Author: Pradeep

  • How the City Moves

    I watched Parag Khanna’s TED talk recently. This gave me a new way of thinking about how Mumbai has been changing recently.

    A slew of infrastructure projects now seek to connect Mumbai East to West. These include to some extent the Monorail, the Link Roads and the Metro. These connecting roads passing through the slums, the old industrial belt and through hills are getting widened.

    Mumbai is tilting on its axis – which was exceedingly North to South from the suburbs to the city. With the move of bulk of the government institutions and private offices to the Bandra Kurla Complex and to the western suburbs, the tilt seems to be getting more clearer. The middle class which worked in the town are now moving to the western suburbs. The local railway lines and the road infrastructure has not been built to take this tilt yet. Hence the traffic jams in the western suburbs and the link roads. The tilt is interesting because in the central suburbs are vast amount of industries and the thriving unofficial economy of the city that keeps the North South link oiled. It will be interesting to see what happens to these in the days to come.

  • High School Reminiscence

    My Gujarati friend got engaged to a Malayali girl.

    We were sitting in the first row in Math class in school discussing the futility of learning Matrices. Our Math teacher Mrs Thomas did not take kindly to our conversation.

    “Just do your matrices, what is there to talk about? If you have any doubts ask me!”

    We nodded and returned to our conversation. I was defending the need to rationally sort out the problems in one’s life with the use of Matrices.

    “Tell me”, said my Gujarati friend, “how will matrices help you decide who you are going to marry?”

    This was a question put to several math and science lovers in the past. These questions were well debated in the science forums online. I used the most famous argument.

    “There are matters of the heart and matters of the brain. One must choose the correct tool for solving the respective problems.”
    “Bullshit”, replied my Gujarati friend.

    Here the Internet forums failed me with a suitable response. I had come face to face with a formidable Science enemy. But, he was just my friend.

    “How would you do it? Choose whom to marry?” I asked.

    He was thinking, hard. Then the bell rang. The school bell, of course. As everyone packed their books in to rush back home, he smiled.

    “I do not care which country the girl comes from. The only thing I care is that she cooks delicious food that I love.”

    Many years passed and it was yesterday that I got a call from him. He had gone to the US, studied computer science and worked at Google. He had met a Malayali girl there and they had shared rooms. They were engaged and had come to India to get married. I was invited out for lunch at our old haunt, Geeta Bhavan in Chembur.

    He complained about the deteriorating quality of pav bhaji. I asked him whether she passed his cooking test of bride selection. She was amused as we recollected that conversation in Thomas ma’am’s class.

    “Yes”, he said.
    “He fell for me just tasting my vegetarian cooking,” she said. “He hasn’t even tasted my Calicut biriyani or marines I!”
    “I was on the Gmail team. She was working with Google Plus. When integration with Gmail was considered, she was sent to our team. That’s when we met. She was looking for a place to stay and I someone to share my rent with. I asked her if she wanted to stay at my place. She agreed. The paneer masala she cooked on day 1 was so delicious that I offered to not take rent from her if she cooked and taught me to cook.”

    As the conversations continued, I was reminded of our school days and that matrices class. You see very few people who knowingly or unknowingly follow through with their childhood utterances.

  • Book Review: Revolution Highway by Dilip Simeon

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://parallelspirals.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on June 25, 2013 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    Some time back, I had acquired the habit of writing down reviews of the book that I had recently read. The practice lost steam as I got caught up in the desire to read more. Writing a review gives pause for consideration for a book that has passed through one’s life. It is with these thoughts that I pick up the practice again.

    A membership with the British Library in Mumbai gave me access to this book called Revolution Highway. It is written by labour historian Dilip Simeon. The book is a work of fiction that considers the 1960s and the 1970s India and the rush of ideas and idealism that flowed through India at the time. The time witnessed the sprouting of the Naxalite movement in the extreme left of the political spectrum and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in the extreme right of the political spectrum. The book concentrates on the revolution that the Naxalite movement bred, the brief belief in the Revolution followed by disillusionment.

