Urban Bawl 7: Hate Story

An edited version of this piece is the seventh in the series of my Urban Bawl columns in Time Out Mumbai for their 'Back of the Book' page.
This is published in the May 11-24 2012  (Vol 8 Issue 19) issue of Time Out Mumbai.

Hate Story

I don’t really hate my city, though-

I am concerned that we have more than enough resources to change the city, but hardly any to preserve it. That our urban memory does not seem to go deeper that our last Facebook update. That we have suddenly become hypersensitive about our rights as citizens but lackadaisical about our responsibilities.

I am worried that every square inch of our city is fair game for builder/speculators; including the house I live in. That it is acceptable to demolish a 5 storey building only 5 years old to build a 40 storey new one, thanks to the toppings provided by 33/7, rehab components, TDR and relaxed FSI.

I find it ironical we believe that the densest neighbourhood in the world, Kalbadevi, can be further densified by cluster development. That Chor Bazaar will inevitably become a thing of the past. That the balcony has already become a thing of the past.

I think it hypocritical that Mumbaikars complain about how filthy our slums are, when Mumbai itself does not have a culture of separating its garbage into wet and dry compartments.

I am outraged that a skywalk from CST to Churchgate could even be contemplated. That congestion on our streets can be resolved just by building another street over it. In fact, our general belief that all the problems of the city can be solved by more building.

I am filled with wonder that, on the one hand we hope that 3 compartment elevated trains with automatically closing doors will bring down overcrowding in trains, while at the same time older platforms are being extended to fit 15 dabba trains. That I live in that part of the city where rickshawallahs have never plied by the meter, yet go on strike each time the minimum fare needs to be raised.

I am disgusted that Churchgate station needed to be tarted up with public funds to become an ugly, blister-packed carbuncle. And yet, we still snigger at Antilla whenever it is mentioned.

I think it is silly that public art in our city can only be designated as such by fencing it off and putting a label on it. Come February, I dread seeing the pastiche soup of installations at Kala Ghoda that will inevitably send me into deep depression until approximately the same time next year. That the second most photographed building in the country, the Bombay Stock Exchange, needs a monstrous neon sign proclaiming that it is, in fact, the Bombay Stock Exchange.

I despair that it nearly impossible to get a couple of decent fried eggs in the city. That the local Udipi charges me Rs.16 for a cup of tea and Rs.50 for a Sada Dosa. That the Wayside Inn has already become a thing of the past.

I live for the day when cinema theatres will display slides in BIG BOLD letters that say: ‘Turn your f***ing phone off right now, Bhen****!’ before the movie begins. Same is true for announcements in local train compartments, instead of ‘Pudcha Station- Currey Road’ in 3 languages.

I am cross that I have to pass through at least three security filters before I can use the loo at the Taj, which has always been the convenience of choice when I am in the vicinity.

Saadat Hassan Manto: What I write

To celebrate the centenary of Saadat Hassan Manto (11 May 1912), I have translated a piece he wrote towards the end of his life in Pakistan, where he discusses the subjects of writing that interest him. 

What I Write 

(Main kya Likhtaa Hoon)

by

Sa'adat Hassan Manto

translated by 

Mustansir Dalvi

Why do I write? That’s like asking me why I eat... why I drink... but look at it this way: I have to spend money to eat or to drink, but when I write I have to give nothing away in cash.

But if I examine this deeply, I realise that this line of thinking is wrong, and I sustain my writing by money alone.

Obviously, if I don’t get food or drink, my body will weaken to a state that I can no longer hold a pen in my hand. It is possible, even in my famished state, my mind may work, but it is necessary that my hand works too. If the hand is too weak to function, the tongue, at least, should give voice. What a tragedy it is that one cannot do anything without food or drink.

Art is given such a high status that it is elevated to the seventh heaven. But isn’t it true that every worthy and important thing is dependent on a dry scrap of bread?

I write because I have something to say. I write, so that I can earn enough to be able to say something.

It’s strange, this relation between bread and art, but what is to be done if this is what God wills? He positions Himself neutrally from all things, but this is wrong. He is most certainly not neutral. He desires your supplication. And supplication is a very soft and delicate roti... why, it can be said that your supplication is like a roti lubricated with ghee with which He fills his belly.

If the lady next door deigns to be beaten up by her husband every day, and cleans his shoes nevertheless, then she does not elicit any sympathy within me. But if the lady next door fights with her husband, threatens to kill herself and then goes off to the movies, and I am able to see her husband fret and fulminate for an hour or two, then I feel a weird sort of empathy for them both.

If a boy falls in love with a girl, it’s as if I had a mild cold, I couldn’t be bothered. But the boy would certainly grab my attention if he declared that despite the many, many girls willing to die for him, he feels a dryness in his heart like a drought-stricken denizen from Bengal. If I could ever feel the tragic sobs bubbling under the colourful love stories of this self-proclaimed Romeo, my heart would seek him out, and I would tell his story to anyone who would listen.

Any woman who grinds grain for the whole day and goes to sleep without a care can never be a heroine in my stories. My heroine can be an well-worn whore. A whore who stays awake at night and, during the day sometimes awakes in horror from her slumber with the nightmare thought that old age shall soon come knocking at her door. Her heavy drooping eyelids, weary with years of waiting to sleep can be the subject of my story. I like the thought of her infirmities, her illnesses, her irritations, her gaalis, I write about these things, and I prefer to ignore the religious rectitude, the good health and the cultivated propriety of housewives.

Saadat Hassan Manto writes because this God is not the greatest poet or teller of tales, but it is the regard for Him that makes Him so.

I am aware that I have a big personality and that in Urdu literary circles I am very well regarded. If I was not self-opinionated like this, it would be even harder to go through life. But for me, it is a fact that I cannot put aside that I have never been able to find my proper place in my homeland, which goes by the name of Pakistan. This is keeps my soul unsettled. This leads me to stay in a madhouse sometimes and in a hospital at other times.

I am often asked why I do not get rid of my chronic alcoholism. I have given away a full three quarters of my life to indulgence. And it has led me to this- I have to stay in a madhouse sometimes and in a hospital at other times.

I think that leading a life of abstinence is like being in jail. Leading a life full of indulgence is also like being in jail. What we have to do, in some form or the other, is to hang on to a strand of this unravelling rope and keep going. That’s all.

