeah, yeah 'chums' is a word that raises an eyebrow now just as 'gay', which love poets generously sprinkled in their poems.) as the wires in our houses housed no current. What evolved from our gathering was a pointless collection of pictographs in wierd poses and which can have various connotations just as the word 'chum' or 'screw'...

i still dunno..wats da pointz??

Prof. Sudhakar Solomonraj always says, "If you have a problem, you should try to find out what you can deal with it." Now the problem is that I am bored and know what to do. I am leaving for Kerala with my family on the 29th of this month which is 3 days from today. A whole month of separation from this place. Not that i'll miss it. Great to be away. Need a break, a deserving one. Hope I will be sane and all when I return. TY Journo has to be interesting. Hope all matters in Kerala get settled this time round! Packing yet to be done...so..cya arnd..eyb!!

NO POINT SOMEONE -Semiotics?

Isn't it amazing how certain things remind us of things and how every word or 'substance' (as my 6th Std. Science teacher woud love to call it) has more than one connotation and would have a hyperlink to memories old and jaded with gradual updating, yet kept fresh and green with frequent summons. now this is something akin to Semiotics, maybe not exactly what the propounders thought of it to be, but an interpretation of signs and symbols that come to be formed when two individuals in a candidly friendly relationship make it a pasrt of their memories.

Videesh is home today. So is dad. Dad is as usual, helping mom with her chores as homemaker- Saturday being the only day, he can actually market for vegetables, clean them, peel them, dice them and pack them neatly and compactly to accurately house them in the refrigerator. this job done, mother can dish out divine delicacies, which I miss when I depend on vadapavs and samosa pavs to quench my hunger pangs throughout the day.

Videesh keeps prancing between dad in the bedroom cleaning the veggies and me on my table writing religiously. Dad gives him a piece of carrot to munch on and thus completes the picture of Bugs Bunny. i get up to get myself a sip of water and Mr. Videesh bangs into me. I call him Gandhi, referring to his shortly cropped hair, which never seems to grow. (our family always jokes about how Videesh and his brother Shyamal always have their hair readied for a 5-year plan!) Then I call him "Chota Gandhi". I freeze. A big glob of snot and spittle passes through my throat as a whimper is supressed.

Now this cold is a very bad thing. Not that i hate the feeling of the sticky, slimy, salty goo rowing away into my intestines through the initial part of my alimentary canal but only because it leaves me retarded, handicapped with my voice, one of the things i am proud of in myself. The alst time i caught a cold, it went striaight into my respiratory system rendering it as useless as an old vintage model car all set to make a museum exhibit.

Went to the beach yesterday, for the first time after I helped make crack open a relationship before it could even send its roots deep enough to gather strength. HE is punishing now.
wading through the sands, i walked towards the water. there were young joggers and old gentlemen resting their muscles after a tiring morning walk. Far away a man sat facing the sea. his back was unusually straight and had his left hand up his nose, might have been some kind of breathing exercise, i reckoned. There wasn't any breeze. The waves were gently washing the shores. I then saw something like an idol sitting erect in the sand.

I went ahead and picked it up. It was a Ganesh idol. Was it yet another symbolism that the aura behind the idol was broken? Old ideas caught me. They tld me not to take a broken idol home. I shook it away. i said to myself that if i had got this idol, it meant something and i am going to keep it.

As usual, I don't have a point to make. Waiting for the time that I start making points...

NO POINT SOMEONE - I AM ASHAMED

The setting was straight out from some well-made, tightly edited documentary on Mumbai train-life. I boarded the slow Asangaon train from Parel station to avoid the rush at Dadar. I prepared to hoist my bag up onto the mesh stand and did so after taking out my copy of Maximum City- Suketu Mehta.

A middle-aged man was playing his harmonica strung from his neck and rested on his lap as he belted out seemingly thoughtful songs like, "Duniya banane wale, ka tere man me samayi, kaheko duniya banayi..” the train trudged on billowing strong gusts of wind towards the opposite side. I found it hard to concentrate in the book as my mind read the lyrics as my foot tapped and my head bobbed in accordance with the drone of the music box and the deference in the man’s voice. The setting brings to my mind the logo of HMV (His Master’s Voice) with Einstein’s dog sitting in front of a gramophone that played his voice. Peace reigned inside the compartment. Contented eyes shone inside uncomplaining faces, as they seemingly looked somewhere, thinking something, obviously relating to the music. They don’t fight for space now. They don’t argue for the window seat. The song has had a humbling effect on all.

The bookmark inside the book stayed where it was until there came Kurla and the train started filling in, people occupying the fourth seat and requesting the other three to make space for him, others plainly grabbing the space and pushing in with their posterior, provoking noises of disapproval. I notice a Muslim gentleman adorned with the traditional skullcap board on with three burqa clad figures. Once inside, the veil was lifted and thrown above the head, facilitating better viewing and respiration. I, by the time was graced with a fourth seat but graciously sat on the edge without even touching my back against the person behind me. I love the way I behave, sometimes. Like ‘animal specialist’ Dr. Bhatavdekar says, “because even we are social animals”.

One of the Muslim ladies found a seat directly opposite to me. I notice that she is very young, not as young as me, but wouldn’t be more than three years older to me. We looked at each other for a second and my eyes went back to the book. The bookmark had found its way into my pocket, sensing that now perhaps the pages will fly, as words were skimmed through and scanned and registered in the gray. But that was not to be. The lady opposite to me kept gesticulating frantically at her companion, who was still left standing, to come hither.