    I read the book in a unique juncture in my life as well. It was a moment when I heard of the left movement within Bombay in the early 1960s and 1970s. I too went through a phase of disillusionment and have now emerged with a more balanced viewpoint of politics than what I had earlier.

    Given this back drop, I found the book a fascinating read. It gives one an insightful reading of the history of the Indian Left given the world situation. It provides and reveals aspects of India’s own revolutionaries and how they get intertwined with the Revolutionaries who struggled in the pre-Independence era. Other than the world histories it has several asides that seem to stand alone and do not fully integrate with the story line. They seem like stand alone pieces of non-fiction inserted into a work of fiction. It provides some very insightful critique of the Left struggle. I especially enjoyed the criticisms leveled at the Left by Rathin, a character in the book. The interspersed bits of world history might have served as a better back drop if they were briefer.

     

  • एक हिंदी लेख

    लिखित हिंदी से मेरा लगाव पाठशाला के दिनों ही समाप्त हो गयी थी । परंतु आज तक मुझे मेरे पाठ्य पुस्तक कि कहानियाँ याद हैं । काश कि मैं उन दिनों कि तरह आज भी काहानि पड़ पाता ।

    कल मैंने एक नया iPhone 4 ख़रीदा । उसमें हिंदी लिखने और पड़ने कि प्रक्रिया इतनी सरल थी कि मैंने हिंदी पड़ने के साथ-साथ इन पन्नों पर लिखने का भी निर्णय लिया । शुरूआत मैं मेरे लेख ़अधुरे लगेंगे पर मेरा इसे सुधारने का सदा प्रयत्न रहेगा ।

  • एक हिंदी लेख

    लिखित हिंदी से मेरा लगाव पाठशाला के दिनों ही समाप्त हो गयी थी । परंतु आज तक मुझे मेरे पाठ्य पुस्तक कि कहानियाँ याद हैं । काश कि मैं उन दिनों कि तरह आज भी काहानि पड़ पाता ।

    कल मैंने एक नया iPhone 4 ख़रीदा । उसमें हिंदी लिखने और पड़ने कि प्रक्रिया इतनी सरल थी कि मैंने हिंदी पड़ने के साथ-साथ इन पन्नों पर लिखने का भी निर्णय लिया । शुरूआत मैं मेरे लेख ़अधुरे लगेंगे पर मेरा इसे सुधारने का सदा प्रयत्न रहेगा ।

  • The One Who Does Not Stare at a Screen

    She looked all around the table. They were having dinner. However, the only two body parts involved was the right hand and the mouth. The left hand was holding a device. It was at such times she wondered how useful it would be if we still could eat with knife and fork. At the very least, these damned devices wouldn’t be on the dinner table.

    Her husband of twenty five years was scrolling through his BlackBerry, probably catching up on office email. Her elder son was reading some book on his Kindle. Her younger daughter was busy texting someone furiously. In between, the daughter and son would look at each other and smile. The son or the daughter had probably exchanged a joke on Whatsapp. She too had a mobile phone but did not feel the compulsive need to be have her head stuck in front of her flat screen.

    In the future, a doctor might probably diagnose her having a Screen Attention Deficit Disorder or something. She just could not stare at the screen for longer than a few minutes. She would then feel this urge to have a human to interact with.

    As time passed on, she saw this spreading. More and more people on the bus she travelled on had their heads stuck in the screen. People in crowded buses had also begun the habit. Some even didn’t know who they were standing next to! Even at work, the friend she used to chat to wind down at work had also begun reading books on Google Play now!

    It was everywhere. She had forbid the devices on her dinner table but when her husband had broken the rule, she could no longer enforce it on her children. She worried that her kids would grow up not noticing the birds and the bees, the flowers and the leaves. She felt she had the right to worry about this.

    “Mom,” her son called out. He was looking at her and she realised that he had noticed the change in her expression as she went through her thoughts.

    “You must write all what you thought about as a blog post.” Her son smirked knowing that he had followed her thought.

    “If you put down your devices, I will tell you my thoughts.”

  • The First Rains!

    This may or may not be a true story.