                                                                                                                 

Translation (c) Mustansir Dalvi, 2012 All rights reserved

Kala Ghoda Ver. 2.0

Once, just once in a while, does our city give back to its citizens. More through serendipity than through design, but who are we to complain? A new al-fresco space has been made accessible to the public at large, taking them off the streets around Kala Ghoda and elevating them one level above it, and allowing for a new vantage point from which to observe the beating, beating heart of South Bombay.

Through a an act of munificence, veteran photographer Kakubhai Kothari has set up a simple new gallery on the terrace of the Jehangir Art Gallery devoted exclusively to photography. The Gallery is itself small, an asymmetrical room of one straight and one curved wall, enough to hang about 24 midsized frames. This space was, for many years, the former studio of the water colorist who would sign his work as, simply 'Chetan'. Now back in the possession of the Jehangir management, this reconverted space shall, hopefully, be the venue for many exhibitions of photographs. The first one, appropriately enough, is by Kothari himself and he has put up several large unframed images of tigers that he photographed in the Bandhavgad, Sariska and Tadoba reserves.

What supersedes the new gallery, to me, is the terrace itself that I have to first traverse to get to the photographs. Reaching the top, having climbed the refurbished steel staircase next to the Samover, I realize how large the terrace is, and (reflecting the lobby and galleries below) how it is broken up into several footprints. It is currently, perhaps quaintly, carpeted over (see image) but I doubt this will last the monsoon. Nevertheless, (and am I speaking too soon here?) there is a potential for this space to be put to use in a variety of ways, should the management appreciate this.

Standing on the terrace looking to the West, I can observe life in the Kala Ghoda parking lot. In this, I am not alone. The lot has, for more than a century now, been overseen by a portentous head of Sir David Sassoon,
"...stuck like a schmuck up here
-an ahmaq.
a certified keer-e-khar –
                                (David Sassoon)
I can now see the old man eye to eye, as he sticks his “pilloried head/ out of a medallion/ in the pediment above the archway...” of the building formerly known as the Mechanics Institute. The Army and Navy Building and the Elphinstone College on either side make up the line of neo-Gothic edifices, whose details one can appreciate better from this crow's nest. There is the precarious Watson's Hotel that I fervently pray will not collapse just because I am looking at it. From beyond, I can clearly hear the bongs from the clock tower named after Premchand Roychand's mum calling the faithful to paryushan. To the east looms the other tower, named after another Jeejeebhoy, aka the Bombay Stock Exchange, and I wonder why India's second most photographed building needed to have a monstrous neon sign capping it, just to tell me of its provenance as Babel and Sodom Inc.

But best of all, I can turn my head up and look up into nothingness, unafraid of getting run over, propositioned, or hauled up for loitering.
Arun Kolhatkar had the same idea:
"This is the time of day I like best,
and this is the hour
when I can call this city my own;
when I like nothing better
than to lie down here, at the exact centre
of this traffic island..." 
                                  (Pi-dog)

But I find myself at a point somewhat removed from the centre of the lot both along the x and the z axis, and I am overwhelmed with a desire to lie down on my back on the carpet and stare at the waning, pink rippled dusk. I stop myself, of course, out of a sense of decorousness. There are too many people around. A couple with far too many children are making their way up the stairs after asking whether there is anything to see. There is. The best thing about the Jehangir Art Gallery is its stellar location. The second best thing is that it is a space that has always been free to all. This terrace could be the harbinger of an opportunity to become another welcome public space.

This said, I have some hopes too:
I hope that the terrace space will always remain open.

I hope that the newly created gallery shall always be dedicated to the display of photography.

I hope that the terrace will inspire installations specific to the opportunities the site offers.

I hope that the management of Jehangir will consider some light trelliswork to shelter visitors during the summer months.

I hope that the edges of the terrace shall not be barricaded with safety features that obscure the views of the streets below.

I hope that this space will be made available for lectures and performances in addition to displays of art, and that these shall never be made exclusive.

I hope better sense (and taste) shall prevail, especially during the Kala Ghoda Festival, unlike the ritualistic buggering up that happens once every year of the parking lot below.

I hope that Samovar shall be allowed to set up an al-fresco eating place. There is enough space for this.

I hope the skyline that we grew up with and loved will never be obliterated because of DC Rule 33/7.

I hope the sky may never fall on my head.

“A twig! A twig! A twig! A twig!
You got it! You got it! You got it!
It’s all yours now.
You can take it away 
Anytime you want
But first, examine it.”
(To a Crow)



(All the excerpted lines are from Arun Kolhatkar’s Kala Ghoda Poems, 2004, Pras)

Iqbal's 'Taking Issue & Allah's Answer', translated by Mustansir Dalvi

Taking Issue & Allah’s Answer

(Shikwa & Jawaab-e-Shikwa)

by

Muhammad Iqbal

translated by

Mustansir Dalvi 

published by

Penguin Modern Classics

Advance information about an an elegant contemporary translation of Iqbal’s 

two most important and controversial poems 'Shikwa and Jawaab-e-Shikwa'.

‘His couplets urge us to live dangerously. 

We are to be stone, not glass;

diamonds, not dewdrops; 

tigers, not sheep...’

E. M. Forster

THE BOOK

When Muhammad Iqbal first recited Shikwa (Taking Issue) in 1909, his audience was enraged by his effrontery. Iqbal, in his lament, took issue with Allah directly, audaciously implicating Him for the sorry state of Muslims worldwide and ruing the lost glory of Islam. 

In recompense, Iqbal composed Jawaab-e-Shikwa (Allah's Answer) in 1913. Here, Allah responds to the poet, first berating his community, then offering hope for Islam in the world. Iqbal's mellifluous words greatly assuaged those angered earlier. 

Over time, the poems have found their place in the canon of South Asian literature, and throough recitation, repetition and selective use, have forwarded a variety of agendas in the subcontinent.

In this elegant translation by Mustansir Dalvi, these classics by the most influential poet of his generation come alive once again in a language that is contemporary and immediate.

Muhammad Iqbal

Muhammad Iqbal(1877-1938) is best remembered in India for ‘Saare jahaan se achchha’, recited to this day as an alternate anthem. A preeminent poet of India in the early twentieth century, he eulogised the land and its peoples with his mellifluous verse. 

