Time Out Mumbai- Slow City

This piece was published in an edited version in the latest issue of Time Out Mumbai


Slow City

We must concoct a new name for the extreme sport of sitting in the path of whooshing traffic on Mohammed Ali Road with your back to it. Limb and possibly life is risked for a plate of saffron-hued firni outside Suleman Mithaiwala, but one spoonful is all that is needed to make the risk worthwhile. Above and beyond your head, long haul cars speed past nonchalantly on the snaking flyover with many names, the one that connects the Sir JJ School to the Sir JJ Hospital. At the Al-Madinah, plastic chairs and makeshift tables are always full at this time of year, occupied, quite comfortably by growling bellies in need of satiation.

Once upon a time, when Ramadhan was pronounced Ramzan, the all-denominational greeting ‘Khuda Haafiz’ had not yet been essentialized to ‘Allah Haafiz’, indeed when the concrete reptile flyover under whose grimy underbelly we now cheat death in order to gain the Kingdom of Culinary Heaven was not even imagined, eateries on the cross lane to Minara Masjid and beyond would lay their spread out nearly across the busy Mohammaed Ali Road,. For a month, at dawn and at dusk, vehicular lanes would be re-imagined as food plazas. Bombay’s hordes would descend on Saarvi, Shalimar and Noor Mohammadi, full of piety and perfume in time for Sehri and Iftaar. The moments before sunrise would pass swiftly, suffused with prayer and humility but the nights were long, filled with loud conversation and conviviality.

Life did take a downturn after the unimaginable events of the early nineties, but then life does find a way. Today, Allah be praised, even in its relatively constricted circumstances haleem, nalli nihaari, and a variety of char grilled kebabs occupy the mind as much as firni and maalpua, assorted barfis and the awe-inspiring aflatoon (the word by which the Arabs knew Plato). Elsewhere in the city, politicians hold Iftaar parties to stem the erosion of their flock, while the food corner between the Suleman and Zam Zam confectionaries requires no agenda to flourish.

Ramzan in Mumbai is a month of charity and fasting, but also thirty days of collegiality and general bonhomie. The fasting hours these days are quieter, given a summer that has stretched longer than usual, but evenings, despite the delayed monsoon go on and on, full of good cheer and loud humour. Does fasting make our city a warmer place? We should all try it then. Our city’s streets are used particularly well, transforming into spaces for eating, shopping and prayer. If the rains do not play spoilsport, each lane outside overflowing mosques accommodate the faithful. Azaad Maidaan on the day of Eid becomes a vast makeshift Idgaah.

Unlike other parts of the Muslim world that have taken the more rational path, using calendars to determine the times of fasting, India is still fixated on mandatory sightings of the sliver of moon for beginning the cycle of rozas and, especially for ending them. As children, this was a time for one-upmanship, running up to the terrace and trying to spot the Chaand. This year, the chaand was attested to by several reliable witnesses on Facebook, a public service act that was, in turn duly liked and shared. Whatever works.

In the days before television, Muslim neighbourhoods of Bombay would be woken by a volunteer walking from street to street like a town crier calling the faithful to rise for Fajr prayers. Today, times for commencement and breaking of fasts are easily regulated by downloadable Android and IoS Apps, loaded with alarms that indicate various times of prayer. But the crier’s sonorous voice, often using popular tunes of the day resonates in my memory decades after this tradition gave way to loudspeakers and recorded calls.

We live in a world of punctuated chaos, a term coined by Bill Gates. He alludes to our current times as one of constant upheaval marked by brief respites, unsettling to those who experiencing them. There was a time (that Gates calls punctuated equilibrium) when we believed the world would never change, at least not much, when the full enjoyment of a month that brought the city together was enjoyed at a slower, more deliberate pace.

For me, this pace is represented by tongawallahs and Victoria drivers, those urban transporters who played a crucial role in short-distance commuting in Bombay right until the late seventies. Plying a beat that extended from Colaba to Jacob Circle, these horse carriages could carry four or five persons along Bombay’s North-South roads. After stuffing myself silly at Minara Masjid, staring up at starlit skies unencumbered by flyovers, sky walks or luxury housing, I could slide into satisfied somnolence to the offbeat clipclopping of the horse’s hooves, nodding my head to a rhythm that would take me home. It this slow city that I miss the most.

Time Out Mumbai - Unforgiving City

This piece was published in an edited version in 

Time Out Mumbai, June 20- July 3, 2014, Volume 10, Issue 22

Unforgiving City

Just how far can you go on forgiving the foibles of our city?

In these pages and elsewhere I have defended Mumbai’s dirt, its density, its congestion, its dearth of open spaces, its overcrowding as natural to the processes of the city. I have extolled the virtues of living together messily in those everyday acts that contribute to its vibrancy and richness. But sometimes you come across a sight that makes you feel that your own leniency makes you an accomplice to something inexcusable.

In the back of a fast moving cab, moving from Metro to Flora Fountain, trundling in the left lane of Mahatma Gandhi Road that is filled with competing four wheelers, I see a decrepit old man laboriously pushing a wheelchair with a frail and visibly ill woman. Life does not seem to have been kind to either of them, and, they are very obviously trying to make their way to Bombay Hospital. The man is negotiating the wheelchair with care, right in the line of oncoming traffic that is not accommodating of his presence in a vehicular lane. He and his charge have no business being there.

I wonder too. But, as I pass them and move ahead it is woefully obvious that the footpath where M G Road turns to meet Mahapalika Marg is simply unfit for anyone to safely push a wheelchair. Walking, even able bodied, is something of a steeplechase. There is encroachment and debris, with little space for pedestrians; trees, hawkers and porta-cabins all grow out of jagged and dangerously irregular paver blocks. There is no length of pavement that is level and true. What else could the old gent do, but to throw caution to the winds, risking not one life but two in the maelstrom of rush hour?

This is too much, even for me. What kind of a city is so unaccommodating that even the infirm and the unwell cannot make their way across it? It is an unfeeling and hostile environment that we have become benumbed to inhabit. I’d like to think that the good city is one we can take for granted. My assumption hardly holds when the pedestrian ways of our city are out of bounds for pedestrians. My gripe is not only about the specially-abled, but for anyone, unfettered by any means of transportation, completely vanilla, on their feet being pushed to the very periphery of presence. 

It is all right, I can argue, that Mumbai really has no open spaces in the European mould, no street-side cafes, no buskers, no flower stalls and souvenir stores, no bespoke urban furniture, no streetlights that geo-position you just by their unique design, no useful signage- our piazzas are our streets. Always have been. We live out our lives measured in walking distances, and latching on to the most meagre of landmarks- shop signs, building corners, even compound walls. As Sahir Ludhiyanvi once wrote: ‘Jitni bhi bildingein thi, sethon ne baant li hai/ Footpath Bambai ke, hai aashiyaan hamaara’. The footpaths belong to us. 

When even this is denied, everyone, panhandler, commuter or flaneur are all exiled from the legitimate city, and are compensated with skywalks built to stop jaywalking, at such heights that trucks carrying idols during the festival season can conveniently drive under. Jaywalking, like jugaad is illegal, but fills the vacuum created by the oversight of the state. The old man and the lady were reduced to doing exactly that by the uncaring nonchalance of those holding municipal responsibility. It occurs to me that, if a mishap should, heaven forbid, happen and either of these two get injured or worse, it is they themselves who would be held accountable and at fault for trying to occupy the vehicular road. 

