A few days back I received an anguished tweet suggesting that every half an hour, an Indian farmer committed suicide.
Sounds terrible, right? You are almost forced to do the mental maths. One every half hour makes it two an hour. Times 24 gives you 48. A week will count 336 dead. And so on all the way up to 17520 every year. Seventeen thousand... India's killing fields. More evidence of the cold brutality that is the grim subtext of our growth story, you tell yourself.
Wait it a minute. Something isn't right here.
Investigate this a bit, you tell yourself. So you decide to look up Wikipedia. India's suicide incidence at the national level is 10.3 per 100,000 population. That's more than 100 per million. For a country now totted up at 1200 million souls, there are over 120,000 suicides a year. Of which about 17,500 are farmer suicides. So back to Wikipedia where you discover that 52% of our population is still employed in Agriculture. Make a simplifying assumption about the family size being no more than the national average and that would put 52% of India's population in agriculture dependent families.
Now if suicides are distributed secularly across the population, 52% of the population should account for 52% of the suicides, right? That would translate into... 62,400 suicides. But the actual figure is less than a third of that. Conversely, non agricultural suicides, 102,000 give or take, out of a non agricultural population of 576 million give you a suicide incidence of 17.7 per 100,000. And 17,500 suicides out of the agricultural population of 624 million gives a suicide incidence of 2.8 per 100,000. You, my dear urban, non agricultural Indian reader are SIX TIMES MORE LIKELY TO COMMIT SUICIDE than your agricultural sister, or brother.
I hasten to add that suicides may well be concentrated in a particular geography and Vidarbha may have a much larger suicide incidence than even the non agricultural average. Every suicide is a tragedy and I am not about to belittle a life lost to fatal desperation.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Mint chocolate and pecan brownies
This is a recipe and not a rant. Really.
Sunday evenings can turn sad and sorrowful with the prospect of beginning another working week in just a few hours starting to loom alarmingly large. Best solution to perennial problem? Find an easy, indulgent snack recipe and address yourself to it. Works for me, everytime.
So here's what you need for the P&MC Brownies
Atta (regular, whole wheat flour): 175 g
Sugar (powder it in your grinder): 175 g
Cocoa powder: 100 g
White, unsalted butter (Makkhan): 175 g
Large eggs: 3
Vanilla essence: 2 spoons
Baking powder: 2 teaspoons
Peppermint Liquer (I used Bols)
Microwave-Convection Oven: 1
Any old 1 litre vol baking pan or tray (and if you have a brownies tray you are way cooler than I am)
Preheat oven to 170 deg C.
Add baking powder to atta and mix them thoroughly. Easy way- sieve them together a couple of times. Melt butter over low heat. Add cocoa powder, then sugar and vanilla essence until the whole thing comes together into a viscous but lump-free mix. Turn heat off. Whisk up eggs and add them to mix and combine quickly to prevent the egg cooking. Now ladle in the atta/baking powder mix in large ladle-fulls ensuring no lumps form. Toss in a large fistful of chopped pecans (walnuts work just fine too) and then toss in a generous pour of the mint liquer. Combine well and pour into buttered baking tray. Stop oven preheat cycle and switch to Convection 170 C+ Microwave cycle for 15 minutes. In a regular convection oven it may take 20 minutes. Start the baking. After 10 minutes, check by inserting fork into centre of pan. If it comes out clean you are probably done but leaving it in for a couple minutes AFTER it comes out clean will give a slightly crunchy crust.
Cool. Cut up (or don't bother, go straight for the whole lallapaloosa). And if you have a nice Burgundy waiting for pleasant company this would be a good time to open and pour a nice glassful.
Suddenly, the morning to follow won't look so forbidding after all!
Sunday evenings can turn sad and sorrowful with the prospect of beginning another working week in just a few hours starting to loom alarmingly large. Best solution to perennial problem? Find an easy, indulgent snack recipe and address yourself to it. Works for me, everytime.
So here's what you need for the P&MC Brownies
Atta (regular, whole wheat flour): 175 g
Sugar (powder it in your grinder): 175 g
Cocoa powder: 100 g
White, unsalted butter (Makkhan): 175 g
Large eggs: 3
Vanilla essence: 2 spoons
Baking powder: 2 teaspoons
Peppermint Liquer (I used Bols)
Microwave-Convection Oven: 1
Any old 1 litre vol baking pan or tray (and if you have a brownies tray you are way cooler than I am)
Preheat oven to 170 deg C.