He published several collections, including Bang-e-dara (1924), Javed-nama (1932) and Baale-Jibreel (1935). In his later years he became the voice of Islam in India, advocating its causes through his writings, particularly ‘The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam' (1930), his poetry and public speeches.

THE TRANSLATOR

Mustansir Dalvi is a poet and architect based in Bombay.

The Urdu text is present along the English translation in Roman transliteration

Category: Modern Classics/ Poetry

Format: B

Binding: Paperback

Extent: 184pp

Imprint: Penguin

Territory: World

Scheduled date of Publication: May 2012

ISBN: 9780143416852

Price: Rs.299

First Post Mumbai: How adaptive technology can bridge Mumbai's housing Divide

Here is an excerpt from my new column on FirstPost.Com:

How Mumbai’s pucca house dream got a quick fix

for full article , click on link above.

excerpt:
"In Mumbai, more people build for themselves than approach builders for ready-made units. With more than 60 percent of its citizens living in self-built housing, this is self evident. They are beyond the pale of Mumbailopolis at large because of their location in designated slums — areas that, to other 40 percent, are the blight seen from the airplane. Spaces and communities to be eliminated as part of official policy in a decade or so.


It is these very areas that are experiencing a construction boom like never before. Those who live here are now part of the city’s middle-classdom, having made enough capital through enterprise and labour. They can construct a pucca home — an expression of their aspirations and optimism."

This is the way the city ends

This is the way the city ends,
this is the way the city ends,
this is the way the city ends,
not with a bang, but a whimper...






image © Mustansir Dalvi, 2012, all rights reserved.

Urban Bawl 6: Sniffing Books

An edited version of this piece is the sixth in the series of my Urban Bawl columns in Time Out Mumbai for their 'Back of the Book' page.

This is published in the March 30-April 12 2012  (Vol 8 Issue 16) issue of Time Out Mumbai.

Sniffing Books

The news that the final curtain was brought down on the print edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica brought back memories of how central its weighty, leather-spined volumes were to libraries. My school library had a set, as did my college, the colleges I taught in and teach in now. The grand old public libraries of the city- the British Council and the American Centre had a set too; the American had Encyclopaedia Americana to boot.  Just as the Britannica was central to these libraries; these libraries were central to our city. Their recent passing into avatars that have left them but a shadow of their former selves has been a matter of great regret. What is a library if you cannot go there; books, if you cannot touch them and there are no pages left to sniff?

You need a library (or two) to bookend your life. You need the comfort of interminable shelving to know that all is right with this world. You need to smell the pages- tangy new ones and musty yellowed ones, the odour of familiarity wafting around while you immersed yourself. Even those corners of the libraries, where it seemed no one ventured (like the dusty shelves with the encyclopaedias), held a special place in your heart. 

All through the eighties and much of the nineties, the BCL and the American were my special vice. I was addicted enough to make weekly visits to these dens of intellectual stimulation. Having a sturdy jhola was as important to my existence then as a smartphone is today. I would walk from VT to the American Centre,  pick up four books; walk to the British Council (eat the best pav-bhaji in town just outside Maker Chambers), issue another four books and lug all eight all the way back to VT- the jhola strap slicing into my shoulder could not erase the smile on my face.

In those cycles of eight, I was to befriend Kurt Vonnegut Jr., John Irving, James Michener, Allen Drury, Arthur C. Clarke, Harlan Ellison, Tom Wolfe, Art Buchwald, Carl Sagan... where do I stop? It occurs to me that you can discover new authors only in libraries, through chance encounter and serendipity. The lack of lasting liabilities makes for easy friendships. In a bookshop one is much more deliberate and guarded; your wallet governs the spreading of affection to such books and authors that you have not been formally introduced to. Even the smaller lending libraries in the city- Abbas at King's Circle being the most loved, allowed you the illicit pleasure of spending time with those most addictive and prolific of writers- Stephen King, Tom Clancy or Lawrence Sanders. You see, a P G Wodehouse was for buying. Tom Clancy on the other hand was for a good read and return.

We are the sum total of all we read, or have read in our growing years. The passing of libraries have left us bereft and anchorless. They have, and that is some consolation, been replaced by some monster bookstores (like the one in 'You've Got Mail') - Landmark and Crossword. But, ask yourself this: are you more likely to read a book through if you borrowed it from a library or if you bought the book outright? 

First Post Mumbai: The Body on the Street

My new column on FirstPost.Com:
Published Date: Mar 07, 2012 11:09 am | Updated Date: Mar 07, 2012 03:51 pm

Kuber Sarup case: We’re just bodies on Mumbai’s moral streets
for full article , click on link above.

What is the worth of an individual body on the streets of Mumbai?

Not much. 
In our public places, our bodies are governed by two standards: the rule of law, which disallows 'indecent behaviour' and the rule of Khap, which disallows everything. The nuances between the two are frequently ambiguous, as is seen in the case of Kuber Sarup who was booked by a policeman for perceived indecency while saying his goodbyes to a female colleague.

His ordeal tells you that your body, in public, is not your own. If at all it needs to be outdoors, it must be positioned appropriately. Ideally, so our city implies — stay at home. If you must come out, do so for a reason, and get off the streets as soon as possible. Watch Fritz Lang's Metropolis to learn the proper slumped posture for a public presence.

Any expression beyond the terminally inert is likely to be plotted along a scale of conformity to standards of propriety or morality. A body may not touch another body on Mumbai's streets. No matter that you travel daily in what the railways call 'Hyper Dense Crush Load'; clinched in the most intimate of same-sex body-positions. The moment you are ejaculated at the station: haath laavoo nakaa.

Why is any public display of affection in Mumbai an offence to Indian Culture? Reuters
Let us recreate Sarup's act, shorn of value judgment: in a public place, a male puts his arms around a female and presses his lips to her cheek for what may be a second or two. Both separate to depart. The female catches a vehicle. The male is picked up and subjected to quasi-judicial hell. He is booked, fined and given a dressing down on his 'bad behaviour'.