We are losing those streets that traditionally had very little or slow moving traffic that were once populated by the walking public, doing this and that, other than merely making their way from A to B. Streets, where the pace of life was slower, where one could meet, chat, eat, buy, haggle, curse and move along. Nakhoda Mohalla at one end of Mohammed Ali Road once was a street full of fabric sellers where chiffons and chikan were sold with equal felicity. That was completely ruined with the flyover that swept past one edge. Now Mutton Street, the road that transmogrifies weekly into Chor Bazaar is now on its last legs.

Mumbai is probably the only aspiring world city that does not have a single officially designated pedestrian street. What does this say about its inhabitants and those elected to run it? They seem to have, like Pilate washed their hands and sealed the fate of pedestrians, those pesky critters that move in the manner of the pack donkey. Cars, fortunately for them, are not linearly challenged and predictable in their movements. Just the thought of the pedestrian being considered collateral in the larger fortunes of the city, is distressing, to say the least. 

And as for soft spoken me, I feel just like Howard Beale in Network, who pulls his hair out in great tufts and screams : 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' 

Time Out Mumbai- 2 pieces on Cluster Development

This piece was (in a slightly edited form) published in Time Out Mumbai, Vol. 10, Issue 19, May 2014.


Cluster Bluster

Now that the votes (and the die) for the next government are cast, it does seem that Bombay’s fortunes are nowhere in anyone’s political priorities. In the run up to Election Day, though, there seemed to be one area of emerging consensus. All the candidates (who matter) from the South Mumbai constituency agreed that 'Cluster Development' in the city is the way forward. The only answer.

The biggest problem with our old city, according to them, is its rapidly deteriorating stock of buildings collectively called 'cessed'. These century old piles are filled to the brim with nonchalant tenants paying ‘controlled’ rents and hapless landlords with too few resources for maintenance. As a result these buildings are now decrepit, have common toilets, and are in imminent danger of collapse every monsoon. They are also densely packed together and there is no greenery anywhere.

The panacea for this sorry state is, of course, Cluster Development (aka DC rule 33/9). The argument in its favour is that developing a largish tract of land is less piecemeal, more systematic, and can be 'community driven'. A 40,000 square footprint today can contain several buildings in the inner city. Bringing them down to tabula rasa allows the redevelopment phoenix to soar, up to four times the plot area. These Elysian Fields would provide every stakeholder with a proper (300 sft) unit with toilets inside, lifts, and open spaces around buildings, with trees and lawns. Above all, the rented tag gets converted to ownership, the ultimate wish of every Mumbaikar grihasta. Could anything be better? Two projects at Bhendi Bazaar and Lower Parel are already under construction, so there is precedent too.

Let me be contrarian here. Leave aside the near cliché that such developments only benefit builders and speculators. In making my case against cluster development, I appeal to your urban and civic sensibilities.

Buildings in ‘clusters’ are equally piecemeal, only now the piece is larger. Here, entire neighbourhoods in the dense inner city will potentially be opened out to new vistas of rising skylines, infiltrated by built forms and open spaces that did not previously exist. This is the urban equivalent of pulling out teeth and replacing them with nails instead of dentures.

Our neighbourhoods- Chira and Bhendi Bazaar, Parel and Kalbadevi, Lalbaug and Dongri, all have a scale and uniformity that make up the urban whole. Congestion is the essential urbanity and civic make-up of the inner city. Shop lines open on footpaths, buildings touch buildings familiarly, balconies overlook streets and roofs match up in straight lines, making comprehensible perspectives. And there are people everywhere. Corners are special and built differently, giving identity and helping way-finding.

None of this is sustained in setting back buildings from the street, bounding them in the nutshell of compound walls, CCTV and uniformed security surveillance. Essentially, this large bite is no longer the city that was, only a regurgitated, unfamiliar, aspiration-fulfilling bolus.

Almost all of Bombay's residential neighbourhoods once spoke a ground plus three floors lingo. The city grew through iteration and accretion, just like Bambaiya-speak. Over the years street culture evolved to raising one floor. This happened everywhere, you may live in one such building. Now, imagine a building across your street looming forty floors above you, cutting off sunlight, subjecting you to a wall of heat radiating from air-conditioning units opposite. Such is the price of caprice the older residents of Mutton Street will face in year or two.

Should buildings in bad shape not be repaired? Well, of course they should, but by respecting building lines first. A contemporary, well appointed, state of the art redesign that retains the previous footprint and matches the height and floor-lines of its neighbours on either side is completely possible. Courtesy demands that buildings be re-imagined in their original context, one by one. With broad agreement, every new building may rise by one floor or two, and still retain the harmony of the street. Congestion will remain, but not further densification. Most of Mumbai’s housing requirement can be fulfilled if each residential building is raised one floor. You do the math.

My one disagreement with the cluster model should concern whoever wins the South Mumbai Lok Sabha seat. 33/9 will result in instant gentrification. Either overtly, or through subtle nudge-nudge wink-wink, the older residents will realise they no longer have a place in this new dispensation. Neighbours will be replaced by strangers, humsayas will be lost, local small shops will become untenable, business networks and societal ties, the result of decades of co-existence will dissolve. Ultimately diversity will decrease substantially making the new neighbourhood a confine of homogeneity served in no full measure by 'outsiders'.

This is counter-intuitive, but I do believe that the much derided Rent Control Act helped preserve a social equity amongst the residents of Bombay across half a century. A fixed low rent allowed the very poor to live in the same building with the very rich, and certainly occupy the public realm, the streets outside as equals. With tenancy morphing into ownership this will no longer be the same- as the city you once called Bambai Nagariya gets slowly transformed, the aam aadmi voter in your constituency could well be endangered by the next elections.

The following piece was (in a slightly edited form) commissioned by Time Out Mumbai for their special issue on Bhendi Bazaar, Vol. 9, Issue 12, February 2013.

Splendid Isolation
What Cluster Redevelopment will mean for the city

“Mohalla maa jayaaoon choo!”
Ever since I remember, this is commonly heard in many households. I am going to the Mohalla. The Mohalla is the Bhendi Bazaar. This throbbing heart of Bohra culture in Mumbai is the place to congregate, socialize, conduct small business, pass time, and gorge on pyalis of street side ‘chana-bateta’- a savory of chickpeas and potatoes that could also be ‘packed-up’ for the kids. The Mohalla is for ziyarat, for offering prayers at the Raudat Tahera, the mausoleum where the present Syedena’s father is laid to rest. And of course, if it is Jumma, it must be Chor Bazaar, the Friday-only market on the adjacent Mutton Street, where one can be equal parts flaneur and haggleur.

Urban culture in Mumbai is very real. It is also intangible, and thrives on two assumptions- first, that an urban place in the city can be taken for granted; and second, to paraphrase Robert Frost, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. It is anchored around a very few (and, on occasion, nondescript) physical markers: a left turn here, a shop sign there, a street vendor at the corner. Urban culture is thus, also very fragile. This is true for Bhendi Bazaar, and also for Chira Bazaar, Saat Rasta, Sewri, Parel, or any of the nine or so locations in the city where Cluster Redevelopment is scheduled to happen.

In a city that has replaced planning with speculation and public administration with outsourced anonymity, it is little wonder that the future heart of Mumbai can only be envisioned as a glorious Hausmann-like phoenix, rising out of a tabula rasa. Cluster Redevelopment, based on Clause 33.9 of the Development Control Rules, is the way the state government sees urban renewal in locations populated largely by cessed buildings or historically rented properties. Accepting the premise that the state itself cannot redevelop, the rule allows for private developers to rehabilitate existing users in the same location with some more areas and amenities and offers the developer a substantial pound of flesh for profiteering. While basic humanitarian gestures of temporary re-housing for those existing is built-in, the grand vision is the builder’s entirely, and very naturally based on the attractiveness of the project to potential buyers at full market price.