I sense, she is now, looking at my book and me. I look up to adjust my glasses, which, somehow, keep gliding down my nose bridge like glaciers prancing down icy slopes. She is actually staring. Now, if someone stares at you for longer then the prescribed 2 seconds, it means either there’s something seriously wrong with the way you physically appear or you are looking like a runaway star from Hollywood! I meet her eyes. They seem to be talking to me. They are imploring. I felt cheap. “What am I doing?”

I move my quadrupled eyes away. I just can’t read now. I look up again. She pretends to be looking somewhere else, then glances back and forth, the same warm, implore in them. Abashed, I pretend to read, turning pages faster, much faster than my usual reading speed. The song goes on, asking the Almighty why indeed He had made this world.

A couple enters. The man has a tiny bundle of a human baby in his hands, held ever so lovingly, nestled close to his chest, with his eyes adoring the beauty of their creation. I get up, sensing the obvious discomfort both, for them to hold a baby and stand in a shaky train and for me, who has had the blood in the posterior held in the same position for lack of sitting space. The mother of the child fishes out a bottle of milk and hands it over to the husband. I peek at the contents of the bag where the bottle came from. I see a tin of Farex and raise my eyebrows. The couple doesn’t seem well off. This tin is perhaps the first and last the kid would ever see.

The lady looks at me getting up. I don’t return it. The train is nearing my station. I put the bookmark back in place, resting it until the next time that I travel, that would be the next day, most probably. A few more seats are empty now. The Muslim lady’s companion finds a seat now. They are all happy now. The lines on the brow are gone. They smile and are ready to break into convulsions of giggles and new stories and comments on people nearby. I wait for this to happen, waiting to be happy at my own prediction, to boast to myself about my knowledge of women, all in vain.

They are talking, but with their hands. As I got down from the train, I felt the shock of my life in the form of a bolt of shame and a tear jerk in my eyes. They can’t speak! No wonder her eyes wanted to speak to me. I say, “shit”, noting in my mental notepad to write about it sometime soon. Today I did it. Phew!

NO POINT SOMEONE- Hi, this is Hari from 'rural' Ambarnath

I remember my first days in FYBMM, Wilson College. I could feel the squirmish inside me when someone turned to me and pouted English and expected me to reply in the very same pattern too. My good and evil halves struggled and marathoned (sheesh, wtf is tht?) inside me to juggle up a concoction of well- sounding words which wouldn't sound like the place I came from! Wow, do I call it an inferiority complex or SARS (Severe Acute Rural Syndrome?)

Ambarnath, a place which I lovingly call Amby Valley after the lavish residencies in Lonavala, is in a pitiful state.My website would enshrine the fact that I love to swaer by it and bask in the radiance of the sunshine here.We are the victims of endless mindless powercutsfor not less than five hours everyday. about a week ago, we hear from people and read in the celebrated papers that beyond Kalyan (that is where the 'rural' region starts) there will be powercuts for 12 hours a day. Kewl ain't it?

I was watching Richard Attenborough's Gandhi yesterday and the power of the puny brown man in his loin cloth and anga-vastram struck me like a thunderbolt. Does he mean to say that, if you don't get what you rightly deserve, you can proclaim that you won't eat anything (not even "thodi si pet puja") and live only on boiled, filtered, cooled and bottled water passed by the Municipality?

My friends, I take this opportunity to invite you to my humble residence for a sumptuous candle-light dinner anytime you wish to come. But, be sure that you call me up before reaching my place, so I can escort you with the torch, lest the canines in my region decide that you are a nothing but a bunch of burglars on the prowl! Also be sure to amply soak youraself in the New Odomos Mosquito repellant cream ( Now available in wholesale at all leading chemist's) to prevent them, flying dragons from interrupting the interesting discussions we are likely to have.

Exactly what the title of my posts say, I talk a lot, but don't know what point to make. (Kindly refer to offer documents before investing...shit, radio lecture hangover!!!)

There...yawn..am bored....

NO POINT SOMEONE – The day I tied the knot.

The highly dramatic but enlightening lectures of our professor for Understanding Cinema- Miss Anuja got me thinking yet another time. Her prophecies coaxed the thinking cap onto my head, so tight that I keep thinking what it forces me to think!

“Shit, I pity you, you don’t remember anything about your childhood!” she said.

That sentence struck me like the apple of gravity struck Mr. Newton, reminding me of the day when I learnt to tie my shoelace.

I was in my second standard then. The day was pretty hot, so I gather it must’ve been sometime in summer. Another reason which forces me to think that it was summer is that I distinctly remember preparing for some bloody oral examination for the final examination. And isn’t it general student characteristics to eat only half tummy before the exams ‘cos the other half is filled with fluttering butterflies and tromping elephants?

Hence, my tummy was in the same condition on that day and I hastily made it to the place where the rickshaws would pick-drop us up to Fatima High School. Only then do I realize that my shoelaces had somehow become undone.

It now embarrasses me to think that I would start to sniffle and stutter at little occurrences like these. That is what I did then! My juniors, friends of standard first and kindergarten, sniggered and jeered. (Sheesh, am I actually writing this??) I wanted to run back home, to get them, stupid laces, tied again, when my neighbour, a year younger than me (who now, smokes and drinks relentlessly) bent down and tied it for me, poor, sissy of a cry baby.

Shit, I thought, now I’ll have to learn to do that, and indeed I practiced tying and untying the knot, that day after returning from a well-turned out oral examination! So, there, now you know that I have tied the knot many times!!!