The trepidation is over, and so are the misgivings if I'm up to it. I've looked over my stats of the past year and they look ok. Picked up my running bib from the Tata Mumbai Marathon centre at BKC this morning, one hour each way by motorbike through Mumbai's crazy traffic, the reverse of the route that I'll be running tomorrow. The hall was already packed at 11.30 and by the time I left an hour later there was a 200 metre queue of people trying to get in, (mostly) grey haired and well - heeled runners. The hall itself was an Indian bazaar as only Indian bazaars can be, packed to the brim and focused on doing brisk business. Young girl DJ's working microphones from booth to booth, exhorting men to take up ludicrous exercises on some virtual running machine. Shoes, running gear and health food change hands briskly. The mood has shifted and the excitement has set in. The half marathoners will gather at 4.30 am at Worli Dairy and at 5.30 we'll be let out like bulls from the pen, running in eery silence for the first 45 minutes, up and down the sea link in darkness. Not until we get back to Worli Sea Face will we hear the first shouts of encouragement, local residents wrapped in shawls against the morning chill shouting and clapping, "Come on!! Go Mumbai!!", as if the city itself is running past, and in a way it is. Up towards Haji Ali with the sun slowly rising over Mahalaxmi Race Course. The climb of Peddar Road looms, the crowds thicken and the first trays with fruit and biscuits appear. Hope that the pace doesn't slow too much on Peddar Road until the downhill part, right past Babulnath Temple, quick deferential nod to Balaji and then left onto Marine Drive, overcome with the thought that you're on the home stretch. Except that you're not and the realisation usually hits half - way on the 4 km stretch of Marine Drive, somewhere along Taraporewala Aquarium. It's after that that the loud part of the party that this city puts on every year starts, Punjabi bhangra dancers and drummers making synchronized moves on a temporary stage. The music overwhelms my playlist and makes it superfluous and so the earphones come off. Truth be told this is why I run, or at least why I sign up for this annual race and why I try to do those stay-in-some-kind-of-shape runs in Mumbai's unbearable and repressive summer in April and May. For this all - out communal crazy running fest. Where else are you going to have Punjabi bhangra bands, Maharashtrian folk bands and EDM DJ's cracking out beats side by side, egging you on?
On to Veer Nariman Road, the real home stretch, with the senior citizen and disabled participants of the Dream Run already moving in the opposite direction, by foot or in their wheel chairs. And after it's all over, the walk back home from Azad Maidan, past the Oval Maidan, where boys from the suburbs are already lining up the pitches for their Sunday cricket game, past the art deco buildings, in time to head for breakfast at Mondegar or The Pantry.
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When his sister approached me for a handout I waived her away, and she moved on. Her well combed and pleated hair meant that she was many steps away from true destitution. By the time the 10 - 11 year old brother approached however, targeting my ice cream with single - minded focus, I was unable to resist. "Uncle!" he yelled, looking not at me but at the ice cream that I had just bought from Naturals on Marine Drive, and grabbing it from my hands.
In all honesty I felt I deserved that ice cream after returning from Lower Parel late at night. Lower Parel, which I at best survive on early morning trips in or out later in the evening is not where I wanted to be at night after a long day. Morning run at 6.30 a.m. Deals. Conflicts. Meetings. My first conference call ever with someone in Dakar. Evening reception. A day later, earlier in the evening than yesterday’s ice cream episode, and I’m grabbing a solitary beer at Cafe Leopold. The staff greet me with exuberant handshakes. I’m not quite Shantaram, but recognized in a Mumbai watering hole , a dubious distinction at this phase of life. November is unseasonably hot and running is tough. The man child and his party are convinced that the Prime Minister is headed to jail for the Rafael jet deal, India’s purchase of French fighter jets. “He won’t last a day”, the man child says, presumably referring to the interrogation as opposed to actual time in jail. The Government is battling back with bullet trains, statues, metros and coastal roads. Bill Gates says that we’re lifting people out of poverty in record numbers and that the world is getting fundamentally better. He’s probably right and in a better postition to know than most of us. Someone just needs to tell that kid who took my ice cream. We bought our plane tickets to be in England at this particular point in time four months ago. Planning that far ahead for a summer vacation has almost never happened. There is a day by day program to guide our fourteen day stay, itself created more than a month ago. That has definitely never happened. Germany is out of the World Cup, Holland was never even in the World Cup. The English have been transformed into a cycling nation of fit urban people since I last looked in on them, wizzing about town on their bikes, helmets and all, as if they're right up there with the Dutch and the Danes.
