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September 27, 2005
Death do us together - Musubiai
This is my new piece that was published today in Mumbai Mirror. Not mentioned in the article, is the fact that musubiai is a term that I came upon while trolling the net at J Ito's site.
A few weeks ago, as I drove out of the Sion crematorium at around midnight, I couldn’t but help think of musubiai. Musubiai, in Japanese, describes the special relationship that develops among neighbors, usually in a village, where they will do anything for each other, a relationship whose value typically becomes most apparent during a death.
With only two degrees of separation in most of Matunga, as well as Wadala, Sion and parts of Dadar, the mentality is still reminiscent of a largish village and help in times of acute need is easily and spontaneously available. And nothing brings this out better than a death in the family.
The moment it comes to be known that someone has died, not only do the relatives converge on the apartment, but the neighbors throw open their doors and hearts without the need to be told. If the relatives are few or none, the neighbors take on a more important role, but even otherwise they are amazingly supportive.
Everything from clothing the body, arranging it carefully, calling the hearse, or making the pall with bamboo sticks, carrying the body, either into the hearse or all the way upto the crematorium, making sure that the cremation occurs as per tradition and in time, helping with feeding the relatives, opening up their apartments for relatives and friends, when there is lack of space, or providing chairs and other furniture, taking care of young, bewildered children, providing a shoulder to cry upon and giving time…are all things that …just happen.
Its funny. Despite all the sloganeering about “our Indian culture”, we provide no dignity to the living and dying. But dignity after death is a given, whether it is an unclaimed, roadside body or you and I. You can see it when the traffic parts to let the pall-bearers and the procession walk through. Or when people drop everything they are doing to fulfill their musubiai. And surprisingly this attitude even extends to the BMC employees in the Sion crematorium, which can come as a pleasant surprise to all those who have ever dealt with any department in the BMC. Even to get the body out of a morgue takes money, but once you are in the crematorium, the workers are really helpful, non-obstructive and make it very easy for the entire process to be completed without any major fuss.
Musubiai also helps in keeping the grief in check. When friends and family rally around, and lunch and dinner have to be cooked and guests have to be taken care off, and many small details and rituals need to be attended to, it helps take your mind off the loss. It is only later, when everyone has gone and all the neighbors are back to their usual grind, that the loneliness and that gnawing, empty feeling in your heart hit you, yet a little less hard than it would have otherwise.
However, there will come a day, when even in Matunga, musubiai will become an alien concept. There are too many high-rises that are coming up now, where people won’t even know their next-door neighbors and until the stink escapes the room into the landing, will have no idea that their neighbor staying alone has been dead for over a week. But until then, musubiai”, even though some of us find it obtrusive, is well and alive and kicking in our part of the world.
Posted by bhavinj at 02:38 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2005
Ganpati Hopping
This is my new piece for Mumbai Mirror, that appeared today.
Saturday before last, we made a big mistake. We decided to take the kids out for Ganpati darshan, and unfortunately, we started first with the GSB Ganpati at the Cosmopolitan grounds. It was like starting an Agatha Christie book from the last page – every pandal we saw later that day seemed a little disappointing.
There were people everywhere, queuing up for long periods of time, just to be able to get a short glimpse of their favorite God. Ravi gave us a guided tour and some of the numbers he reeled out were mind-boggling - jewellery and gold valued at almost Rs 6 crores adorning the idol, more than 20 lakhs of people visiting in the five days that the Ganpati is kept for and more than 15,000 people fed every afternoon and evening. Maybe, if we ran our disaster management with the same logistics, the city would be far better off.
We then took a cab to the crossroad before Matunga Gymkhana and started our Ganpati hopping. Most of these were located in building compounds or on the roads and in a short 100 meter area upto the market, there must have been at least eight or so. The kids were excited with the first two or three, especially since they could see the idols from a close distance, but after that, Ganpati fatigue took over. In the end there are just so many museums, towers or monuments that you can visit when you are touring, just so many bars that you can crawl into at night and just so many chocolates that you can eat at one time.
Last Sunday, on Anant Chaturthi, we again took the kids out for Ganpati darshan, this time onto the main road. The entire place resembled a “mela” from an old 70s film with road-side stalls selling every thing from vada-pav to toys and even multi-colored bangles. Except for a small lane for cars, the entire stretch from Sion to Dadar was just filled with people. We clung to the kids hoping not to repeat a “lost and found” scene.
This is probably the only time when you see so many people at one time in Matunga. There were old ladies sitting on the road on their own plastic chairs, kids from the BJ Home sitting quietly in three rows on the kerbside, parents holding their kids up Ganpati style on their shoulders so that they could get a better view of the idols, bystanders breaking spontaneously into shuffle-dances when the idols came near, people scrambling behind the trucks trying to pick up some “prasad” and some people just circumambulating, trying not to miss any sight or a single idol.
Unlike a cricket match, this atmosphere can never be captured by live coverage on TV. Though it’s pretty hilarious when the commentators keep saying things like “See that Ganpati is going (or coming)” or “Now everyone is dancing” or “Now everyone is happy”, etc.
Finally after having had our fill of Ganpatis and the noise and the crowds, we went for dinner. At the table, seriously in thought, my son, whose current favorite superhero is Hanuman, turned to me. “Who is stronger, Bheem or Hanuman?”. I said, “Hanuman”. He continued, “Then who is stronger, Hanuman or Ganpati?”. I said, “Ganpati”. He slowly shook his head in disagreement and till we finished dinner, there was nothing I could say that would convince him. Can anyone tell for sure?