Section 110 of the Bombay Police Act 1951 says: "No person shall willfully and indecently expose his person ill (sic) any street or public place or within sight of, and in such manner as to be seen from any street or public place, whether from within any house or building or not, or use indecent language or behave indecently or riotously, or in a disorderly manner in a street or place of public resort or in any office station or station house." There are no specifics. This paragraph is neatly sandwiched between sections disallowing ferocious dogs and horses to be let loose, public bathing, and flying kites. The only phrase from Section 110 that could remotely apply here is ‘behave indecently’.

How many options did the policeman discard to conclude that Sarup's behaviour was indeed indecent? On the face of it, he had no way of knowing who the individuals were: brother or sister, husband or wife, spiritual leader or acolyte or even two strangers. The act was consensual, neither complained of a forced advance. Would the same policeman have booked an adult female kissing an infant male in public for possible paedophilia? Or all those males embracing heartily as they emerged from mosques after the Idd prayer?

Any student of semiotics knows that an act is separate from its perception. The two are loosely linked at best and understood by common-law agreement. Meaning is never inherent; we ascribe meaning to something. How we do is based on our own background and world view. Body language therefore is hardly subject to normative judgments. To do so would be like asserting that only Marathi should be spoken in public in Mumbai. If such linguo-fascism is sniggered at, why should the acts of bodies be subject to similar homogeneity?

In our public realm, we are no models of perfection when it comes to inadvertent action: remember Clan Bachchan proudly and collectively emerging after voting, holding up erect middle fingers? Everyone did a double take, then laughed it off, good naturedly. No one threw the book of Indian Culture at them.

I would be happy if a policeman prevented me from breaking the law. I would even appreciate it if I were booked if I did, indeed break the law. But I will not abide any policeman giving me a lecture on Indian Culture and Traditions, like the hapless Sarup was subject to. I do not believe that policemen in Mumbai have the education and awareness to do so. I do not think that imbibing Amar Chitra Katha at a young age or the ritual observance of religious channels first thing in the morning makes anyone an authority on the subject. Not until the beat cop has a certification of credit hours spent learning under qualified teachers on the diversity of Indian Culture (from 'A' for Arunachal to 'J' for Jarawa, and every letter in between and beyond) will I accept this kind of edification.

Why is any public display of affection in Mumbai an offence to Indian Culture? Are our minds (and upbringing) so fickle that any conjoining of body parts, however innocuous, can only be an allusion to the act of coitus? It is indeed a matter of concern that every public action we make has to run the gauntlet between the upholders of the Police Act 1951 and the lumpen upholders of the Khap. Both these are, at the best of times, uncanny reflections of each other. You and me, on the other hand, with the benefit of hindsight and of higher education, amount to nothing on Mumbai’s moral streets.


Published Date: Mar 07, 2012 11:09 am | Updated Date: Mar 07, 2012 03:51 pm

Urban Bawl 5: Glass Teat

An edited version of this piece is the fifth in the series of my Urban Bawl columns in Time Out Mumbai for their 'Back of the Book' page.
This is published in the Feb 17-March 1 2012  (Vol 8 Issue 13) issue of Time Out Mumbai.

Glass Teat
We are gathered here today, we motley few, in this small chamber of
600 words, to mourn the death of our foster mother- television.

Her glass teat nourished us through our impressionable years. Her
mortal remains still lactate a daily pint of sari-clad, big bindi
infidelities and perversions in patriarchies, but we never developed a
taste for that sort of thing. When she was alive, she nurtured us
through two golden ages- the single screen, multilingual Bombay
Doordarshan during the seventies and the first multiplex age of
satellite television in the early nineties.

Those were heady days; she came to us piped through cables that flew
across rooftops, down rainwater pipes and through our windows. Her
riches were bounteous, given freely in Star TV, MTv, BBC, TNT, the
forbidden fruits of Jain TV, and of course, latesht movies of every
genre that the cablewallahs themselves curated.

But now she is gone. We could see the decline coming, the morphing of
‘Yo! MTv’ to ‘Oye! MTv’ was the harbinger. We ignored these symptoms,
preoccupied with wolfing down channels by the hundreds. Her toxic
desi-fication, complicated by relentless proscriptions in the nouvelle
vague of branded dish-content made her terminal. Toward the end, we
kept her going by restricting ourselves only to the news and English
movie channels, but even these modest needs were soon confounded.

How expectations can be belied. We searched for news, but had to make
do with cookery. Or Bollynostalgia, advertisements, spiritual
discourses, car shows, advertisements, cellphone promos, talking heads
dissecting soap operas on other channels or Sachin’s hundredth hundred
and advertisements.  We wondered, wasn’t all this better suited to the
specialized channels? But our mother was past the stage of response.

We turned to Hindi news channels and saw these headlines: ‘Shahrukh
Khan ne pahili baar shirt utaara!’ We clicked our remote for Breaking
News (all capitals and martial music) as it happened: ‘Deepika ne
Aishwarya ko Auntie kahaa!’ We felt elated. All was well with a world
where the younger peedhi showed such rispact for the elderly. News,
sans editorializing had been sublimated in a cacophony of bombastic
music and kitschy reconstructions. The bathos of Mumbaikars, who never
made news normally, was only reinforced when they surfaced briefly
from one terror attack to the next.

We sought relief in the superficiality of cinema and got Godard.
Jean-Luc invented the violation of continuity editing; fillum channels
emulated this grand tradition. Movies were downsized with ‘jump cut’
to pander to the tastes of ultraconservatives and babies. While our
Censor Board made cuts with surgical precision, the television
channels hacked though everything ‘deemed offensive’ with a machete.

Some progressive channels showed us cinema as it was made, and
preferred the middle-path of the blur and the bleep. Luis Bunuel was
outmatched, as ‘You Don’t Mess With the Zohan’ was remade into a
surrealist masterwork. The word ‘terrorist’ was bleeped out maybe a
zillion times, both in sound and subtitles. Cigarette smoke was
pixellated as per the government regulations. You could not see a
bleeding hand because your namby-pamby sensibilities would not take
it. We learn language in the laps of our mothers, so, appropriately
she taught us, replacing older words for new: ‘Prick’ was therefore a
no-no, we now use the more refined ‘testicle’. Thusly was our
vocabulary enriched, each day.