We're here for the graduation of one of our child progenies (authentic Indian teacher statement), touring her university town one last time, packing up her last belongings, in between wryly observing a world that seems to have gone topsy turvy. It's our annual leave Mumbai behind family getaway, leaving behind the 24/7 Mumbai metro work, the monsoon that has finally hit, and yes the daily news on (mob) violence against fellow human beings. India feels like it's in the middle of an upheaval that's going to last at least another twenty five years. Parts of society can do with going topsy turvy, it's the in between slow motion phase that's the bitch. Rahul the man child will have us believe that if we just elect him and a gaggle of ten other aspiring prime ministers to rule over us next year all will be well. It won't. There's an eruption of violence against women, children, minorities and political opponents on the right and the left that's starting to feel like societal entropy. Anyway, progeny #1 graduates today and a year from now progeny #2 will be ready to set off for university. Once upon a time, long long ago, they went to their nurseries and play schools in Amsterdam and now here they are, ready to right the wrongs and to stand the world on its head. It needs it. There are so many classes that make up and define society, and especially Indian society in large metropolises such as Mumbai and Delhi.
There's the ruling class, that ostensibly rotates in- and out of power every few years or so, but even when out of power and in jail manages to wield considerable influence. There's the incredibly wealthy class, the types that can crack their heads thinking about the six months of celebrations required to lead up to a wedding, including as I was told today the 'what shall we put on the gold plated wedding invitations celebration'. The upper & within striking distance of wealthy class is increasingly seen in- and around the large Indian cities. These men and women with manicured nails can afford to wear pink polo shirts with upturned collars and shoes with no socks, look like complete twats in the process, but have no one tell them that because they just have a little too much money and therefore influence. The 'boring old' upper class with their inherited wealth and manners, but without the hunger, drive and psychological need to get to the truly wealthy echelons content themselves with trying to maintain civility, both for themselves and for a piece of society. In cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta and Chennai they keep the arts going and wax eloquent about the latest Schubert recital. The raw rambunctious Indian middle class, oozing out of the pores and crevices of this nation is as harried as it's impatient. Ill served by a creaking infrastructure, collapsing Foot Overhead Bridges and derailed trains it's impatient to get ahead in every way possible, which includes airline queues at six in the morning. It may not have as much money as it would like, and suddenly having to pay taxes may be an unpleasant surprise, but it's able to define what it wants. The working class, the heroes of society, who literally give us our daily bread (and milk and vegetables and newspapers) and who clean our cars and our apartments and our streets where we have dumped our styrofoam cups, I suspect only entertain the thought of hope. I'm amazed at the stories of young boys and girls who sitting in the near darkness of a 50 square foot slum dwelling study for their 10th and 12th grade exams and score in the mid to high nineties. The criminal class cuts across all classes, the true democratizers and equalizers of society. They may look and smell differently from each other, but they are a brother- and sisterhood in their own right. From the sweat soaked boy who snatches mobile phones from the hands of travelers in a moving train, to Cousin Dawood across the border in Pakistan and to to the dwarf - sized diamond trader who ran a $2 billion loan roll over scheme with an Indian public sector bank, and then just ran and ran and ran until he was out of reach of Indian justice, this class manages to keep our money out of our own reach. The class that some people love, others hate and I love to hate is the idiot class, the purveyors of mindless entertainment for India's masses when they're not cutting queues or mugging up for exams or falling from Foot Over Bridges. They who fill the pages of the Bimbo Times on a daily basis. The undisputed leader of the idiot class has in the past two days once again been let into- and out of jail for one of his alleged crimes, this time for shooting (not movie shooting, real shooting) a Bambi look - alike in Rajasthan twenty years ago while on a hunting trip with fellow members of the idiot class. Let us never forget the class that supersedes all classes, the classless class, the heartless class, the fat overfed class with eyes neither at the front or at the back of their heads, the class that will throw their plastic plates on the street so that the working class may sweep them up, the class that manages to gorge on street food at 11 p.m. while an emaciated pre-teen girl standing three feet away stares at them blankly, not even entertaining the hope that she may eat that night. The sounds outside our bedroom are different today. For the first time in four days it's not raining. Crows are cawing and another bird starts chirping, tentatively at first. One of the first buses of the day drives along General Bhosale Marg, towards Mantralaya. The bell sounds at the fire brigade, round the corner from our house.