Add baking powder to atta and mix them thoroughly. Easy way- sieve them together a couple of times. Melt butter over low heat. Add cocoa powder, then sugar and vanilla essence until the whole thing comes together into a viscous but lump-free mix. Turn heat off. Whisk up eggs and add them to mix and combine quickly to prevent the egg cooking. Now ladle in the atta/baking powder mix in large ladle-fulls ensuring no lumps form. Toss in a large fistful of chopped pecans (walnuts work just fine too) and then toss in a generous pour of the mint liquer. Combine well and pour into buttered baking tray. Stop oven preheat cycle and switch to Convection 170 C+ Microwave cycle for 15 minutes. In a regular convection oven it may take 20 minutes. Start the baking. After 10 minutes, check by inserting fork into centre of pan. If it comes out clean you are probably done but leaving it in for a couple minutes AFTER it comes out clean will give a slightly crunchy crust.
Cool. Cut up (or don't bother, go straight for the whole lallapaloosa). And if you have a nice Burgundy waiting for pleasant company this would be a good time to open and pour a nice glassful.
Suddenly, the morning to follow won't look so forbidding after all!
Cars-inoma
Time was when motor vehicles didn’t come preloaded with indicators, or at least, none that worked. When you learnt driving, your instructor, usually a parent, would explain how the right hand could be used to indicate both a right and left turn. For turning right, you stretched your car straight out and kept it there. The left indication was a little more intricate involving a continuous counter-clockwise rotation of the arm, although the more experienced drivers would probably use just the palm with the index finger pointing the movement. You learnt to ensure that your vehicle was in the correct lane well ahead of the turn so you wouldn’t have to run across the traffic flow at the crucial moment. You learnt that restraint in the usage of the horn was a sign of quality driving. As it happened, horns were tame toots back then, which you had to strain to hear. You learnt deft manipulation of the clutch and brake, particularly when you were on steep uphill gradients like Peddar Road or Pali Hill. There was no handbrake after all, and it was almost embarrassing to allow the vehicle to roll back, even when you got off from a standing start. This also meant that you learnt to keep some distance between you and the vehicle in front to accommodate such a mishap. You learnt to respect the rights of the pedestrians. A zebra crossing at a traffic signal was designed to enable pedestrians to go back and forth across the road, and on those occasions when you landed up straddling it while waiting for the lights to change, you had a real sense of guilt about the misdemeanour. You were aware of the limitations of your vehicle or of your driving abilities and had no hesitation in making way for better vehicles or drivers to overtake you. From the right. A flash in the rear view mirror told you that the vehicle behind you was ready and able to pull ahead and you simply shifted, soon as possible, to a space in the lane on your left to enable the overtake manoeuvre to happen without fuss. Which brings us to the rear view mirror. There were no wing mirrors back then so everything depended upon the one above the dashboard. As soon as you got into the driver’s seat, and even before you fired up the ignition, you checked whether the mirror was correctly aligned making quick adjustments to get it just so. Extra-cautious drivers would buy wider convex mirrors that would clip on to the OEM article and provided a much improved rear view. You knew that the traffic already on the street had right of way when you were pulling out of parking and would not start moving without taking a good look over your right shoulder and waiting for the gap. In any case, the right hand was clearly stuck out to indicate your intentions so even if you misjudged the gap, the other drivers knew you were entering.
With low traffic density (at least as compared to today) and much better compliance with rules of the road, major intersections could do with just a roundabout rather than a signal as low traffic density and sensible practice of the rules of the road favoured the less obstructive solution. Old Mumbaikars will remember when even junctions like Haji Ali, Worli Naka and the Bandra intersection of Linking Road and S. V. Road were thus regulated. Remember that Mumbai has always had a substantial of public transport on the road, whether it be buses, taxis or auto rickshaws and when I speak of the higher standards of compliance, it was as true of the drivers of these vehicles as it was of those driving (or being driven around) in their own.
And licences were not issued without a proper driving test being conducted. The RTO official would direct you to a stretch of road with relatively lighter traffic and put you through your paces. A figure-of-8 was routine. As was doing it in reverse. Parking in reverse into a relatively tight space was also quite commonplace. The official kept a sharp look out for your indicating turns, entry and exit from traffic and so on.