    I tied my shoes carefully, made sure that the knot was snug and then got up. I had forgotten the ear phones of my mobile phone. I switched on the tracking on my RunKeeper app and began walking from my building out to the outer ring road in my residential colony. I did this every morning.

    I was irritated at having forgotten the ear phones. My right brain thought that this might be a good opportunity to look at the surroundings and take a fresh look at the environment around me. My left brain asked me to consider counting my steps. In the end, I just concentrated on walking as fast as I could.

    A form emerged in front of me, which was at quite a distance. It was perhaps a girl, looking at the way she was dressed. My pace increased automatically. I was definitely not walking at my fastest pace. Now, I gained distance behind the girl. It was not as if once I catch up with her, I would ask for her number or ask her out for coffee or even breakfast. I just wanted to look at her. “Why?” wondered my left brain. “To appreciate beauty,” said my right.

    I walked faster and faster, but as I gained on her, another form caught my eye. It emerged from the corner of my eye and was slowly but surely overtaking me. He was definitely older than me and when he looked straight at my face, I recognized him as my father. His look seemed to tell me, “I am twice as old as you are and yet I walk twice as fast as you do.” “You are just projecting your thoughts on him. I am sure this is not what he must be thinking,” said my right brain. I ducked to the side pretending to be tying my laces. By the time I was up, he had gone a good 200 meters ahead of me. At the turn he looked at me, glared and walked on.

    I reset my target on the girl. By that time, though, a strange phenomenon happened. I felt some thing falling on my hand. Not crow shit, I hope. But it wasn’t. My eyes confirmed. It was water. My stride broke half way.

    “This isn’t the monsoon. If I remember my eighth standard geography texts correctly, the monsoon is to hit Mumbai around June 10. This might be the pre-monsoon shower. Wish I had setup the rain gauge on the terrace..” the left brain was thinking when I cut it out.

    Slowly the intensity increased. Other walkers were perplexed, not knowing what to do. This was a strange thing to happen and they had forgotten how they had walked during the monsoons last year. But, then again it didn’t rain all that much during the monsoons last year. Since I was walking under the canopy of trees, the full blast of the rain did not hit me. At least not yet.

    “What a beautiful sight! The clouds had covered the Sun. It has darkened a little. People are so confused not remembering what they did. Wonder what photograph would appropriately capture this moment. The first rains!” the right brain was thinking when I cut it out.

    I pulled out my phone and immediately tweeted out and sent a notification on Facebook. This came naturally to me. And then, one guy among the walkers remembered. He swerved to the side to the shelter provided by an overhanging asbestos sheet in front of a grocer’s. Then, as if everyone had an epiphany together, each one moved into the shelter. I noticed, with disappointment, the girl walking into the entrance of a nearby building as I ran a short distance under another asbestos sheet.

  • Never Say Never Again!

    By the title, I did not mean the famous James Bond movie of the same name but something a colleague at work told me was his life philosophy. He described this philosophy to mean that he would never say “I will never…” in a sentence but would only respond in the negative to a given situation. What he means is that in another set of circumstances he might not have responded in the same way.

    I, on the other hand have responded several times to situations by taking extreme stands. I either wholeheartedly agree or wholeheartedly oppose an idea or a course of action I am taking. This is true in situations where I am passionate about the subject. It doesn’t apply to my relationships with other people, though.

    To give you an example, I quit Wikipedia late last year vowing never to return. I had issues with some members with the Indian English Wikipedia community members. I think I believed in the movement passionately enough to think that it would collapse if such individuals made up the movement. However, I soon re-joined Wikipedia realising that the movement was not defined by these few individuals besides how much I enjoyed actually editing it.

    Late last week I announced that I would be quitting Twitter. I observed how my brother was caught up on his phone and how little attention he paid when my parents or I spoke to him. Sometimes, he did not even realise that we were talking to him. I envisioned myself as something even worse than that when I do this.

    However, when I announce my intention of quitting, it is half hoping that announcing it will help me stick to the resolution of quitting a platform. The situation changes and makes it even more difficult for me to return because of the thought of my announcement of quitting a platform and how I would appear to people. It would seem to people that I am the sort of a person who makes decisions and does not stick to it.  Not everybody might think like this but my perception of this being a thought process is so strong.