In passing, our foster mummy left us terminally infantilized. Her love
for us made her blind; she could never accept that we have grown up.
She has left behind a legacy of baby-talk and absences. God rest her
soul, as she looks down at us drooling mindlessly as we flit from
channel to channel to channel.

FirstPost Mumbai: Garbage-in, Garbage-out: The state of bricks in Mumbai

Image: eartharchitecture.org

Here is an excerpt from my new column on FirstPost.Com:
Garbage-in, garbage-out: The state of bricks in Mumbai
for full article , click on link above

excerpt:

Many kilns in operation just outside Mumbai work with rough and ready techniques for firing bricks that obey no norms of production. Although guidelines for building and operating brick kilns have been framed by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), it is unlikely that these kiln owners have even heard of the organisation. Their work habits result in near-toxic levels of air pollution in the vicinity of the kilns which are fired for days on end, emitting the acrid smoke that every worker cannot avoid inhaling. Notwithstanding this, bricks are churned out by the millions.

The quality of bricks produced and available in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai are, even to be most charitable, rubbish. In architecture school, we learnt that a good brick should be ‘of standard size, have sharp and truly right angled corners, have a bright colour, be of dense and uniform texture, should emit a ringing sound when struck, and, when dropped from a height of three feet or so should not break into pieces.’ None of this applies to the average Mumbai brick. Given the fact that most of your houses have an external face that is only half-a-brick thick, is it little wonder that your houses leak? If the supply end is poor to start with, how could the constructed edifice be otherwise?

A Bookshop dies: a paean to Manney’s

A Bookshop dies: a paean to Manney’s

I growed up, like Topsy, in libraries and bookshops.

Besides the British Council Library (Motto: ‘Truth Always Triumphs’) where my father was the librarian, it is the bookshops of Poona that were the long suffering witnesses to the sputters and spurts of my pubescence. One of the most visited was Manney’s Booksellers next to Westend Cinema (English movies, soda fountain) at Camp. And now, it is shutting down.

Bookshops, like Irani Cafes, seem to have a way of doing this, blindsiding your comfortable memories and leaving them frayed and crotchety. Manney’s (the anglicised ‘Mani’s’, after its owners) is (for a short while now) a cavernous bookstore of current bestsellers and oddities and rarities that one can safely get lost in for an afternoon. In its bowels, I graduated from the vast collection of comics (GoldKey and Indrajal) and children’s books (especially the Three Investigators Mystery Series, ghost authored, but hosted by Alfred Hitchcock) to Alistair MacLean's oeuvre of war novels and contemporary thrillers (where I read my first swear words, and was thrilled to learn their spellings) to a completely eclectic set of reading habits, foraging rather than finding new stuff to read.

Manney’s was the first port of call, though not the only one. Around the corner from Manney’s were the Modern Book Stall and the Express Book Stall, both on East Street; while the Utkarsha and Popular were both at the Deccan. Each was different from the other, so visiting them all one after the other, browsing, not necessarily buying, was as ritualistic as temple darshan. Manney’s offered the largest collection, its employees tolerated, yet frowned upon my frequently darkening its doorstep (Free Reading Not Allowed). Manney’s has bookshelves upon bookshelves- travel, the English language, the Classics, novels, books on spirituality, philosophy, cinema, music and uniquely, a section on the military. Presumably it caters to the extended presence of Armed Forces folk in that part of Poona, the Southern Command being nearby, but also the National Defence Academy at Khadakvasla and the Armed Forces Medical College. Then the shelves peter out, un-categorized yet fun to delve into. I have always found that the best bookshops are the ones without direction. But then maybe Manney’s had imprinted on me in my impressionable years.

These are the institutions that landmark your life, that you take for granted will always be there. And yet, after nearly forty years of browsing, I did feel that bookshops like these remained behind the times as the world moved on. It is not that monster bookshops (a huge Landmark store is just across the road) now dominate the book buying scene, nor that online reading and online buying are killing them. It is simply that these single proprietor bookshops never developed a warm relationship with their customers, never created the ambience for an extended stay and never made offers that bibliophiles could never refuse. This standoffish, take-it-or-leave-it attitude lingered on even after the challenges to their former monopolies loomed large.

I have my own Manney’s story: I have mentioned browsing and not buying; one could not afford most books in the shop. Once, in the late eighties, while still in college, voraciously skimming books on rock ‘n roll, I found a freshly minted paperback of ‘20 Years of Rolling Stone: What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been’ edited by Jann S. Wenner. Its pristine cover and chewed-off corner delighted and enticed, and equally quickly disappointed as it was way too dear for my collegeboy allowance. I left, feeling all the worse because I had riffled through its pages and it offered everything a rock-philiac would have liked to get jiggy with.

Twenty years later, the book was still there, on the same set of shelves, now yellowed, considerably worse for the wear, thumbed by strangers, never owned. Between the two decades, each time I visited Manney’s, I gave the book a darshan and a wistful caress. God knows, the book is probably still there. I wondered each time: just what kind of turn-over policy did the proprietors have for their old stock?

I do not vouch for this, but I never heard of Manney’s ever having a sale. Now, as the shop-owners have announced, when Manney’s will finally shut shop by the end of March, they will organise a ‘Grand Sale’ with discounts of twenty percent. Twenty percent. Bookshops like the Strand in Bombay offer a discount of twenty percent on All new books, and considerably more on older ones. Life goes on in these bookshops; books keep changing, the shelves are constantly refreshed. The sale events of bookshops like Strand are looked forward to with anticipation; when you can buy books in buckets. Little wonder then a shop like Manney’s, much loved, can also leave you in a state of perplexity.

Its old world charm and old school obduracy notwithstanding, I am sorry to see Manney’s go. The vast space it occupies and the advantage of its location in Poona Camp makes it real-estate to be sought after. I wonder what will replace it though. Cafe Coffee Day? Barista? KFC?

Another bookshop? Naah, unlikely.

FirstPost Mumbai: When Dharavi grows up, it wants to be Khotachiwadi.

Here is my new column on FirstPost.Com:

When Dharavi grows up, it does not want to be Shanghai

Dharavi Koliwada

Photo by Smita Dalvi, (c) 2009

When Dharavi grows up, it wants to be Khotachiwadi. Or Fontainhas. Certainly not Shanghai, nor Singapore, god forbid, with all its imposed hygiene and eugenic living. 