Posted by bhavinj at 05:39 PM | Comments (4)
September 11, 2005
Empathy (Or My Lack of It)...Revisited
I wrote about my empathy drying up almost five years ago. Not much seems to have changed.
New Orleans is no more. An entire city…is just gone. When I saw the city under water, on television, I went cold. But as I later told my wife, the reaction did not really have anything to do with New Orleans itself…it was because I immediately thought of a similar scenario in Mumbai and that almost knocked me out. We were unable to handle Terrible Tuesday. Something like this would have killed millions of us, in one stroke!
Uma and Ajit have talked about their reactions and why they haven’t written about New Orleans in as much detail as, for example, Uma wrote about the Mumbai floods. Among other things, I suspect it is a combination of “tragedy fatigue” and distance. Terrible Tuesday hit home, all of us had stories and most of us were affected. New Orleans is on the other side of the globe and unless you’ve been there or know someone (and I have neither been there, nor do I know anyone), at least I find it very difficult to connect.
On Friday, when a few parts of Mumbai were flooded, as normally happens every monsoon, the government agencies and the news media pressed the panic buttons. People at work started getting calls from their parents to leave for home immediately. And as everyone at the same time started driving northwards back home, we got stuck in the mother of all traffic jams beyond Parel. We eventually had to leave our car in KEM Hospital (thank God for these few sanctuaries) and then hoofed it up. When we reached Wadala, we realized that the traffic was actually moving well and we were able to get a cab hone. I finally went back at 11PM and got the car back from KEM.
In the meantime, I was fielding calls from home, from my HRD manager and other employees on what to do! Luckily, being in the arena, and having realized that this was nothing but a panic situation with no real issues, I was able to get some sense into everyone.
In the evening, we took the other car and drove to Matunga Gymkhana for the kids’ karate exams. After dropping Mom to the market, we drove on and landed up in a jam again. I get amazingly claustrophobic in traffic jams and with what we had gone through an hour earlier, I was already on the edge, wondering what “worse-case” scenario had happened.
As the cars moved, we realized what had happened. Some idiots had decided to do a Ganapati visarjan (the only visarjan on that day) and instead of using the by lanes, were merrily blocking the main market road and creating a jam. I just lost it. I got out and let loose some choice expletives at a couple of guys at the end of the procession, especially at one guy who was trying to divert traffic as well!
This is what I seem to connect with. Local issues and personal problems. Maybe it’s a euphemism for selfishness or self-centeredness…I don’t know. What I do know though is that unless the tragedy is close by, images and words from television and newspapers only provide a way for my brain to assimilate the information, but at no point do they really strike a chord.
Damn me!
Posted by bhavinj at 10:51 AM | Comments (2)
Matunga's Running Problem
This is today's Mumbai Mirror piece.
"2BHK, 5 minutes from Five Gardens”. Ads such as these are guaranteed to catch your eye. Never mind that the building is actually in Parel and the promised “5 minutes” to Five Gardens, is actually a fast drive at 5AM in the morning, without traffic and signals.
But, that is the pull of the “Five Gardens”, which together form one of the largest green spaces in the Matunga, Wadala area. Not only do these gardens provide the necessary open space and greenery, they also serve as community place, where people of all kinds converge: to walk, run, exercise, play, socialize, flirt and neck.
The perimeter of the gardens provides a concrete walkway, where in the early mornings and late evenings, you find people of all shapes and sizes; most walking, a few running, some slow, some fast, some working-out and some just preening. The place has its own pecking order, but you need to be a regular to understand it.
And yet, running or walking in Five Gardens, is not as great as it is made out to be. Since the perimeter is bisected by two large roads, you have to stop virtually every quarter of the way along, to let traffic pass. And though less, there is still no getting away from the noise and smoke that comes with the buses, taxis and cars passing by. And as with all decent open spaces in this city, peak walking times often resemble busy Bhuleshwar streets.
Furthermore, walking on concrete is not the best way to learn Newton’s second law; you know, the one that says that “every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. The more you pound the concrete, the more it pounds your cartilage back, and it’s just a matter of time before the complaining knees start creaking and groaning.
The problem is, there aren’t too many alternatives. Walking or running inside the gardens is not easy because of the grass and gravel. Some of the smaller nearby lanes, such as RP Masani Lane, the VJTI lane and the roads around Don Bosco help if you don’t want to bump into people all the time, but the concrete and pollution remain. One friend of mine, just to get away from the crowds, actually runs at 5.30AM on RAK Rd (char rasta) in the middle two lanes, upto Sewri and back.
Unfortunately, Matunga lacks an enclosed space like a Jogger’s Park or a Priyardarshini. Maheshwari Udyan is too small and not exercise-friendly at all. The nearest large garden is Bhakti Park in Wadala East, near the IMAX, but that’s a good 20 minutes drive away from Matunga and is slowly getting crowded as well.
For those who don't want to run, there are alternatives like the gyms at Matunga Gujarati Club, Matunga Gymkhana and Talwalkar's in Wadala. Which are not bad options, but they lack the glamour of some of the newer, trendier gyms that have come up in other parts of town.
Having said that, one of Mumbai's best mud-tracks for walking and jogging is also one of Matunga's best-kept secrets. Few people know about it, and even fewer use it. .....and honestly, Viplav would kill me, if I mention another word!
Posted by bhavinj at 04:24 AM | Comments (1)