This vision disregards the intangible, but very real patterns of urban life. Mumbai is Mumbai because the rich and the poor have always lived as humsaya, with homes facing the same street; because the diversity of economic class and religious affiliation has meant nothing, especially in the densest neighbourhoods; because although there are ghettos, especially in the inner city, there are no walled exclusions; because the desire to come together to create an urban place is the result of social accretion over years, very real, even if you can’t put a finger on it. Mumbai is Mumbai not only because of urban homogeneity, but because of social diversity. To presume this the other way round, like cluster redevelopment projects seem to do, is to deny and choke the very spirit of the city.

Look at the New Bhendi Bazaar, this is what we see: a private future built on sixteen acres of south Bombay, imagined by the wealthiest of a Mumbai sub-community in its own image. We see pristine, ‘homes of rest and quiet’, secluded from the rest of the dirty city, your city, by walls or buildings that function as walls. Access into these redesigned acres will now be through gateways that never existed before. We see skyscrapers rising sixty stories abutting the same narrow street on which older four storey structures still exist. We see several buildings demolished to make way for a large park with unobstructed frontage around the Raudat Tahera.

Where did the Mohalla go? Can the same social fabric that held together for a century remain in this upmarket utopia? Can small businesses thrive without their former durable networks? Will Chor Bazaar retain any identity, when one edge of Mutton Street transforms into a barricade?

Cluster redevelopments as private real-estate speculations only take away from the city, both physically and spiritually disentangled from the larger reality of metropolitan Mumbai. While they load fresh urban burdens onto its infrastructure, they deign to exist in splendid isolation, in a rarefied haven of Eloi, while Morlocks outside toil in its grime.

Who speaks for Mumbai in these new projects? We accept the rights of the individual as supreme in our capitalist present. No one denies that better housing, amenities and facilities should be paramount for all. But should we, at the same time, not define responsibilities the same individual has towards the city at large? No quid pro quo?

Woh intezaar tha jiska yeh woh s(h)eher to nahin.

Time Out Mumbai- Travel Lite

This piece was published in an edited version in 

Time Out Mumbai, March 14-27 2014, Volume 10, Issue 15

Travel Lite

Those in academic circles probably know this already, but Mumbai has been the international flavor of for quite a few years now. This is especially true for students of architecture and urban design. Each time the monsoon bids Mumbai farewell and her sodden soul slowly dries, cohorts from universities, unknown and ivy-league, travel to her shores for field visits, just like flamingos at Sewri.

After parking themselves in one of the many establishments on or off Colaba Causeway, high-seating Volvo buses are procured and from such rarefied and elevated environments the city is absorbed. Driving down from the Gateway of India (referred to by some as India Gate) to the boondocks of Navi Mumbai, depending on the theme of the semester, the colonial SoBo, the dense inner-city areas of Kalbadevi, Bhuleshwar, the ‘panjra-pol’, the Dhobhi Ghat, the City Improvement Trust precincts of Dadar-Matunga, the former mill and current mall lands, the eastern docklands, the fast-disappearing mangroves and salt pans and ‘slums’ of every stripe are mandatorily observed. Local trains (in non-rush hours) are given custom, the monorail admired, and various skywalks crossed. Getting serious, development plans are procured, Google Maps pored over, terrabytes of jpegs clicked, local colleges of architecture visited and a few brains picked- all this in about three days or so. Oh, of course, Dharavi-darshan happens and 'Kumbharwada' becomes part of international vocabulary. It joins words like 'jugaad', which have already been learnt in advance.

There is quite an abyss between the literature available and the city's reality. In the spirit of academia, much previous reading is prescribed. Suketu Mehta, David Gregory Roberts, Katherine Boo, Dwivedi and Mehrotra, among others form the canon. ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ becomes the visual point of reference. This is pretty obvious when you encounter un-nuanced positions about slums or the role of real estate; cluster housing is fait accompli- a shining pointer to end all woes, after all it is community driven, no? Speculative theories coalesce into New Urbanism projects, learnings from weekend immersions and catch-as-catch-can ethnography informs the iterations of computer extrusions, where high rise developments (the only answer) are clothed with a garb of Bollywood culture.

What does our city offer that attracts so many to it? To be charitable, Mumbai does provide the foreign observer with several contradictions, to paraphrase Whitman, being large and containing multitudes. It is some surprise that trains run on time, but garbage remains uncollected. One family lives in a 2 billion dollar, 20 storied skyscraper residence, while more than half of the city lives in self-built postage stamp housing. The rule of law is indexical of our democracy, but common law applies everywhere. Everyone here walks and talks English, but as a phunny Indian language. However, despite these polarities, true to our common ethos, what you cannot see is vital to understanding and appreciation, but intangibles are often subsumed in the morass of visual documentation. This can lead to some ‘face-palm’ results. Some American students of architecture found the sights and smells of one corner of one street in the city so overwhelming that it became a metonymy for the city as a whole, and resulted in the design of skyscrapers made out of ‘kachra’. 

Nothing interests student practitioners of architecture and urban design and their mentor institutes more than change. The objective is always to make a city ‘more livable’. This is predicated on the understanding of a city as it is as ‘less livable’. Sociology rather than technology is currently the driving force behind change, and alternatives derived to conceptualize ‘better cities’ are the results of surveys and sampling, even if the sample set is a few persons doing muttergashti at street corners, or a paanwallah, say, or a local SIM shop. There is an urgent need to put it all down on paper and soon conceptual charts, three dimensional street views, stitched photo-collages and before/after layouts are all put together and displayed. 

By now, there is entire machinery in place here in the city to receive these visitors and cater to their needs, spaces for work and presentations, large panels for pinning up their work and seminar spaces for discussion, even for the conduct of international conferences. The usual suspects of invited city experts are rounded up from time to time to take on these fights of urban regeneration fantasies, and to give anecdotal and insightful comments and ‘crits’ about the nature of change in Mumbai, which are eagerly lapped up by these wide eyed, travel-lite acolytes. I should know, on occasion I have been one of them.

Time Out Mumbai- Nanny State of Mind

This piece appeared in an edited version in my 'After Words' column in Time Out Mumbai, February 2014

Nanny State of Mind

One of the first actions the new CEO of the Central Board of Film Certification has taken is to rollback all permissions granted to movies in the last few months on the grounds that the previous board was too permissive of objectionable content. One of them, ‘Sholay-3D’, was pinpointed for lacking seriousness in its content. The movie was screened in the presence of the CEO, his Board, his parents, his wife, her parents, his daughters, and their neighbors from the same floor. The following cuts and modifications to ‘Sholay-3D’ were demanded:

Vigilantism in all forms is disapproved, as when a currently serving policeman is commissioned by a retired Inspector to source delinquents to carry out encounters. The scene showing Thakur giving supari to Jai and Veeru should be removed.

All three coin tossing scenes to be excised as a British Raj coin is used in independent India. Also said coin was forged (heads on both sides).

The Inspector, shown sitting in the same space as two convicts in a goods train should be replaced with a havaldar. Also, when in uniform, the inspector should be addressed correctly as ‘Inspector Saab’ and not ‘Thakur’ (proper hierarchy must be followed).

Scenes showing Veeru running on tops of railway compartments should be deleted. This wrongly encourages rooftop travelling by children in suburban trains and violates several clauses of the Indian Railway Act.

The song ‘Yeh Dosti’ is to be entirely deleted for promoting cultural prurience. Far too much love and physical displays of affection are visible between two full-grown males. Not only do they hold hands but one actually mounts the other’s shoulders while riding a motorcycle. Sec 377 to be referred to, also traffic laws regarding reckless endangerment while riding a two wheeler. The board also found objectionable the lyrics that openly refer to same-sex love (‘aisa apna pyaar’, etc.)