Things began to change in the late 1980s. India began to emerge from decades, even centuries, of abject poverty and incomes began a secular rise that, we all hope, will continue for decades to come. Discretionary spending began to grow and acquiring personal transport was clearly an important rite of passage for everyone as it set them free from the inconvenience and discomfort of public transport. ‘Hamara Bajaj’ was ‘Bulund Bharat ki bulund tasveer’ and later ‘Naye Bharat ki nayi tasveer’ and everyone wanted their own bulundi, their own nayapan.
Unfortunately however, the appetite to own a vehicle was entirely disconnected from any desire to learn how to drive it in a lawful, dignified manner. You fired it up and were ready to roar. You were the king of the road and could weave in out, cut left, right and centre and traffic signals were mere inconvenient obstructions to be run with impunity so long as ‘Mama’, the traffic constable, was not around. Never having driven in the earlier era and possibly having no previous background of driving in the family, there was no one around who knew better.
A malignancy was beginning to breeding in the hot furnace of personal prosperity and vehicular cornucopia. A lethally potent mix of stupidity and ignorance topped off with frothy insensitivity and arrogance.
Mumbai had become terminally ill with Cars-inoma.
With low traffic density (at least as compared to today) and much better compliance with rules of the road, major intersections could do with just a roundabout rather than a signal as low traffic density and sensible practice of the rules of the road favoured the less obstructive solution. Old Mumbaikars will remember when even junctions like Haji Ali, Worli Naka and the Bandra intersection of Linking Road and S. V. Road were thus regulated. Remember that Mumbai has always had a substantial of public transport on the road, whether it be buses, taxis or auto rickshaws and when I speak of the higher standards of compliance, it was as true of the drivers of these vehicles as it was of those driving (or being driven around) in their own.
And licences were not issued without a proper driving test being conducted. The RTO official would direct you to a stretch of road with relatively lighter traffic and put you through your paces. A figure-of-8 was routine. As was doing it in reverse. Parking in reverse into a relatively tight space was also quite commonplace. The official kept a sharp look out for your indicating turns, entry and exit from traffic and so on.
Things began to change in the late 1980s. India began to emerge from decades, even centuries, of abject poverty and incomes began a secular rise that, we all hope, will continue for decades to come. Discretionary spending began to grow and acquiring personal transport was clearly an important rite of passage for everyone as it set them free from the inconvenience and discomfort of public transport. ‘Hamara Bajaj’ was ‘Bulund Bharat ki bulund tasveer’ and later ‘Naye Bharat ki nayi tasveer’ and everyone wanted their own bulundi, their own nayapan.
Unfortunately however, the appetite to own a vehicle was entirely disconnected from any desire to learn how to drive it in a lawful, dignified manner. You fired it up and were ready to roar. You were the king of the road and could weave in out, cut left, right and centre and traffic signals were mere inconvenient obstructions to be run with impunity so long as ‘Mama’, the traffic constable, was not around. Never having driven in the earlier era and possibly having no previous background of driving in the family, there was no one around who knew better.
A malignancy was beginning to breeding in the hot furnace of personal prosperity and vehicular cornucopia. A lethally potent mix of stupidity and ignorance topped off with frothy insensitivity and arrogance.
Mumbai had become terminally ill with Cars-inoma.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Civil Society
Ask yourself this question (and try to answer very honestly). Is it fair that your vote counts for no more in any election than the vote cast by your driver? Your maid servant? The chap who cleans your car? Or the vote cast by the squatter on the pavement just outside your apartment block?
All of them are less educated then you, indeed some of them are illiterates: strictly angutha chhap. They pay no taxes. They don’t have an original point of view on anything. They are the undeserving recipients of endless largesse from the Treasury, which you fill with Income Tax. They are shirkers who slack off after just a few hours of brainless, manual work while you toil endless hours and suffer sleepless nights for your employer. They don’t even understand the first thing about Democracy and Universal Suffrage which has given them privileges way beyond their natural station in life. At the very least, you fantasise about a more reasonable world where a vote like yours counts as equivalent to more than one of any of their votes. Perhaps you’ve imagined a system where votes are sized proportionate to the amount of tax that the elector pays.