Mumbai had endured days of non stop rain, making up for the shortfall of the past months, but then yesterday the levee almost did break, with almost 300 mm of rain falling in twenty four hours, ten times the normal amount. The TV is showing images of thousands of workers walking along flyovers, trying to get home. Maharashtrian women, their trademark saris tied up like a dhoti, walking with fierce determination, 35 kilometers to go to get home. Thirty men stand in a truck, holding on to ropes to keep standing. The driver picked them up at Marine Lines and is offering them a free ride to Mulund, in the North. Western and Central railway lines halted service. Kumud spent five hours to Worli and back in order to pick Tarini up, normally a thirty minute ride each way. KEM (King Edward Memorial) Hospital was flooded yesterday. A year ago my father, his short term memory fading fast, recounted how as a young doctor at KEM Hospital in Parel he'd have to walk, shoes in hand, trousers rolled up, to get to work during the monsoon. "The water flows down from Parel to Lower Parel to Worli during the monsoon", he remembered. Sixty years later the water still flows from Parel to Lower Parel and on to Worli, as it should, and KEM Hospital still gets flooded, as it shouldn't. Everyone remembers July 26 2005, the year when heavy rains combined with clogged drains and high tide immersed the city. Kumud's nephew, now an investment banker in Chicago, was stuck in his schoolbus for twelve hours that day. 1000 people died. At $3.8 billion the BMC, Mumbai's municipal council, has a budget larger than that of any other city in Asia. 28 of the 58 projects promised after the 2005 deluge, and meant to prevent another such as yesterday, are pending, incomplete. The sun has just peeped out but the city is virtually empty with everyone at home, drying their feathers. As I walk back from my half hearted Saturday morning run I see the woman standing at the corner of the Mantralaya intersection, selling thin pieces of steel wire pierced through green chillies and limes. She sells these every Saturday to passing motorists, to ward off the evil eye. It explains why Mumbai has so few accidents.
She just gave birth a few months ago and the baby is fast asleep in the sari which she has strung between two lampposts. When we first came here seven years ago her first born, Rakesh, slept like that in a sari. Now on weekends he darts between cars, buying something for his mother or the baby. Rakesh does go to school, his mother says, but she seems unsure where it is. When holding one of the coloring pencils that we gave him, he seems unsure, or out of practice. A shop along Marine Drive was advertising apro nachos, 'our' nachos in Gujarati. I think fusion cuisine just went a step too far. My wife tells me that she couldn't sleep most of the night because of the pounding of concrete pillars into the ground by Mumbai metro, not 100 meters from our house. Strange. I slept the way I always sleep, flat on my back, hands folded across my chest, corpse style. Mumbai is building a metro from Colaba in the south to SEEPZ in the north, running right across the city, uprooting trees and buildings. Once done it will do good for the environment, right now not so much. The next song starts on my iPhone, I'm trying to remember who the artist is, but I recognize the production. I remember just in time, before his raspiness starts singing. It's Dylan, from the 3rd generation iPod ads, 'if it keep on raining the levee gonna break'. I had been rehearsing my father's eulogy in my head for the past several days, and soon I will get to utter those words, but not until we have cremated him tomorrow, not until we have immersed his ashes at the confluence of three rivers in Prayag, not until my head has been shaved as a final sign of mourning, and not until the last of the prayers has been performed eleven days later.
Rest in well deserved peace Dada. At one of our first parent - teacher meetings here in Bombay, almost seven years ago (!) the young Hindi teacher said to Kumud and I "as Uncle was just saying", and I actually turned around to see who she was referring to, until I realized that in fact I was the 'Man from Uncle'. The twenty - something physiotherapist who's been treating me for a shoulder injury asked me yesterday, in trying to figure out which pricing I could avail of, "are you like 60+?". "I can be if you'd like me to be", I replied drily. Indians have an odd relationship with age and antiquity. There's a phase in life when people almost seem in a race to be declared old and infirm, as if it's a badge to be worn with honor. International flights departing from and arriving in India have the maximum number of wheel chair requests, with otherwise healthy people in their sixties and seventies slumping into a wheel chair in their best Stephen Hawking impersonation, minus the great man's intelligence. In politics on the other hand there is a fierce clinging to power by senior leaders. When the current BJP - led government came to power in 2014 it caused great unhappiness among some of its octogenarian stalwarts by announcing that henceforth seventy five would be the cut-off age for anyone wishing to hold public office. Thousands of buildings that in their hey - day must have been a sight to behold are left to fall into disrepair, trampled upon daily by the armies of working people moving into and out of them. When I told an Indian friend years ago that my parents lived in a house in Holland that was more than a hundred years old, he asked "why?", perplexed why someone would choose the old over the new. Kumud and I both lost an aunt, a bua, father's sister, in the past month. Both ninety, both teachers, both working women in an era when it was not fashionable for women to work. In with the newWe no longer need alarm clocks. From 5.30 onwards, seven days a week, construction machines drive concrete columns into the yard behind our apartment. Bulldozers move back and forth gathering up the debris of what used to be political party offices. They've all been torn down now to make way for Mumbai Metro III, a line that will run from Cuffe Parade up to the airport in the north of the city.