Scenes of the main actors openly extorting beedis from Soorma Bhopali without a ‘Smoking Kills’ disclaimer is a lapse needing rectification. A later scene of Imam’s son moving to work in a tobacco factory is discouraged on religious grounds. Alcoholism, consuming unbranded country products by respected senior film stars encourages illegal haath bhattis and leads to liquor tragedies.

Scenes of a widow turning off lights in the verandah outside her bedroom while another man ogles her while playing a mouth-organ were found to be too suggestive. The implied invitation to promiscuity cannot be overlooked. The scene of Radha handing over keys of father-in-law’s safe to criminals shows the Indian widow in poor character.

Russian roulette in Gabbar Singh’s introductory scene is of foreign origin. It is suggested that this be replaced with the Indian game of chausar. Firing bullets in the air is a waste of ordnance, an action not desirable in a developing country such as ours. Also, harvesting mangoes using guns is discouraged as it divests the unskilled unemployed of a proper day’s wages under NREGA.

All scenes of eve-teasing and physical proximity in song ‘Holi ke din’ should be removed. The producers are requested to see Barjatya’s wholesome films for positive influences.

The Board also frowns upon the excessive use of the Arabo-Turko-Persian vocabulary that permeates the entire movie, ignoring our homegrown Sanskritic heritage. To redress this, it is suggested that the following phrases be replaced-
‘yeh dosti’ by ‘yeh maitri’,
‘mehbooba’ by ‘premika’
and
‘kitne aadmi the?’ by ‘kitne purush the?’

Also, to avoid the issuance of an ‘A’ certificate, the following obscenities must mandatorily be replaced-
‘haramzaadae!’ by ‘dusht!’,
‘hijdon ki fauj’ by ‘ardha-nar sena’,
‘soovar ke bachchon’ by ‘murgi ke chooze’
and
‘chakki p*****g’ by ‘micturation’.

All lady members of the audience walked out during the ‘Mehbooba’ song, while covering the eyes of their young ones. Helen was not wearing skin-colored, full-body innerwear, as Sandhya and Vyjantimala have respectfully done in the past. Also physical thrustings of certain body parts in 3D to R D Burman’s rhythms were too much for older members of the board. On second thoughts, an ‘A’ certificate is unanimously advised.

Horses, poultry and insects were all harmed in this film. Such scenes should be replaced by CGI and a certificate to the effect should preface the main titles.

Depicting the surgical amputation of Thakur’s limbs is deemed unacceptable as the swords were not sterilized before the operation. Also Thakur was not put under general anesthesia by a qualified medical person. This encourages bad practices.

The use of spikes outside of a sport pitch can send wrong messages to school going children to wear them to classroom and home and should be replaced with sneakers (with the brand blurred). Also, stamping on someone’s palms with shoes on is against the Indian tradition of respect and humility. On the other hand, the Board commends the depiction of the ill-effects of dancing without shoes in public places.

The last scene of a man and a woman publicly embracing in a train compartment makes us hang our heads in shame. We condemn the previous Board for allowing such vulgarity to go though and recommend an enquiry (by appointing a retired judge) on their possibly mala-fide intentions of ruining the ethos of our great nation.

Time Out Mumbai- Re:claim

This piece appeared in a slightly edited version in my 'After Words' column in Time Out Mumbai, December 2013

Re: claim

Dear Mumbai,
re: your claim that the only solution to your congested, imploding self is to reclaim more land from the sea, here are our considered opinions-

We see from our records that your past actions re: reclamations on your good-self are chequered with inconsistencies- whereas your laying the many causeways in the mid 19th century interconnecting the erstwhile islands that constituted your good-self had some intrinsic merit in making you whole, this resulted in a low-lying centre prone to flooding annually and mosquitoes, a space you further exacerbated by raising several textile mills, creating a situation you have not satisfactorily resolved even after a century and a half.

Your next request for plastic surgery admittedly met with some success in 1940 with your self-named appendage- the Queen's Necklace. But you botched this up laying a road along the water edge rather than perpendicular to it, isolating a thin sliver of land only useful for walking dogs and/or resisting expressions of young love. All your subsequent actions, we note with concern, catered to the whims and fancies of automobiles rather than your own citizens, a trait so deeply embedded that you seem to think is normal. It is not.

We can only shake our head at your half-hearted, ultimately abandoned attempts to create a business district out of the sea in the late 1960s, which you ironically named after the same person who opposed you in the first place. We call your attention to the toothless gum that is the Cuffe Parade fishing village. Your desire to iconicize the Mantralaya only resulted in scuppering the very objective of your new city across the harbour. This reluctance to shift your administrative heart to Belapur put back both settlement and progress of New Bombay by three decades, making it a dormitory suburb. We must therefore infer, Mumbai, that you are, in your own words, 'aarambh shoor'; you know how to start things but not finish them.

It is with some relief that we note your fancy late '90s ideas proposed by your starchitect to reclaim a width of one kilometre on your western edge for 'public amenities' stayed on the drafting board. God alone knows how you would have monetized all that land in the millennium. On bended knee, we offer thanks to our city deity daily that your other scheme of enclosing your natural eastern harbour (linking Colaba to Uran, like bringing together a thumb and forefinger) in order to create, a 'giant freshwater lake' remained just an idea. Having seen your track record with sewage,re: the Mithi, we only shudder at what you could have done to the water you sought to sweeten.

Now, in your latest application, you have sought to expand on the aborted Nariman Point reclamation by another hundred hectares. We observe that you have enclosed testimonials from foreign experts to back your claim. Needless to say, you seem unconcerned that in the last decade your business centres have all shifted to BKC and the mill lands. Enterprise and commerce have moved north. Has this not helped change the mono-directional circulation of commuters and laid the base for a polycentric city? Who do you think will benefit from raising land to create high-end residential properties on the southern tip? You already have, at the last count, around 1,40,000 unsold ‘crore-plus’ flats all over the city. We suggest you sell them first.

Also, your current policy allowing the densification of those parts of your good-self that are already some of the densest in the world displays an ambivalence about your own urban future. While you ignore debris-dumping on mangroves and salt-pans without permission, you keep a twenty kilometre stretch of eastern docklands undeveloped, hidden behind tall screens. This, after shifting the bulk of your maritime commerce to JNPT. We suggest, earnestly, you look up the word ‘oxymoron’.

Your new proposal also seeks to create another ‘freshwater lake’, this time at Mahim, which you intend to fill with water from the Mithi. You never learn, do you?

To conclude, your past history does not give us the confidence to endorse your proposal to resume reclaiming land. By allowing redevelopment on almost every plot of land (built or unbuilt), to provide ‘long denied’ benefits to the owners, your developers are reclaiming the entire city anyway, bit by bit. You should be satisfied. And satiated.

Nevertheless, given our long association, we specially commissioned our back office to develop a proposal to reclaim land from Bandra West to Sur-on-sea (Oman East). We are told this is feasible, as the crow flies. The only reason we resist giving it the go ahead is our concern about illegal migrants, and the possible dilution of your city’s culture.




The image at the top of this post is Neibhur's 1764 mapping of Bombay's islands.
This image was one of many made free for use online by the British Library.

Time Out Mumbai- Forever Bombay

This piece appeared in a slightly edited version in my 'After Words' column in Time Out Mumbai, Volume 10 Issue 6, November 8-21 2013.