You see the utter chaos and corruption that is rife in the Society and State that you inhabit and feel a sense of chronic helplessness, even impotence, that for all your organisational authority and economic contribution to community, you are but a mute spectator to all that is wrong around you. You are so frustrated, in fact, that you have no interest in participating in the electoral process. When the electoral rolls were last revised in your constituency at the time of the General Elections, you even made a sincere attempt to get your name registered but the damned process is so ineffective and tedious, involving sweating for hours in long lines outside a drab Ward Office and filling forms in the vernacular (that you don’t know, which leaves you wondering why they can’t offer the forms in English too) that you gave up.
From time to time, you receive email and Facebook appeals to sign some petition and you make it a point to append your name to causes that you find worthy. You forward them to your friends for their support. Every once in a while, you even donate to some of them.
You had been secretly longing for the day when someone would stand up to hold the authorities accountable. Who would have the charisma, the brio, the guts of steel to take on the venal and corrupt and get them to their heels. Who would offer tough prescriptions against all cancers that had seized our body politic and have the cojones to administer them. When suddenly, such a Crusader emerged. In a most unlikely garb.
A Gandhian Prohibitionist from an obscure village, Ralegan Siddhi, that Google Maps had to scramble to add, had decided to awaken the national conscience. He was a tireless fighter for probity in public life with a solid record of exposing corruption in Maharashtra’s political establishment and he had now decided to turn raise his sights. After CWG, Adarsh, Telecom and goodness knew how many others, he was no longer willing to remain silent. Wonder of wonders, he was proposing not just to fight the problem but actually offering a solution too. An Ombudsman, a Lokpal, he said, was just the ticket. An office that lay outside of the dirty and ethically compromised traditional three organs of Legislative, Executive and Judiciary. With plenipotentiary powers of oversight and, when justified, penalty.
He spoke directly to your heart. Here, you said to yourself, was a new freedom struggle whose time had, unfortunately, come. Here, you heard the news anchors, was India’s very own Velvet Revolution, its very own Summer of Discontent. The frail Masiha had revealed himself.
In Gandhian tradition, the Masiha launched a Satyagraha involving an Uposhan unto death. As the Government looked on, stunned by the rapid sequence of events, a million such as yourself were busy FB’ing, tweeting, texting, emailing one another and canvassing support for this man who spoke directly to your innermost self. A small band of selfless volunteers even gave up their day jobs and formed a platoon around the man. And then the Government blinked!
The new keepers of the national conscience had just agitated themselves the right to discuss a whole new piece of legislation with the government of the day. You were ecstatic.
And a new phrase was born. Civil Society. As distinct from? Criminal Society. Uncivil Society. The terms you had long used secretly in your mind to describe the debauchery and debasement around you. A society full of shining, clean, incorruptible men and women who would rejoice in the shining, clean, incorruptible age of Ombudsmanning to come.
A battle of attrition was about to begin. You can imagine the boxing rink. In the Red Corner, the flabby GOP Champion of Attritions, P. Muks; in the Blue Corner, the Untainted, the Unblemished, the Lean, Hero of Heroes, A. Haz.
Your pulse raced. Your heart threatened to go into arrhythmia. This was finally going to settle it. In favour of the smart, the sensible. The Incorruptible. Against the dross and filth that lay on the other side.
And then the battle actually began. Remember, P. Muks was a much scarred veteran of many campaigns. A. Haz was naive. A greenhorn to Muks’s Chhata hua Badmash. Closed door meeting followed In Camera session. From time to time, there were voices of indignant protest from either side but the parleys went on. Civil Society was staking its all and only a decisive victory would be enough to appease the collective hunger. Of Civil Society (remember?).
But it wasn’t so simple, was it?
Muks and his team dealt in Decades while Haz thought it was just a matter of Weeks, to the Independence Day 2011, no less, by which he could unfurl his victorious Parcham of Ombudsmania over the Lal Quillla.
And then everything started to go spectacularly ulta pulta. Meeting after meeting ended ‘inconclusively’ or worse. Lok wouldn’t have a Pal, or at least not the way Haz had planned it. We, the (deserving) people, wouldn’t have our Canaan.
Kejri wasn’t able to wal it off. Bhushan was unable to negotiate a Shanti that would satisfy you. Indeed, the voices of ‘Civil Society’ seemed to get progressively shriller and less Civil with every day that passed sans result.
And somewhere along that line, your mind, tuned as it was to collecting its order of burger with soda and large fries in about five minutes, was beginning to drift off to planning your next holiday in Switzerland. This painful, long-winded process was not what you had signed up for.
Your l’affaire was over.