The vast slums of Mumbai are blithely derided and dismissed. They suffer from a monomaniacal insistence from the upper city: that they are unwanted and should be removed. This wanton labeling ensures they remain under-appreciated. Even when condescended to as being vital to the city's services — that they provide Mumbai's manpower — an undertone of otherness separates them from the city that matters. 

Slums in Mumbai, such as they are, have to be seen for themselves. Of course, many of them occupy plots whose ownership is contentious. But not all, having grown from earlier settlements that sometimes predate the city. 

Easily ignored in this tarring and feathering is that slums are diverse: they are just being settled or undergoing transformation, young or old, random or well laid out. Despite this, they share one important trait with the city itself — they are in a state of becoming. 

Slums, in their third stage of development, are not free from the threat of demolition. But they have ways to deal with it. What they cannot deal with is the finality of 'rehabilitation'.Reuters From their very rudimentary beginnings, one can notice a sense of order. Settled first as 'tent cities', slums begin their infancy as roofs, as mere shelters and little else. In their chrysalis stage, they get the 'slumdog' image that is so familiar — hutments with rough and ready enclosures of blue tarpaulin or flex movie hoardings, pattra or cement sheets held in place by brickbats. These are the settlements that suffer most in the rains, bear the brunt of frequent demolitions and fires, and have problematic sewerage and drainage. 

In their third stage, however, they aspire to becoming pucca, properly rebuilt with services equivalent to the rest of the 'legitimate' city. Large areas of the so-called slums of Mumbai have already reached this stage. They are rarely noticed. From Dharavi to Deonar, from Cuffe Parade to Bhandup, these erstwhile settlements are now full-fledged urban neighborhoods that create value for themselves and their immediate surroundings. Once again, a sense of order and self-similarity prevails, with most issues of hygiene and public health already resolved. 

These neighborhoods are hives of building activity. The houses here have long passed the hutment stage and are now as pucca as your own homes, albeit in constrained conditions. Unlike most flat owners (this means you), these homes occupy a plot on the ground and rise to a height that will not get them in trouble with the BMC. They are built in RCC and brick masonry, finished with ceramic tiles, both inside and outside, are clean and largely maintenance-free. They have electricity and piped water running to their kitchens and toilets. This is clearly seen by the miles of running pipes over ground, on both sides of the streets. The roads outside their homes are paved with interlocking tiles, just like any other part of the city. 

Despite this, the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) chooses to name these localities as 'difficult' areas, and damn them to the eternal hell of rehabilitation. 

The first impression one gets while walking through these localities is the humane scale of building, the coziness of homes, shops and production units nestling close to each other. You know the fortune of each dweller is dependent on their neighbor. This social network is a vast support system, fueled by proximity and circumstance. One is reminded of the Barrio das Fontainhas in Goa, with its similar architecture of narrow, sheltered alleys, quaint, colorful facades and outdoor living. Or of Khotachiwadi, an urban village in Mumbai, a well-knit community, so popular with tourists who love just to walk through its narrow streets and pocket plazas. 

Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava of URBZ, located in Dharavi, study user-generated cities. They have interacted with various contractors and mistrys who build the houses in these 'slums' and have documented their work. They demonstrate that the construction is efficient and locally derived, based on such optimization of men, materials, processes and time as could give a few good lessons to professionals in building and management. Although untrained, these contractors develop on a bank of building lore, learning from precedent and experience, adjusting to the vagaries of budgets, climate and the ever looming threat of demolition. For example, their way of introducing toilets in places where underground infrastructure is absent is remarkable for its ingenuity. They are also true masters of recycling, nothing goes waste. Each house is built on the debris of its older avatar, which when demolished is compacted into a high plinth. Those organisations rating 'green' buildings for low carbon footprints and zero-energy construction would have a field day here.

These slums, in their third stage of development, are not free from the threat of demolition. But they have ways to deal with it. What they cannot deal with is the finality of 'rehabilitation'. Entire neighborhoods could be razed and reconstructed in a faux Singaporean image, with the inhabitants being 'rehoused' in zoo-cages of 300 square feet several feet above the ground. This is a strong possibility. This new model goes against the grain of every neighborhood as has developed organically over a period of several decades. The architect Richard Rogers has critiqued such models of rehabilitation: "If you can repair, it is so much more sustainable than starting again. We should reuse land and materials. Even slums can be renovated." 

The short, sharp shock proposed by the SRA will result not only in gentrification, but in displacement. The social integration of currently thriving neighborhoods and the value, both material and intangible, that they have infused into the plots they currently occupy will be unraveled in no time. Connections, associations, inter-dependency, a strong shoulder to rest on in times of need will all get subsumed in a miasma of legitimacy. It is sad to contemplate that the only network that these communities would now have easy access would be Facebook.

Dharavi Koliwada

Photo by Smita Dalvi (c) 2009

Street in Fontainhas, Goa

Photo by MalenaN; posted in virtualtourist.com

Khotachiwadi

Urban Bawl 4: Dead Spot

Here is the third in the series of my Urban Bawl columns in Time Out Mumbai for their 'Back of the Book' page.Some of my nostalgic ruminations on the 'forceclosed' Rang Bhavan and a clarion call for its return to active duty.

The Rang Bhavan at Dhobhi Talao, with an entrance from Badruddin Tyabji Marg next to St. Xaviers.

Image from Google Earth, accessed on 7.01.12

Dead Spot

(click on link above)

excerpt:
"I have my own trove of memories of this lovely place in the heart of the city. Being of congruent vintage and having studied in a college just a few steps down the road from Rang Bhavan (not St Xavier’s), I have marked my presence at several landmark events there. The hairs on my forearms still rise as I recall being pushed against bamboo barricades, within touching distance of Osibisa in the mid-’80s; in awe of the resonating drums of Daku Potato, who wielded a club rather than sticks to rock the joint. Now rarely remembered, Osibisa’s AfroCarib songs were more viral than “Kolaveri”."

Latika!!

FirstPost Mumbai.The Blue Tarpaulin

Here is my new column on FirstPost.Com.

