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July 28, 2006
Old, but Distinctive
This was published today in the Mumbai Mirror.
Three weeks ago, a close friend of mine invited me to her small house-warming party. She had moved from her house on RAK Rd in Wadala to a new tower, Dosti Elite, on the road behind CineMax, built in one of the industrial compounds that used to exist there alongside the Premier Automobiles workshop.
Till then (and till now) I had only seen a couple of towers in Mumbai, one in Hiranandani and one in Kandivali (E), and so didn’t really have much to compare with. My friend’s place was impressive. We went in after dark and the swimming pool area was shimmering. We saw a gymnasium, a lovely jogging track, gardens, ample parking and pretty nice apartments and it was difficult to believe that we were just a 5-minutes walk away from the blusteringly busy Sion Circle.
Living as most of us in Matunga do, in our 1 by 3s or 1 by 2s (i.e. 3 or 2 storied plus ground floor), this seemed really nice. For a short while, we kept thinking, how nice it would be to move to such a self-contained residential complex with its own facilities and avoid having to go out to stand-alone clubs or gardens. Apart from being self-contained, they also seem better maintained.
As against that, the older Matunga places offer larger areas for the same price, based on carpet areas and not on super super built-up concepts. The families are more cohesive and as we recently experienced during the summer vacations, the kids really get to form their “gangs” much more easily. But most buildings being landlord-owned, aren’t all that well maintained.
And then Shameem Akthar’s piece, two Tuesdays back, stopped me short. Can it really get that bad living in a cluster of towers? I can completely understand being a “nobody”, getting sucked into a quagmire of insensitivities, such that you start questioning your very being and existence…but I thought this only applied to ICICI internet banking and not to tower homes. And just as I increasingly find that we are better off with our “friendly” neighborhood nationalized banks, who with their “human touch”, prevent us from sinking into the “nobody” syndrome, I wonder if our small 1 by 3s and 1 by 2s are not so bad after all. So what if you have to go Matunga Gymkhana for swimming and listen to a gaggle of mothers in the afternoon besides the swimming pool discussing the best fashion designer in our area. Maybe that is how we retain our sanity and remain “somebodies”.
The sad thing however, is that if you are in the market for a new apartment, you really don’t have a choice, but to go “tower-size”. And if you do decide that you want to live in a small building, these properties are not readily available, unless you buy pre-owned older apartments, which are often rentals, which means you have to pay “pagdi” and you don’t land up owning those places. Yet, the demand for these “old” apartments isn’t really going down, and in the last few weeks, I’ve had at least three colleagues asking me to lookout for any “old” apartments that I might know of that are for sale or rent.
I have now identified my new profession if things go wrong with the current one: Real-Estate Agent for Old Properties in Matunga.
Posted by bhavinj at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)
July 19, 2006
Living with Terror
This was published in today's Mumbai Mirror.
Like a lot of people, I always remember precisely what I was doing at times like these. In 1993, I remember, we were in Bombay Hospital, when the first casualties from Dalal Street started pouring in, with head injuries and blood-splattered clothes, accompanied by their broker friends. Those days, without the kind of information dissemination we have now, it was all about rumors and for most of us, that was our first experience with terror of this kind.
On July 11, I was sitting and working at home, when someone casually mentioned some bomb blasts. For at least another half hour, we didn’t think much of it, until we put on the news-channels and saw the mayhem. And they kept mentioning Matunga as one of the sites of the blasts, when in reality that was Matunga Rd station in Matunga West, just before Mahim, not the Matunga we live in.
Matunga in reality, has rarely been affected during either the riots or the blasts. The worst that has ever happened was a major train derailment at the Raoli camp junction, on the harbour line, some years ago. During the 92-93 riots, though adjacent Dharavi was burning, Matunga was a sea of tranquility. We spent most of our time playing cricket on the roads and even the ice-cream parlors opposite Don Bosco were open. The big scare in our lives had been a truck we saw left discarded in one of the bye-lanes, which we thought may have harbored a bomb, but had only been left there for safe-keeping, by a scared truck-owner.
Maybe it’s the homogeneity of the population, maybe it’s the location, but in times of crises, Matunga seems an oasis of peace. Unless of course the crisis we are talking about involves the rains, in which case your sense of well-being completely depends on which side of Gandhi market you live in.
And all this is only true provided you’ve managed to get home to Matunga, in the first place. Which is not always an easy thing to do, when the city is hit.
As the face of terror becomes more and more visible in our lives, as terrorists from conflict areas around the world step up their activities, often without any reason or sense, we also will need to start accepting the presence of terror in our midst and then to get on with our lives. Which is what most of us did the day after, returning to or staying on at work …and thus deny them any sense of victory that the terrorists might have otherwise felt if they had succeeded in disrupting our daily routines.
Posted by bhavinj at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)
July 09, 2006
Concerts in Contrast
This appears in today's Mumbai Mirror.
Last Sunday, despite my protests, I accompanied my family to a Sonu Nigam concert, a the Shanmukhananda Hall. Honestly, if it wasn’t the fact that the hall is a four-minutes walk from my house, I doubt if I would have gone. Let’s face it; no parking facilities, a screwed up approach road and a concert by a singer whose only song I really know is “Har Ghadi” from “KHNH”…the deal didn’t seem all that great. And with my past experience with “Musical Nights” and “Voice of Mukesh” and “Voice of falana dhikna”, I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic.
And things didn’t get better. It rained heavily during our short walk to the auditorium. Then, the musicians had gotten late, so until they were ready with their instruments, we were made to wait out in the hot and humid foyer…which wasn’t so bad in retrospect, since I got to meet quite a few of my professional colleagues. Then the show started an hour late, because everyone was waiting…as we all do all the time.
Anyway, finally, after some felicitations, a forgettable opening act by an upcoming female singer, but a nice ensemble rendering by his musicians, Mr. Nigam came on stage.
And all I can say is that I am glad I was there.
Mr. Nigam is a consummate entertainer. He has a great voice and is supremely confident of his ability to handle it. He also has a great self-deprecating manner and is not above making fun of himself and last Sunday he used all these abilities to the hilt. He bantered with the audience, kept drawing them in and his words of “wisdom” to the crying infant at the very beginning of the show, made all us warm to him immediately. It was fun seeing an “Indian” singer entertaining the audience, in a manner more reminiscent of rock stars rather than the sedate “Hindi” singers of yore.
Just as Ian Anderson had done in February during the Tull concert. Having grown up with Tull and having missed his previous concerts in Mumbai, I had made sure that I had the time and tickets to be there on the second day, at Shanmukhananda Hall. Again, everything started late, and the opening act by Alms for Shanti was a bit of “pseudo – sopho” patchwork, but once Mr. Anderson was on stage, it was a different story. He held his audience by the palm of his hands. And though he couldn’t really hit the high notes and the music at times felt desultory, it didn’t matter. It was good fun.
I wish I was a classical music aficionado, because then Shanmukhananda Hall would have met my “live performance” needs with ease. Unfortunately, though in my distant “thelawala” past I tried to “understand” classical music, all that ever happened was that I woke up at the end…refreshed and ready to go home.
Hopefully though, we should see the Hall being used for more “popular” entertainment, so that when it rains and the entire city is flooded and you are stuck at home, you can go someplace else apart from Aurora and watch something else than Krrish, though in all fairness, watching Krrish wasn’t a bad use of 2 ½ hours last Monday evening.
Considering though, that even if Shanmukhananda Hall had something, there would have been no way of reaching it, through all that water that always collects around it during the rains.
Posted by bhavinj at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)