All of them are less educated then you, indeed some of them are illiterates: strictly angutha chhap. They pay no taxes. They don’t have an original point of view on anything. They are the undeserving recipients of endless largesse from the Treasury, which you fill with Income Tax. They are shirkers who slack off after just a few hours of brainless, manual work while you toil endless hours and suffer sleepless nights for your employer. They don’t even understand the first thing about Democracy and Universal Suffrage which has given them privileges way beyond their natural station in life. At the very least, you fantasise about a more reasonable world where a vote like yours counts as equivalent to more than one of any of their votes. Perhaps you’ve imagined a system where votes are sized proportionate to the amount of tax that the elector pays.
You see the utter chaos and corruption that is rife in the Society and State that you inhabit and feel a sense of chronic helplessness, even impotence, that for all your organisational authority and economic contribution to community, you are but a mute spectator to all that is wrong around you. You are so frustrated, in fact, that you have no interest in participating in the electoral process. When the electoral rolls were last revised in your constituency at the time of the General Elections, you even made a sincere attempt to get your name registered but the damned process is so ineffective and tedious, involving sweating for hours in long lines outside a drab Ward Office and filling forms in the vernacular (that you don’t know, which leaves you wondering why they can’t offer the forms in English too) that you gave up.
From time to time, you receive email and Facebook appeals to sign some petition and you make it a point to append your name to causes that you find worthy. You forward them to your friends for their support. Every once in a while, you even donate to some of them.
You had been secretly longing for the day when someone would stand up to hold the authorities accountable. Who would have the charisma, the brio, the guts of steel to take on the venal and corrupt and get them to their heels. Who would offer tough prescriptions against all cancers that had seized our body politic and have the cojones to administer them. When suddenly, such a Crusader emerged. In a most unlikely garb.
A Gandhian Prohibitionist from an obscure village, Ralegan Siddhi, that Google Maps had to scramble to add, had decided to awaken the national conscience. He was a tireless fighter for probity in public life with a solid record of exposing corruption in Maharashtra’s political establishment and he had now decided to turn raise his sights. After CWG, Adarsh, Telecom and goodness knew how many others, he was no longer willing to remain silent. Wonder of wonders, he was proposing not just to fight the problem but actually offering a solution too. An Ombudsman, a Lokpal, he said, was just the ticket. An office that lay outside of the dirty and ethically compromised traditional three organs of Legislative, Executive and Judiciary. With plenipotentiary powers of oversight and, when justified, penalty.
He spoke directly to your heart. Here, you said to yourself, was a new freedom struggle whose time had, unfortunately, come. Here, you heard the news anchors, was India’s very own Velvet Revolution, its very own Summer of Discontent. The frail Masiha had revealed himself.
In Gandhian tradition, the Masiha launched a Satyagraha involving an Uposhan unto death. As the Government looked on, stunned by the rapid sequence of events, a million such as yourself were busy FB’ing, tweeting, texting, emailing one another and canvassing support for this man who spoke directly to your innermost self. A small band of selfless volunteers even gave up their day jobs and formed a platoon around the man. And then the Government blinked!
The new keepers of the national conscience had just agitated themselves the right to discuss a whole new piece of legislation with the government of the day. You were ecstatic.
And a new phrase was born. Civil Society. As distinct from? Criminal Society. Uncivil Society. The terms you had long used secretly in your mind to describe the debauchery and debasement around you. A society full of shining, clean, incorruptible men and women who would rejoice in the shining, clean, incorruptible age of Ombudsmanning to come.
A battle of attrition was about to begin. You can imagine the boxing rink. In the Red Corner, the flabby GOP Champion of Attritions, P. Muks; in the Blue Corner, the Untainted, the Unblemished, the Lean, Hero of Heroes, A. Haz.
Your pulse raced. Your heart threatened to go into arrhythmia. This was finally going to settle it. In favour of the smart, the sensible. The Incorruptible. Against the dross and filth that lay on the other side.
And then the battle actually began. Remember, P. Muks was a much scarred veteran of many campaigns. A. Haz was naive. A greenhorn to Muks’s Chhata hua Badmash. Closed door meeting followed In Camera session. From time to time, there were voices of indignant protest from either side but the parleys went on. Civil Society was staking its all and only a decisive victory would be enough to appease the collective hunger. Of Civil Society (remember?).
But it wasn’t so simple, was it?