The Blue Tarpaulin: What it bares about Mumbai's high-rises

In my opinion, La Familia Ambani did not not shift into their two billion dollar abode because of a Vaastu dysfunction. I think the problem was much more mundane. Antilla leaks. This is why Mumbai was subjected to the rather unedifying sight last monsoon of large parts of the world’s costliest urban home covered with blue tarpaulin.

Antilla apart, the blue tarpaulin is a sight that has become ubiquitous all over the city. Normally associated with slums in mid-growth or buildings under construction, Antilla caught our eye mainly because it was a skyscraper, a state of the art uberhaus, and one designed by a vaunted, outsourced architectural firm.

Let us begin with the moral of the story first: Mumbai’s climate will bite you on the bum if you do not respect it in the first place. The tarpaulin is indexical of the essential disjunction between our aspirations and the sensitivity we have to fulfill them.

As buildings in our city rise higher than ever — 100 storeys and more are now being commonly contemplated — the appreciation that they are being erected in a tropical climate seem to be bypassed by the day. Sleek, blister-packed, glass edifices routinely puncture our skies forming beacons shanghaied by visions of an uncharted future.

How considerate are these imaginings to the inhabitants within? The fully air-conditioned environments are all very well, but all it needs is a leaking building to undo such technologies. As every householder knows, cracks, fissures and leaks are often invisible and go undetected until the problem becomes malignant.

Mumbai has lost its horizontality. This is a metaphor at many levels. For Mumbai’s high rises, the vertical semantic itself, the need for each building to be tower-like, an icon splashed on front page advertisements of national newspapers, can be the problem.

In the tropics, any architecture, whose predominant feature is a wall, exists in denial of the hot summer, the wet monsoon and the yearlong humidity. Its 4mm glass exterior is the only protection against these insistent forces, and the pane is a very meagre insulation indeed. Whereas this knowledge is self-evident, your grandmum would tell you so, exigencies to ignore it are too strong to resist.

Technology and real-estate prices beguile both designers and their patrons to create potentially problematic buildings. There are locations in Mumbai that now go for up to Rs 700 per square inch, so the need to maximise saleable area commonly overrides common sense.

The choice of steel frame technology as a structural system is increasingly replacing RCC (Reinforced Cement Concrete) as the norm, for two reasons: the first is that building erection is prefabricated, dry and speedy. Secondly, the structure itself occupies the least space in the building footprint, and encloses many more square feet that can, of course, be monetised. So like a tetrapack of milk left out in the sun too long, the building bulges from the inside out, straining at its seams, appearing at first glance that all is well on the inside.

Mumbai has lost its horizontality. This is a metaphor at many levels. We are increasingly out of touch with the ground beneath our feet, preferring, ever so easily to elevate ourselves out of the mulch of our city’s reality. The horizontal lines that were once its hallmarks, expressed in deep eaved roofs, wraparound verandahs, sheltered walls, and the triple-shuttered floor length windows, are sparingly visible in its inner city areas even today. These are features of low-rise buildings in the tropics. Ironically, it is the slum dweller who has adopted these vernaculars to create habitable space with a small amount of comfort conditions. The blue tarpaulin is now the waterproof, sheltering deep roof under which all the activities of life are possible. What is home for the slumwallah is the seasonal, ‘tempervary’ solace for the Ambanis.

Horizontality will have to become imperative in Mumbai’s high-rises if they are to remain hospitable to their occupants. This is a part of the world where sunlight abounds. What is needed is the creation of shade, and the provision of cross-ventilation. This is possible only when the outer layer of a building (whether shanty or skyscraper) is imagined as an overcoat and not a lycra bikini.

Only by investing in a layer outside of the habitable space will any building handle both insolation and precipitation. Several countries in South East Asia (Malaysia in particular) have begun to adapt their high-rises to these principles, creating what is now in architectural circles referred to as ‘the bio-climatic skyscraper’. Here, the design choices themselves determine the building’s outer form and inner spaces, shaped to create defences against the elements and to maximise on the comfort of its inhabitants. Any reliance on mitigation in the form of energy-consuming mechanical means is minimised through this simple realisation: good design comes free.

Mario de Miranda (1926-2011)

Mario Miranda passed away today.

We never met. We did not need to.

Mario de Miranda was the subliminal presence in our growing up years. He provided the visual counterpoint to our learning, our schooling, our appreciation of English, of literature, of illustration, of art, of Bombay, of India and beyond. His illustrations in our schoolbooks, his cartoons in our newspapers, his murals on the walls of our restaurants and his art in our galleries remain forever in the back of mind and can be recalled in an augenblick.

When I started writing this blog, one of the first pieces I wrote was on Mario. It remains to this day the single most visited page on my blog, outstripping very other blogpost by several hundred visits. Here is a poem I wrote, inspired by one of his illustrations, way back in the 80s, when I was in college, based on his 'Bar Lady in Germany' . This was the first of many wonderful travel illustrations that he produced, displaying finesse and rigor in his cross-hatching but sublime in his observation of life.

India should remember Mario as our own Norman Rockwell.

We are fortunate that architect Gerard da Cunha has designed a gallery in Goa specifically for Mario's work and has published a comprehensive book of his oeuvre. It is now a time of remembrance and appreciation.

Tchau, Mario!

Last Day in a Lived-in House

Christo

Christo,

New York City, 1981

photography by Annie Leibovitz

First published in the Rolling Stone 1981

Urban Bawl 3

Here is the third in the series of Urban Bawl columns in Time Out Mumbai for their 'Back of the Book' page.
Two small stories involving articles of clothing, centrifugally and centripetally engaged.

Two stories from a Mumbai Local

One
While returning home in the late afternoon, I am tired and sleepy and rush to find a window in the first class. I am lucky and soon, nearly nodding off. While I was alone to start with, now I notice a man come in, look around and leave. This doesn't register until it happens again. I pull myself up and look around. On the window seat opposite me, there is a white knitted skull-cap. You know, the kind worn by Muslims at the back of the head. The kind that Narendra Modi recently refused to accept.

Then another person come in, sees the cap, hesitates and moves to the opposite corner and sits near the window there. And then another, who winces visibly and finds a place as far away from this forgotten and forlorn object as is possible within the small enclosure of a railway compartment. I observe this silent opera, as the seats fill up one by one, all, except the one opposite me. Others prefer to remain standing. Finally, a commuter enters, sees this seat as the only empty one, and with two fingers gingerly lifts the cap, tucks it into a corner, and sits down. The train starts, and in its gentle sleep-inducing rhythms I am left to wonder, how much meaning gets invested in so ephemeral an object.