Forever Bombay

At a vantage point above the Kala Ghoda parking lot, I watch the world whiz past. My gaze sweeps the panorama from right to left- the Jehangir, the Rampart Row, Rhythm House, and the undulating modernism of the BSE tower. Then, I turn my back to it all. Arrayed before me are several fornicator’s chairs, some occupied. They all face away from the street, towards the pointed stone arcade and the murmur of fans and nodding heads beyond. I lower myself into a chair that creaks with age but offers comfort. I turn its specially designed extendable arm and hoist one lazy foot over. To my left, a lady in an orange cotton saree lies dead to the world; on my right a college kid has his nose stuck in a textbook on economics. Soon the buzz of traffic lulls me into somnolence and I am gone. The pleasures offered by the David Sassoon Library are manifold, but perhaps the least known is their indulgence of sleeping members on their terrace.

When I wake, I find bodies all around me, expressions of repose softening their features. I move inside, walk past floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, old teak tables covered with textbooks, handwritten notes and reams of stapled, photocopied study stuff. This other indulgence the library offers is, in fact, a mandate. The Library doubles as a Reading Room accommodating students from nearby colleges (the Elphinstone is right next door) to study in the relative quiet imposed here. Students form the bulk of its transitory memberships, and the upper hall is often full to capacity. We have this image of school kids studying under street-lamps, or on the steps of the Asiatic, but here is the real deal- for the library keeps its doors open from 9 to 9 every day of the year. Old desks and reading lamps are available as are numerous plug-points, de rigueur for today's laptop and mobile fuelled world. 

This small colonial building houses so much history. Built with the munificence of one of Bombay's city fathers David Sassoon (a library booklet from 1931 calls him a merchant prince), this building was erected in 1870 for the erstwhile Bombay Mechanics Institute, an association of young professionals from the Royal Mint and the Government Dockyard. While their activities wound down by the 1930s, the legacy of mechanical excellence in Bombay is enshrined on the library’s mid-landing in a marble bust of James Berkley, Chief Engineer GIP Railways whose courage and risk-taking led to the first train line to cross the Bhor Ghat. Descending the grand staircase, I circumambulate the larger than life statue of David Sassoon by the English sculptor T. Woolner. I am fixated on his hands raised in prayer; the slim detailed fingers in marble remind me of Albrecht Durer’s 1508 drawing of praying hands. The polygonal Malad stone, the Venetian arcades, the sharply neo-gothic rooflines, the interiors of timber and the commemorative art all stand mute to the building’s dwindling relevance to the city. This is only emphasised as I walk past a notice that says ‘Happy Senior Citizens Day!’ The David Sassoon Library is symptomatic of several of Bombay’s public buildings that stay forgotten for most of the year, and are only occasionally made the most of, like a Parsee Gara during a wedding. Here too, the library’s pocket park is de-mummified annually during the Kala Ghoda Festival and mothballed when it is over.

Standing at the entrance on a mosaic of Minton tiles, I am struck that this should not be the case. The library’s essential resource- its books in English, Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati date from the 1790s and form an archive to be treasured and accessed, especially its scientific books procured as a memorial to Berkley. Like the Asiatic and the Bhau Daji this library quintessentially represents the city, and deserves every first copy of every book published in Mumbai. Today, the library relies on its own dwindling resources and the efforts of its bibliophile managing committee. I cannot but ask everyone reading this- if you love books, buildings and Bombay, become a member now. Read, study, sleep, or take in the garden, but embrace this patch of land that is forever Bombay.

I step outside and cross the road. I turn away from the city once again and meet the eyes of Sassoon, now in the roundel above the entrance portal. He is, just as Kolatkar describes, “a prisoner... wearing a collar... forced to watch the slow disintegration of a city I cared about more than any other.” Like Mumbai, here is a place pining for its potential to be released and shared.


All the photos here are by Smita Dalvi. My thanks.

Time Out Mumbai- Free Ride

This piece appeared in a slightly edited version in my 'After Words' column in Time Out Mumbai,  August 2013.

Free Ride
The newly opened Eastern Freeway has been the flavour of the season. Firstly, because of the knife through- butter smoothness by which the 17 km from Chembur to Orange Gate can be negotiated (12 minutes), and secondly, because the average Mumbaikar in a car cannot believe that the freeway is, in fact, free. There has been some talk about the usual suspects feeling awkward about appending the term, “Mukt Marg” to the names of their heroes. I offer my own, in recompense. It is a sentiment many readers of this column would echo, I am sure.

A third reason that gives cheer is the access the freeway provides to the many views of the city from an elevated position, especially those of the eastern edge, hidden for decades behind the foreboding walls of the docks all along PD’Mello Road. Looking to the left while cruising towards South Bombay several versions of dystopian wasteland emerge, even as the sun rises from behind the mud flats, former salt pans and mangroves. Electric pylons punctuate this bleak nothingness we have been prevented from observing due to a specious sense of security. The pencil-like chimneys belching flames, dah-dit-dah as if in Morse from the refineries bring to mind the Los Angeles’ apocalyptic future landscapes from Blade Runner.

Then, just when it gets interesting and we anticipate a bird’s-eye view of the Ferry Wharf, tall grey barriers rise from the verge to remind us that you, the citizen, are much too infantile to be allowed to see Mumbai’s historic maritime infrastructure.You turn to the right, and sloping Mangalore tile roofs foreground the skyline of emerging new skyscrapers. You pass a hill called Antop, rue the diminishing greens of Parel and as the freeway winds down you meet the city at Carnac Bridge, old Bombay’s dockland heritage.

This little peek at the eastern beyond was impossible for all these years. This edge of the island city lies slit like a sliver, separated from the rest by a tall wall that hides the docklands from prying eyes. Beyond these walls lies the first manor house the Portuguese built, the singed memory of the Fort Stikine disaster, the pier from whence a million émigrés left to better lives in other countries, the same pier that Gandhi returned to a rousing welcome. Why is that wall still standing?

Now that the bulk of shipping cargo has moved to the JNPT, why can’t this, almost 15 km long stretch be returned to the city? Here is an opportunity for urban transformation far beyond that of the erstwhile mill lands. These seem to have had their time in the early 2000s and have exhausted their urban potential in a morass of contested tenures and exploitative real estate. On the other hand, this long piece of Mumbai straddles the natural harbour that enticed the British in the first place to put down roots, to relocate from Surat. East of the freeway and PD’Mello Road lies Mumbai’s final frontier that can become a potentially new dimension to city occupation. If the obsession with keeping the docklands sanitized can be overcome, the Mumbaikar can get first dibs on the edge that, with good urban planning can allow for a melange of waterfront activities the length of the city itself can be released. The hardworking Bhaucha Dhakka and the largely hidden Kala Bandar that bookend the docklands themselves can be refurbished with plazas, boardwalks and cafes, evening events and fireworks.

The Eastern Freeway is also the perfect bypass to the older choked north-south arteries of the city. The efficiency of traffic movement (current congestion at both ends notwithstanding) also shows up the redundancy of a lot of earlier infrastructure, especially the multitude of flyovers built since the 1990s. They were built for the same reason that the Freeway serves today, to bring in more and more vehicles into the southern parts, only piecemeal. What is their worth today, now that this alternative is available?

Anyone can see that the presence of flyovers in the city benefits only the fast moving traffic above it. Below the flyovers lie the detritus of the city, those neglected parts that are a mulch of garbage, dead vehicles, opportunistic pay and- park operators and general illegal occupation. In the process, flyovers destroyed the vibrant street life of several of Mumbai’s busiest streets and gardens, just look at Mohammed Ali Road or King’s Circle today. The freeway should be just the excuse for reclaiming street life by removing the redundant flyovers and allowing the sun once again to fall on the streets below. Let us start with dismantling the JJ Flyover, that long and unnecessary tapeworm, and then, one by one, work our way northwards.