    Which brings me back to why the philosophy of never say never again. I will try and not announce that I am quitting the platform. So, with that huge post, I am happy to report that I am back on Twitter!

  • Never Say Never Again!

    By the title, I did not mean the famous James Bond movie of the same name but something a colleague at work told me was his life philosophy. He described this philosophy to mean that he would never say “I will never…” in a sentence but would only respond in the negative to a given situation. What he means is that in another set of circumstances he might not have responded in the same way.

    I, on the other hand have responded several times to situations by taking extreme stands. I either wholeheartedly agree or wholeheartedly oppose an idea or a course of action I am taking. This is true in situations where I am passionate about the subject. It doesn’t apply to my relationships with other people, though.

    To give you an example, I quit Wikipedia late last year vowing never to return. I had issues with some members with the Indian English Wikipedia community members. I think I believed in the movement passionately enough to think that it would collapse if such individuals made up the movement. However, I soon re-joined Wikipedia realising that the movement was not defined by these few individuals besides how much I enjoyed actually editing it.

    Late last week I announced that I would be quitting Twitter. I observed how my brother was caught up on his phone and how little attention he paid when my parents or I spoke to him. Sometimes, he did not even realise that we were talking to him. I envisioned myself as something even worse than that when I do this.

    However, when I announce my intention of quitting, it is half hoping that announcing it will help me stick to the resolution of quitting a platform. The situation changes and makes it even more difficult for me to return because of the thought of my announcement of quitting a platform and how I would appear to people. It would seem to people that I am the sort of a person who makes decisions and does not stick to it.  Not everybody might think like this but my perception of this being a thought process is so strong.

    Which brings me back to why the philosophy of never say never again. I will try and not announce that I am quitting the platform. So, with that huge post, I am happy to report that I am back on Twitter!

  • On Reading Scholarly Papers and Mumbai’s Urban Renewal

    Reading scholarly papers is not a hot subject among youth in India. By this, I mean that nobody reads these papers “for fun”. The idea of reading scholarly works for fun seems like a strange pass-time to have. This is one of my pass-times that I let pass under the broad category of reading. This is not something that I can share on goodreads.

    Rating and reviewing scholarly papers is difficult compared to works of fiction. For one, scholarly papers are works of non-fiction. They are written more for a specific audience than for the general populace. I had a habit of reading scholarly papers in astronomy through Current Science, a publication of the Indian Academy of Sciences besides the Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Once I started working in Bharuch, this was a habit I could not carry on. I replaced it instead by watching videos on YouTube on my mobile phone or listening to podcasts.

    Once back in Mumbai, I have now started reading the Economic & Political Weekly, published out of Mumbai. The May 4 edition of the Weekly has an interesting paper titled Caste and Gender in a Mumbai Resettlement Site [the paper will go behind a firewall in about 4 weeks]. The paper is by Varsha Ayyar at the School for Labour Studies in the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. The paper is principally concerning the role that gender and caste play in the rehabilitation of slums to a particular location in Lallubhai Compound, Mankhurd, Mumbai. People were moved to the spot around 2005 onwards from different parts of the city under several projects meant to improve conditions for Mumbaikars.

    The relocation is still an ongoing process. Yet, the people who have been relocated have not been given basic amenities. Despite being able to plan where these people were to be re-located, this was not done. This also does not get coverage in the local media, much less national newspapers.

    People from various localities of Mumbai and different castes were all put together in a close space without amenities and with poor infrastructure and were expected to exist here. Throughout the paper, there were allusions to slums being better than these buildings – 72 5 stories buildings. The poor infrastructure was a story in itself. Added to this were the dynamics of caste and religion which get hightened in such close quarters.

    What is interesting in this paper is that mention is made of particular NGO which goes unnamed that has been working with the Compound, forming housing societies and what I understood to be self help groups which played a role in the power politics in the Compound through supporting certain castes over others. 

    Do read the paper, which delves more into how caste and gender are shaped in the Compound caused by forced displacement. Also, found this interesting photographic work on the Lallubhai Compound on the web.