Two
6.30pm, Mumbai CST. Platform 1. The Harbour line.
It is the cusp before full-blown rush hour. A young couple, uncharacteristically entwined, walk the length of the platform towards where the first class compartments would arrive. The boy, almost all in black, encircles the girl’s waist with one arm. The girl is slim and short, a petiteness further enhanced by a really tight pair of jeans and a top that fits only too well. She has, over one shoulder a biggish ladies bag with several dangly bits. She wears fashionable heels, giving her an inch or two. With her free arm she clinches the boy back, tightly. It is unusual to see such a public display of affection, especially in a railway station in the evening.

The boy can only see her eyes.
The girl’s face and hair are obscured, wrapped completely, a dark dupatta forming a very makeshift naqaab. Both are engrossed; they bill and coo to each other as they wait for the train. Soon, the Vashi train trundles in, quite on time. The girl raises her head and gives the boy a peck on his cheek, right through the dupatta. The boy disentangles himself and gets into the general compartment. The girl walks a few steps down to the Ladies First Class.

Even before she finds a place to sit, with one smooth motion, she whips away the dupatta from her face, her hair falls to her shoulders, and once again she becomes Everywoman.

A New Column on Urbanism

This is the first of a new column on urbanism I will be writing for Network 18's Mumbai section of firstpost.com , which I should be doing every three weeks or so. To read the full piece, please click on the title below:

Urbanism: 
What makes Shivaji Park more accessible than Oval Maidan

Every unauthorized shop-owner needs a peg on which to hang his wares. So does every squatter. Give someone a backrest and they will fashion a home out of it. Every physical subdivision, every border or fence in Mumbai’s public realm provides a multitude of pegs, made available for appropriation by the private anxieties of its legal occupants. The urbanist Jane Jacobs, more than half a century ago, spoke of how borders, while being dismissed as passive objects, or matter-of-factly as edges, actually exert an active influence. Every new wall physically and existentially divides its denizens. You are who you are depending on which side of it you belong. Take care of your own then; forget what goes on outside. 

The emerging city of Mumbailopolis arrays its spanking new buildings, all barricaded against Mumbai, Open City. Lower Parel’s Peninsula is a fairly generic corporate park, laid out classically in gridlike blocks. Situated at the junction of Ganpatrao Kadam and Senapati Bapat Marg, Peninsula is surrounded by walls that visually deny views on both sides. There is nothing the city gives to the park and in turn it gives nothing back. On the inside is a befountained evocation of urban order, quite suited to totalitarian big brotherly Singapore. Manufactured havens such as these have strongly filtered accesses; but outside, le deluge. 

High-rise residential towers under construction are pictured behind an old residential building in central Mumbai September 9, 2011. Reuters Beyond its perimeter are narrow encroached footpaths, streets with high vehicle density and the diagonal slash of a flyover, all jostling for space. The wall outside is a vast plane of nothingness, suitable erecting political hoardings or, of course, for easy use as a peg. The Peninsula is only a current example, but similar circumstances pervade over most of the new ‘re’developments in brown-field spaces. 

Building walls today reflect setbacks, mandated by law, applicable across the city irrespective of specific circumstances. Open spaces all around buildings are therefore judiciously guarded by the plot owners. These spaces, cut off from the city outside because of their relative narrowness, tend to remain unused, and only alienate those inside. 

Surprisingly, no lessons have been learnt from the very urbane Ballard Estate, designed as a series of building blocks placed right on streets that define the urban fabric. The City Improvement Trust in the early part of the last century defined building by footprints. This led to common building lines and uniform pedestrian ways. Building fronts were placed squarely on the roads; entrances were obvious and accessed straight off the streets. Windows overlooked life outside as it happened at all times, forming what Jacobs calls ‘eyes on the street’, empowering those inside to take charge of their own concerns of safety and still preserve good urban manners. 

For a city starved of public spaces, the Oval Maidan is an exemplar of barriers destroying urbanity. In order, presumably, to preserve the grounds from the depredations of undesirables, the Oval is fenced off with railings that put you in mind of a penitentiary no matter which side you are on. Inside, a few cricket pitches are tended to for a filtered few to use. The narrow ‘public’ path joining the Art Deco to the Neo-Gothic stretch only emphasizes the impression of one being out of place. The railings along Veer Nariman Road are variously adapted as pegs for street vendors. The corner near the statue of BR Ambedkar is desolate enough for both women and men to prefer taking the opposite side of Madame Cama Road. What could have been, in the absence of the railings, a positive social space, a ‘living room for the city’, for all those with purpose and for flaneurs in general, is now fossilized for the rather vapid pleasure of viewing from the balconies of Deco residences. 

Compare this with the ‘katta’ culture of Shivaji Park, a maidan truly loved by all who live around it. Its unfiltered access from all sides allows an extended neighborhood to occupy it and call their own. A simple kerb edging forms a makeshift seat for everyone regardless, and can be easily monitored for abuse. Shivaji Park demonstrates that plot boundaries can be defined in ways other than erecting barriers. Simple changes in flooring, building low curbs, installing street furniture or well located trees can be used to allow unrestricted visual and physical access. In several European cities, even main thoroughfares do not differentiate between foot path and driveable roads. Lines of streetlights or a different sort of paving suffice as indicators.

Walls, defying conventional wisdom, are anachronistic in today’s surveillance obsessed society. Walls form blind corners. Walls create narrow undefined spaces that usually lie fallow. Walls form ready scaffolding for easy encroachment. Today, strategically located CCTV’s can do the same job a wall does, even better perhaps, and most definitely at a lower price. The employment of personnel from private security agencies, now becoming increasingly acceptable can have more value in preserving and protecting than a dormant fence. 

Every owner of real estate, even in these One-Lakh-Rupees-per-square-foot times, can give back a certain part of their property to the city for public use. The edges of buildings, not the anonymity of railings are a far more cordial urban interface between inhabitants and pedestrians. Robert Frost once said: ‘something there is that doesn't love a wall, that wants it down’. Quite possibly, in spirit, he lives in Mumbai somewhere.