Time Out Mumbai- Inert Deco

This piece appeared in a slightly edited version in my 'After Words' column in Time Out Mumbai,  Volume 9 Issue 21, June  7-20, 2013.

Inert Deco

It’s about time, I think, that we stopped referring to a particular type of building in Mumbai as ‘Art Deco’. This appellation only trivialises our city’s urban fabric and some of its most loved icons, and could, in fact be the cause of its ultimate ruination. We should, simply and correctly, refer to these structures and precincts as ‘Bombay’s architecture from the 30s and 40s’. Even the name- Art Deco, is anachronistic. It came into common parlance retrospectively, in the 1960s.

We tend to look at the buildings like the ones along the Oval Maidan or Marine Drive, especially at their external ornament, colour and fancy grille-work, and call this the Art Deco Style. It was hardly surprising when; very recently, a former member of the heritage committee and a senior architect made light of the Marine Drive buildings and their purported style by saying that even a coffin can be made in the Art Deco style. Such a view is superficial; it is as if Art Deco can be applied to any building, like an ointment. This implies that buildings occupied for several generations can be demolished and rebuilt, provided they are then overlaid with the selfsame external ornament, colour and fancy grille-work.

In an earlier column, I had talked about how some places in our city are well mannered. The best examples of urban etiquette in Mumbai come from the two decades leading to Indian independence. This was the time of reclamation (first the Backbay, then the Marine Drive) and the laying out of plotted precincts that led to a building boom. This resulted in a lot of architecture, not only at the Oval or the Marine Drive, but also at Mohammed Ali Road, Phirozeshah Mehta Road and the Dadar/ Matunga/ Five-Garden areas. This was a time when office buildings like the United Insurance or New India Assurance, cinema houses like the Regal, Eros and Metro, and the many new-fangled apartment blocks from Napean Sea Road to Chembur were designed as both foci and fabric. With bursts of streamlined concrete, they defined the optimism of metropolitan life, tempered with the ‘zara hatke, zara bachke’ nature of Bombay meri jaan. These harmonious ground plus three buildings lining our streets form our image of the city even today. To see them isolated of their context and re-imagined only as wallpaper is to do them a profound disservice.

What is Art Deco after all? The Oval Maidan buildings form Bombay’s most famous stretch. These twenty or so apartments (with Eros as full-stop) were all built in just three years, from 1935 to 1938. They are the most ornate, with motifs of chevrons, ziggurats and frozen fountains, painted in bright pastels. Other buildings from the 1940s are far less ‘jazzy’ but are relevant nevertheless as icons of that era. Many office buildings are formal stone piles, while cinema houses are specially designed with striking verticals and ocean-liner horizontals, punctuated with spaces for the marquee. These buildings are numerous and varied, but the one constant is not their style (whatever you want to call it) but their urban placement, the manner in which they line the streets and circles that connect the city like a neural network. In most cases these buildings abut the road directly with no setbacks or gated edges. They belong to everybody.

There was a time when several of these buildings were protected as heritage. Now, under new dispensations, individual rights completely overshadow collective responsibility, so any of these buildings may be demolished and rebuilt with all benefits accrued, should the occupants desire so. Who can stop a multi-storey building emerging out of the seventy year old harmonies of the Marine Drive? That would be depriving its inhabitants of the benefits of FSI, TDR, and other fungibles and, in any case, we can take a forty storey building and Art Decofy it, no?

That is the problem with labels and names; they tend to obscure context and relevance by offering mental shortcuts to take the place of critical thought. Give a dog a bad name and hang him. An Art Deco building is no longer inviolate. By extension, neither are any of the buildings from the 30s and 40s. Full page adverts front our newspapers every day, pushing new building proposals in the Spanish Hacienda style or the Swiss Chalet style, or the all purpose Classical style, so Art Deco is just another surface solution to assuage fears of wanton urban destruction. I would not be surprised to see proposals of skyscraper sized Art Deco coffins in tomorrow’s dailies. After all, the tallest building in the world for several decades- the Empire State Building was an Art Deco building too.

Time Out Mumbai- Hindi Picchers

This piece appeared in a slightly edited version in my 'After Words' column in Time Out Mumbai,  Volume 9 Issue 18, April 26-May 9 2013.

Hindi Picchers

Indian Cinema is a 100 years old. I have been around for approximately half that time. I can measure my life out in matinee shows (do they even call it that anymore?). My back-story begins, so I am told, with my sleeping through most of ‘Shikar’ (1968). My mum would wake me whenever the tiger made an appearance and I would make loud growling sounds, irritating all the other Dharmendra fans. I was four.

In the same year, I was given a choice of seeing either ‘Brahmachari’ (chakke pe chakka) or ‘Raja aur Runk’. I chose the latter as I already knew Mark Twain’s ‘The Prince and the Pauper’, read out to me from Classics Illustrated comics. I still haven’t seen ‘Brahmachari’, except for the song where Mumtaz in a cut-off saffron sari shakes a jelly belly.

In the late 60s, movies came to us through advertising rather than actual movie going. As a schoolboy, my eyes were stabbed by the flash of psychedelic hand-painted billboards of ‘Hare Krishna Hare Ram’ (1971) and ‘Bobby’ (1973). One poster I can never forget is of ‘Bhoot Bangala’ (1965) with its skeletons doing the twist and Tanuja screaming on the Radio Cinema; a rerun, in a rundown theatre. Radio would make its way to dusty death in 1974, to be replaced by the pyro-happy Manish Market, home of ‘do number ka maal’.

I readily believed in ghosts for several years after, an obsession fuelled weekly by very cinematic radio plays called ‘Adbhut Kahaniyaan’ on Vividh Bharati. Radio is where we got our primary movie education. New movies would be presented in 15 minute ‘radio-programs’. The phrase ‘kitne aadmi the?’ was on everyone’s lips much before ‘Sholay’ opened on 15th August 1975, thanks mainly to the radio, our very own social media. Television was something we knew of only by reading American Gold Key Comics.

Television (1972) brought with it the back catalogue of films (from the 40s to the most recent) which we assiduously imbibed every Sunday evening at a convenient neighbour’s house, and learnt songs by heart every Thursday with ‘Chhayageet’ and antakshari. Hindi films (and advertising) also educated us in Urdu. Even as a child I knew some impressive words- ‘Aalingan’, ‘Ulfat’, ‘Jwar Bhata’, ‘Salaakhen’, ‘Saawan Bhadon’.

It is lesser known, but world cinema was regularly telecast on Bombay Doordarshan in the 1970’s. I vividly remember every ‘bloody’ scene from Chabrol’s ‘Le Boucher’ (1970) telecast in B/W when I was 8 or 9. Even after television, radio-programs for films would survive well into the 1980s, when the Asian Games, colour TV and Delhi Doordarshan killed all civilised programming that once came out of Bombay’s Worli studios. The memes of popular cinema continued as songs, thanks to Radio Ceylon and toothpaste. Ameen Sayani would host the weekly ‘Binaca Geet Mala’ right until 1988.

Seeing movies was something we took for granted in our fledgling years. All movies ran at the same time- 3.30, 6.30 and 9.30 pm, while children’s films had matinee shows at 10.30am. I saw 3 movies a day several times, especially in college, hopping from theatre to theatre all located near Bombay VT.

Even the prices were mostly the same: cheap seats were the Lower and Upper Stalls, the Balcony was costlier and the Dress Circle the costliest. A carryover from the days of drama, many of Bombay’s cinemas were converted playhouses, which meant that sometimes you had to hope that you wouldn’t get a seat with a column in front of you.