Muks and his team dealt in Decades while Haz thought it was just a matter of Weeks, to the Independence Day 2011, no less, by which he could unfurl his victorious Parcham of Ombudsmania over the Lal Quillla.
And then everything started to go spectacularly ulta pulta. Meeting after meeting ended ‘inconclusively’ or worse. Lok wouldn’t have a Pal, or at least not the way Haz had planned it. We, the (deserving) people, wouldn’t have our Canaan.
Kejri wasn’t able to wal it off. Bhushan was unable to negotiate a Shanti that would satisfy you. Indeed, the voices of ‘Civil Society’ seemed to get progressively shriller and less Civil with every day that passed sans result.
And somewhere along that line, your mind, tuned as it was to collecting its order of burger with soda and large fries in about five minutes, was beginning to drift off to planning your next holiday in Switzerland. This painful, long-winded process was not what you had signed up for.
Your l’affaire was over.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
 | |
| Lane Behind ITC Grand Central |
Yesterday, our Hon. CM Saheb very graciously arrived a mere four hours late to inaugurate the latest claimant to the title of Mumbai’s longest flyover. This morning I decided to inspect it for myself. By running it, one end to the other.
As you trundle up from the northern end, with the ITC Grand Central on your left and the Bharatmata Cinema on your right, you start to discover midtown from an elevated perch that presents altogether different views than those you were used to. The lane behind Grand Central curves away, dogleg right, into a tree-lined avenue. At the early hour when I took this picture there wasn’t a soul on the road and every prospect pleased.
 |
| CM Saheb's Shamiana |
Time to turn attention back to the flyover itself. We have barely covered 100 metres at this stage and notice that while the odd car is bounding down toward Byculla, the northbound lane is entirely devoid of traffic. The mystery of the missing vehicles is shortly resolved when, close to where the ramp starts to flatten out into the long flat stretch, you espy a shamiana tent. Yes indeed, the VIPs have left their distinct signature on the brand new bridge. Leaping like a mountain goat over the piles of scaffolding, corrugated sheets, tarp and assorted furniture which the grandees’ majestic rear ends must have graced yesterday, we reach the other side. Given that this apparatus isn’t about to dematerialise like something out of Matrix, we now have a clear, safe run down to Byculla.
 |
| खँडहर बयां करते हैं |
The Currey Road junction is now behind us and a series of chawls and the textile mills that they once provided with manpower marches alongside for the next km or thereabouts. ‘Khandahar batate hain ki imarat bulund hogi’ you mutter to yourself. Windows that have long lost their glasses, gabled roofs that have lost their red tiles, the evidence of a once thriving industry hollowed out in a matter of decades by indifference and the ravages of time.
 |
| Privacy? What's that? |
Running past the chawls, you can see clear into the homes and hearths of hundreds of families that had enjoyed generations of relative privacy, with the road lying a floor or two below them. This rare luxury, of not having inquisitive strangers peering at them with impunity, literally meters away from their windows must surely (and legitimately) cause resentment and anxiety but remember, these are lesser mortals. Children of a blue collar god. Unlike the Olympians who reside on Peddar Road and have thus far vetoed a flyover there on the perfectly fair grounds that it could mar their rightful privacy.
 | |
| Patchwork |
Your reveries on the fairness or otherwise of life are interrupted. All this time, you have been looking left and right, away from the bridge itself, but as the road straightens out for its exit decline towards Byculla, you look down and are promptly horrified. This is a brand new road, you tell yourself, but who would believe it looking at its patchwork state.
A run is nearly done. You exult in the knowledge that the commute from Lalbaug to Byculla will now be at least 10 minutes quicker. Then grieve for a lost way of life, a lost age, a whole lost generation from which a very heavy price was exacted only so some of us could live in comfortable 3 BHKs,
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Colabaaaah!
5 in the morning. The earliest Koels are beginning to trill as the first tentative tendrils of dawn seep through into the still dark sky. Sunday is run-day and it’s time to get up and get going.
Half an hour later and, with the ablutions completed and the running kit assembled, I drive off to Nariman Point where today’s run will begin, and eventually end. P. D’Mello Road (hey, does anyone know what that P stands for? Peter? Patrick? Pradyuman?) is nearly clear with all of three lorries to be overtaken in the long straight from Sewri to VT (ok, CST if you must) and at 6:02 the car rolls to a stop at the last parking spot along the NCPA sidewalk. Time to stretch, limber up, and get going. Things take a small turn at this stage. Partner for run cries off with a migraine and I begin to have second thoughts about doing the same old, same old. No RTI and back today, I decide, and a route that has long beckoned, hitherto ineffectually, is the order of the day.