Trees will be felled and buildings torn down to make way for this metro which will hopefully replace many car journeys that would otherwise have taken place. India is on a rampage, desperately trying to play catch up with the world, after having under invested in roads and infrastructure for sixty years. At Kumud's aunt's memorial service the best tribute to her was paid by her octogenarian younger brother, who spoke with grace and energy about the adherence to values of that generation, and how she and her sisters' teamwork had held the family together during the throws of Partition. My bua was widowed at a young age and chose to work and raise her two children on her own, rather than sit hidden from public view, dressed in the white sari of a widow. These intangible, non white-washable learnings from the past are what we need to cherish as we race forward. Having done our bit to reinvigorate the cash-strapped and circulation starved Indian economy through a bit of profligate Christmas shopping, we now stare at the spoils arrayed under the tree. As a family we like to do our bit for local economies, swooping down from the skies to lend a helping hand, spreading a bit of benefaction. In December 2008 we went to Rome and Perugia and pulled Italy back from the brink. We couldn't make it to Greece the following year, and you all know what happened as a consequence.
I'm a bit Andrea Bocceli'd out at the end of his Christmas CD, so that's been put away for another year. What we have been listening and re - listening and re - listening to is the soundtrack of La La Land - movie and music making at its best. By the way, who'd have thought that Ryan Gosling could sing and dance, isn't that a good way to make up for an otherwise floundering cinematic career? Half of Mumbai has decamped for the holidays, out to Alibaug, Lonavala and Pune. The other half seems to have headed for our neck of the woods: Marine Drive, Nariman Point and Colaba. Crowds four lines thick are gathered outside Mondegar's, trying to get in for Christmas. Hundreds of cars and thousands of people on the streets, weary street vendors weaving in and out of the crowds wearing and selling bright red Santa hats and reindeer antlers, a site that never quite becomes normal, and nor should it. I know we live in the Indian version of La La Land, Bollywood, our own tinseltown, but there are limits. Here's wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and safe 2017. "Per caste 200 each for converting", the text message from an unknown number reads and I am momentarily non - plussed. I then realize that this must be from the photography store guy where I had enquired earlier in the day about copying mini DV cassettes onto a hard disk. 'Per cassette Rs. 200 each for converting'.
In upwardly mobile India, where everyone is keen on communicating in English in addition to their mother tongue(s) you can't predict what the written or spoken message will be, but chances are high that it will bring a smile to your face. Unpredictable, but 'fun types', as they say in Mumbai. Unpredictability unfortunately extends to too many other less 'fun types' aspects of life in India. Will the car coming from the other direction stop at the red light, or keep going? Will the policeman provide help to the citizen asking for it, fine him or thrash him? Will the motorcyclist who was stopped for driving without a helmet apologize to the policeman, pay his fine or thrash him? Will the passenger show up for the flight or stay home? Will the cargo booked for a vessel or a flight out of the country actually show up, be a few days late, or get cancelled altogether? Will the friend who says he's coming over today actually come over, or was it a 'we'll play it by ear'? Will the family of the bride or bridegroom actually see the wedding through, or will they bail? Will the businessman pay his taxes or not? You never know, not until the last minute, and it puts Indians' ability to cope with uncertainty to the test. It also causes stress across the system because not knowing, not being sure of such crucial things means that individuals and businesses and yes, Government bodies, have to constantly make contingencies, keep buffers, make allowances, and plan for surpluses, redundancies or massive shortfalls. The Government of Prime Minister Modi has just made the most unpredictable announcement in modern times for a large complex economy. All Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 bank notes were declared illegal tender on the night of November 8th, the day that the people of the United States were planning a little unpredicted result of their own. 86% of legal tender is being sucked out of the system and replaced with new bank notes. The trade in grains and rice and fish and meat has ground to a halt. The sale of white goods and cars and motorcycles is down by 25%. Day laborers can't be paid. Trucks couldn't move because truck drivers need thousands of rupees in cash to navigate police checks across the land, never knowing when they'll have to pay someone. Lines of citizens are snaking in front of banks, trying to offload old money and get their hands on new notes. There's an air of resignation in the air, there's anger but also a feeling, as one columnist wrote, that this is the role they have to play in cleaning up the system, in making it less unpredictable for and biased against the common man. What if we as a nation were a little bit more predictable? We have no hope of ever being Japanese or Swiss or Singaporean or German in terms of predictability, but wouldn't a little predictability, a little boredom be a boon for the country? Wouldn't fewer accidents and deaths on the road come as a relief? Wouldn't normal citizen to policeman or tax man or Customs Officer conversations be a welcome change? Wouldn't knowing that the 96% of the population that currently doesn't pay taxes, will pay some tax make a difference in the Government's ability to allocate resources? Wouldn't my wife like to know that I'm going to be home when I say I'm going to be home?? Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Oh, to be predictable and boring, if only for one day. |
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October 2022
Btw, the banner photo was taken from our holiday home outside of San Gimignano at 6.20 am. What light! It lasted all of five minutes.
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