Movies were like comfort food. They would begin with advertisements, the Indian News Review, a Films Division Documentary, the trailers (forthcoming attractions) and a cartoon, all before the main (feature) film started. We missed none of these pleasures.

Hindi picchers were to die for. I waited 2 days straight in line for a ticket of ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’ (1977) and went back home disappointed after reading ‘House-full’ in every seating slot just above the booking window. I had to content myself with radio-programs for several weeks before I finally witnessed the awesomeness of Manmohan Desai’s magnum opus (but I knew all the dialogues before that). Do movies ever go ‘House-full’ anymore?

Seeing a movie ‘First Day First Show’ was a matter of peer pressure. We could not believe how one bunch of kids in school always managed to do that. They would gleefully commit the unforgivable sin of telling you the story and ruin everything. We hated them.

The only movie I managed to see in all its First Day First Show glory was Attenborough’s ‘Gandhi’ (1982) at the Regal. We got lucky, buying tickets from the ‘panch ka pachhees-wallahs’ at no extra cost because on an unusual police presence. Of course, this hardly a story we could tell the next day to those smug so-and-so’s and return the favour.

Time Out- Weighty Tomes

This piece appeared in a slightly edited version in the March 29-April 11 2013 (Vol.9 Issue 16)  issue of Time Out Mumbai in my After Words column.

Weighty Tomes

Bibliophiles in Mumbai are currently having their Bull-in-a-Chinashop moment. Sundarabai Hall, that cavern on Marine Lines, home to the book exhibition since yonks, is hosting one where books are being sold by the kilo. Yes, that’s right. No typo.

After several friends made me sufficiently jealous with tales of treasures they had trawled, and the pittance they had paid, I could not stay away.

Normally, a visit to a book exhibition is a slightly ‘posh’ activity, where aficionados move in slow-motion along the stacks, eye-ball the merchandise, stop occasionally to flip a page or two, glance at the back cover, look at the price and more than usually move on. The deliberations are like that of an English high tea, all ritual and gesture. It is not so much about buying books, but about basking in their presence. Here, in contrast, the scene was like a rag-pickers paradise painted by Goya. The many, many visitors scurried from table to table, weighed down by baskets filled with books, giving everyone else the evil eye.

This was a paradigm shift, for when book are sold by weight, any concern about the content becomes secondary to the probability of ownership. The stacks were nominally separated by books for children, fiction, non-fiction, encyclopaedias and suchlike, but had no finer divisions. Those who asked the management for another copy of a particular book were given wan smiles in recompense. What you see is what you get. Also, inherently embedded: garbage in, garbage out.

Not immune to the thought of paying a hundred rupees per kilo, I tucked in myself, and was soon amazed and appalled by my own desires over-riding sense. In such a situation, the only book that you would potentially not buy was one you already have. But dear reader, I bested myself, by buying one or two of the books that already line my shelves at home. Pavlov would have loved to jump out of his grave and take behavioural sampling,  for like a dog that salivates conditioned by the sound of a bell, I filled my basket within no time.

The smart ones in the crowd had worked out that they could get a bigger bang for their buck by choosing paperbacks over hardcovers (again, the more fool me, who bought seven kilos of only hardbacks). On the other hand, this was the moment to go after those weighty tomes that would have been untenable in any other exhibition (cum-sale) of books.

So, at the end of an hour and a half in the company of more books than I could reasonably count, and of more people I took an instant dislike to because of the contents of their baskets (that I coveted), I emerged into the mid-morning haze of a Mumbai summer, lighter of purse but proud daddy to a newborn, overweight pack of books (no plastic bags).

Now that I was out, and had unburdened my load on the seat beside me in a taxi ferrying me homewards, I rubbed life back into my hands and contemplated the books I now owned. But did I really need them? Life-lessons were learned. Should you wish to follow my path, these you should know:

When buying books by weight, you do not bring either the age of the book or its current condition into consideration. It is simply- do you want the book or not?

Either you pick it up or someone else will. As the grand sage Yoda says: do, or do not.

Many of the books are familiar. But there is no point ruing the fact that you had seen this book on the road at Flora Fountain for ten rupees thirty years ago, but you did not buy it then, either.

You can judge a book by its cover. If it is attractive and shiny, pick it up. What is inside can to be seen to when you get home.

Yes, your home is already filled with books. Yes, your shelves have long since been outgrown and stacks are piled your spouse’s side of your bed, but so what? One kilo for one hundred rupees, bleddy!

Please do not get into petty issues like- will you read the book when you buy it? No true bibliophile buys books only to read, come on!

It’s all right if you do not pick up 'The Da Vinci Code’. They published far too many of those than were needed, anyway.

Do not think of the behind the scenes business model of this kind of sale. What the organizers make out of this is none of your business. Just think: is your basket full, and do you want another?

I am home now, and it is more than a week since my purchases. My book stack still is unopened. What’s the hurry? I kind of like it, just the way it is.

Time Out- Loo Brow

This piece was published in Time Out Mumbai's After Words (Vol 9, Issue 13; February 15-28 2013) in a slightly edited version.

Loo brow
No loo is too loo-brow for me to give it custom.

Being blessed with far too much weight and far too weak a bladder, I follow the only injunction I hold to be the one truth- when you have to go you have to go. I therefore have no qualms about the smell, the wetness, the ability of the flush to work, or the sight of previous detritus. Can’t afford them. All this and more can be bypassed if I am able to pass some myself.

I have, more or less mastered the art of standing tippy-toe on dryer patches of a public toilet, managing with a bag in one or both hands, and not being excessively prissy if the loo does not have a door latch. Bodily privacy does not amount to much when it comes to bodily priority and evacuation is imminent.

When it comes to going for the ‘big one’, I go down on my knees (bad choice of words here) and thank providence for a decade of apprenticeship that I had, of living in a chawl with common toilets. Over the years, I mastered the art of doing my thing with a single, approx. three-fourths of a litre, ‘tim-pat’ (tin-pot) of water. This included washing to satisfaction and saving some for flushing after (in deference to the next-in-line). This rigour has stood me in good stead when I needed, no, when I had to go behind a rock outcrop near the Khardungla Pass (17,582 ft.) with a bottle of Bisleri, or to similarly not embarrass myself, and others, numerous times when on the road.

I am not complaining, but I have also had access on occasion to upmarket loos too. I remember being utterly impressed by the newly minted ones in the Inox at Nariman Point when that multiplex opened its doors. It was all glitter and glam, just like going to the movies, but only for valid ticket holders. I have visited the ultra swank bogs at the Royal Opera House in Muscat, complete with gilt signage of a man in Omani national dress and its squatting-type WC’s that shone like burnish’d gold. Damn it all, we all grew up to treat the ground floor loo (to the left) at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel near the Gateway as the public toilet of choice in our growing up years, didn’t we?. That one of course is no longer of use when the urge is too strong; the time you spend getting frisked and patted down could lead to a disaster having national consequences.

How a body is able to manage in Mumbai’s streets is another thing altogether. Loo-lore of the location and proximity of public conveniences is vitally important to my well being when I go about my daily work. This is of no help at all in places I do not normally frequent, where such knowledge is unavailable. Mumbai has no signage in her grand outdoors that indicates where a toilet is located. Even if you wished to throw all civic sense and propriety to the wind, in our densely occupied streets there are few alleys or shielding walls offering the possibility of unseen micturation. The undersides of flyovers, those puke-inducing pools of putridity have also been appropriated now for pay and park purposes.

Thank you for reading thus far. You must know that I am of the male persuasion, and that these are profound urban inconveniences that I find myself subject to. Now imagine being a woman with similar needs on Mumbai’s unhelpful streets.