I start out North on the Marine Drive but take first turn right at the Oberoi Hotel and head into the thick of the Nariman Point office district. What a contrast this neighbourhood presents early on a Sunday morning to what it will be a scant 30 hours hence. None of the hubbub of commerce and sweaty exertions of desk warriors today. Just gently swaying trees and street cricket games. Run past Mittal Chambers which stirs lost memories of long afternoons spent in the British Council Library and turn right again to approach Cuffe Parade. Turn right at Cuffe Parade and start heading South. The fishing village is clearly beginning to slow down for the Monsoons. Dozens of fishing craft are berthed, hulls turned to the sky, ready to get their makeovers. Nets await deft hands to fix tears and rents from many months of hauling in the daily silvery catch. Run continues past the few remaining bungalows that once proudly faced the Backbay, sadly reclaimed in the 60s and 70s to spawn an acne of multistoried apartment blocks.
Leaving ‘Goolestan’ (don’t miss the wildly Anglophilic spelling) and its storied neighbour ‘Sea Wind’ (google it if it doesn’t ring a bell), on the left I am now fast approaching the Colaba Cantonment area. The road narrows, a ‘Sadhu t. S. Vaswani Road’ (why here?) is passed on the left and abruptly, I step into the verdant, tree lined greens of another world. The reverie is interrupted, within a minute by? I’m in front of Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society! Visibly incomplete, the most striking feature of the facade is a dozen ‘Anti-Buri Nazar’ charms that we Mumbaikars call mirchi-limbu. These, being in a fashionable neck of town, use only the biggest nimbu and the coolest plump red chillies. (Does a more expensive mirchi-nimbu bestow proportionately greater buri nazar resistance? Is there a lakh wali, crore wali and sau crore wali mirchi-nimbu prescription? Would you use only imported Habaneros or Jalapenos for the top end buri nazar?)
Cantonment starts and the signage declares ‘Gun House’, ‘Garrison House’, ‘Fleet House’, ‘US Club’, ‘Afghan Church’. All the old landmarks that the Fauj has carefully protected and conserved with unwavering attention to detail for as long as 150 years in some cases.
I pass I.N.H.S. Ashvini a.k.a. Bha. Nau. A. Po. Ashvini. Anyone figure out what Bha. Nau. A. Po. means? Answer in footnote J[1]. Run past a hundred Sea Cadet Corps kids proudly wearing their starched white uniforms and head straight down to the Roman Catholic Church (yup, it WAS that simple after all, for all those who had wondered what the R. C. In R. C. Church stood for). It is about 36 minutes into the run and the timer reminds me it is time to turn back. Legs are tiring, throat is parched and it is time to reach for the trusty bottle of water and a few almonds from the stash in the pocket. Revivified adequately, I begin the inbound leg with the clear intention of taking a different route back. A fork in the road just past Ashvini heads, on its right prong, to the Colaba Post Office, which is where I head. Just a few hundred yards down is the gothic edifice of the Afghan Church. To the right, the Colaba Sewage Pumping Station that also has, en suite, a delightful little park, the Sagar Upavan. A regular battle rages within, trying to figure out whether a small detour into park is a good idea but the heat and humidity is climbing, with the Sun having risen well above the horizon, and the spirit and flesh both declare they aren’t up to it. The Cantonment area ends, rather abruptly, at Colaba Post Office and everything goes back to the grime and disorder that is our Urbs Prima.
The Women Graduates’ Union Hostel goes past on the right. How many times have I dropped friends back here after long bouts of elbow bending? Shudder to think what would have been the consequences ff the breathlyserators had been in action back in the 80s and trundle along. The unmissable and unchanged stink of Sassoon Dock is now my partner for the next 4 minutes and that helps, a tiring pair of legs suddenly find a second wind to accelerate past this indolic interlude.
All the wonderful bits of the run are now nearly exhausted though the kilometre turning off near Cusrow Baug, heading to Radio Club and left toward the Taj and the Gateway provide a fitting finale to the run. A gentle amble past the Royal Bombay Yacht Club (hey MNS, what do you have to say about Bombay Gym and the RBYC?) down Rampart Row to Regal and I am done. Khallas!
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