Mumbai needs many more accessible toilets for both men and women than it needs urban transport, redevelopment or any other form of aspirational pipe-dreams. It needs them as first priority, placed visibly, and with it the signage and directions for immediate and easy access. It needs them at frequent enough intervals so that long lines do not form outside them. It needs them with doors that latch and with hooks for bags.

I would like to see the day that the Chief Minister proudly proclaims (on TV, on Twitter and in print) that Mumbai has more loos than Shanghai. It is no excuse that loos are not built because maintaining them is difficult. You might not like to hear this, but Mumbai needs public toilets first, their hygiene and cleanliness can follow.

Time Out Mumbai- Long Cut

This piece was published in Time Out Mumbai's Back of the Book (Vol 9, Issue 10; January 4-17 2013) in a slightly edited version.


Long Cut

I pull up the Kharghar Skywalk on Google Earth. It was recently thrown open to public, after the inevitable delay for want of a suitable politician.

Touted as the longest skywalk in India, I measure with a divider (you know what that is) placed gingerly on my laptop. I mark off Kharghar Station; long enough for a 12 bogie train, and compare this with the skywalk. It is six times longer than the station, running a length of 5340 feet. Five times longer than the Eiffel Tower laid on its side and just about 500 feet shorter than the Golden Gate Bridge, here is a missed opportunity that I can only attribute to a certain laziness in doing a Google search.

Elevated walkways are not new to Mumbai. The foot-over bridge (paad-chaari pul) is the humble progenitor, and has been around since local trains gained custom. The new skywalks are most efficient when plugged into these venerable bridges, allowing commuters to cross above fast moving traffic that inevitably obstructs the fronts of stations. Both foot-overs and skywalks are meant to be perpendicular crossings over train tracks or over busy vehicular roads. 

Consider this absurdity: at Kharghar, first one climbs down to a subway under the tracks, then one climbs up out of it, after which one trudges up 20 feet or so to the cable-stayed bridge that fords the fast flowing NH4. Then, this steel worm drags on and on for a kilometre and a half flanking the highway into Kharghar triumphantly upending at Utsav Chowk. What purpose does a long and winding skywalk serve parallel to a highway? Could there not have been a decent footpath instead, lined with shade giving trees and occasional park benches? Of course, but then it would not have cost Rs.36 crores. What’s the fun then?

Skywalks in Mumbai set the trend for running along existing footpaths. Much of the Bandra skywalk and the one at Cotton Green do this. So does the skywalk at Sion, disconnected from the station just a short distance away. The Ville Parle Skywalk runs for 1500 feet over the very road that accesses the station. There is duplication and redundancy to these costly urban interventions. Left to themselves, pedestrians choose the geodesic- the shortest line between any two points, accounting for local obstructions. These over time become common-law crossings. Urban planners call these ‘desire lines’.  Mumbaikars have a less highfaluting name - ‘short-cut’. We also use its opposite, one that nobody opts for, if avoidable- ‘long-cut’. That is what most of skywalks are, and that is why they fail. No one chooses a long-cut.

The long-cut is acutely felt in the climb up to these skywalks. Most decks are at a height of 18 feet, to account for container-trucks and double-decker buses. The MMRDA also acquiesced to the demand of Ganesh Mandals to raise the deck-heights along the processional paths by another three feet, making a climb of twenty feet or more. This means forty to fifty steps with two or three mid-landings before one reaches the deck. With neither elevators nor escalators, no wonder your grand-mum will prefer the risk of vehicular demise, and take the short-cut below.

The skywalk, emerges from some rather specious thinking about pedestrian benefit is an example of the vast and not so visible reclamation that has currently beset our city. Unlike before, when land was reclaimed from the sea, land is now reclaimed from land itself. All over the world, cities are being reclaimed for pedestrians- highways are reconsidered, subways are filled up, even train lines, as in New York’s High Line are redesigned as public spaces. In Mumbai, the powers that be come up with this: if you can’t clear a path, build one over it. Smart, no? 

What is even smarter is the fringe benefit- spaces for rent. Not for accommodation, but for hoardings. Right from the first skywalk at Bandra, this was obvious. Today, benefits accrued from leasing out billboard real-estate come close to offsetting the costs of the skywalks themselves. Look at Kharghar again, with its 5340 feet running length. Now, multiply by two. What do you get? Chaandi.

Time Out Mumbai- Good manners

This piece was published in Time Out Mumbai's After words (Vol 9, Issue 8; December 7-20, 2012) in a slightly edited version.

Good Manners

Can architecture have good manners? Architects and urbanists have debated this for more than a century, ever since the idea of new towns was conceived. In Mumbai too, there is evidence of urban etiquette, but to see it you need to focus a bit. We have come to accept the notion that Mumbai is an unplanned, an accretive city. Not entirely. For a century, several precincts and neighbourhoods within it have been deliberately planned, to create better conditions for living. Look at some parts of apna shahar on Google Earth. You’ll see what I mean. After the dark years of plague in the 1890s, the city fathers set up the City Improvement Trust, and created several new neighbourhoods to the north, in contrast to the congested and compact ‘native city’. These precincts had wide roads and well spread out plots. They accounted for the rise of vehicular traffic while emphasising the need for green lungs. Five Gardens at Matunga is probably its best surviving example.

The impetus for this piece came from a discussion with a friend researching the social mores of the inner city. Why are some buildings curved, she asked? The answer, my friend, is because they are well mannered. Curved buildings are evidence that there is a town planning authority at work. When plots were laid out, the corners of streets always turned a quarter-circle, never a right angle to accommodate a turning radius for cars. Buildings on such plots swept along the two roads with a curved front. Enforced initially by building regulations for frontages, this resulted in built harmonies along streets. Walking along some of these streets is a delight even today. Good manners are something you expect, and anticipate. There is a special charm to a curved building that matches your urban perception, a comforting notion that things are as they should be.

A corner building also gets the privilege of being iconic - it can be seen from three sides unlike the next one in line which has to be content with one. They locate places in your memory. You describe them while giving directions. These buildings can surprise and delight when encountered for the first time. Take Hornby View on Gunbow Street, with its shorter semicircular end sharply bisecting the street. Its rousing Art Deco features emphasise the corner, while the inviting doorway leads straight into Ideal Restaurant, home of Dhan Dar Patiyo. We have many such urban delights- Empress Court on the Oval has streamlined curves, one of G B Mhatre’s best, while at the end of the road Eros, with its curved, turreted, marquee-end provides a most satisfying full stop.

Sometimes the buildings bow in reverse, in concave arcs like D. R. Chowdhary’s Yogakshema at Nariman Point, sweeping inwards to encompass the garden in front. So do the Venetian Gothic buildings flanking Hornimann Circle with their pioneering covered arcades. But, if I was pressed to choose one above the rest it would surely be the Jehangir Art Gallery, whose arced front, shell canopy and entrance steps on the street makes it the best mannered building in Mumbai.

Curved buildings also have a functional advantage when it comes to security. ‘The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers must be oriented to the street’ says urbanist Jane Jacobs. She prescribes ‘eyes upon the street’ belonging to those who live there. Typically, a curved building with windows on three sides allows for better surveillance, keeping the immediate surroundings safe. There is no blind side.

Ironically, Mumbai’s curved geometries are evidence of its past, not its present. Its built etiquette withered with time, and died an unlamented death in the seventies with the introduction of FSI. Rectangular buildings were designed on corner plots and cylindrical ones on rectangular ones- an expression of architects’ originality. Today, when the worldly ambition is to squeeze out the last inch of FSI or lay on as much extra TDR as can be mustered, good manners in architecture are not the first (or the last) thing that comes to mind.