Comparing Mumbai, Banguluru and Delhi

A Tale of Three Cities

I am a habitual train traveller. One thing I have noticed in these journeys is that as the train enters a city the passing scene prepares you for its individuality that slugs you in the face. For example entering Mumbai in the mornings one sees people unconcernedly defecating on the tracks, the other sight is of the chawls and slums in which a majority of the city’s population resides. These vignettes prepare you for some basic facts about this city. The first is that the people of Mumbai have been forced to develop a cloak of indifference that allows them to function as humans; the second is that the city is filthy and the minority that is rich are the only ones who are seemingly able to escape the filth.

In the case of Delhi, trains originating from the South pass by walls of factories, large houses and even hutments as they enter into the city and chug to the railway station. Passengers get to see advertisements for quacks solving problems that range from sexual dysfunction to piles. Though one could argue that these advertisements indicate the oneness’s of the city, the fact is that it only mirrors the image of Delhi being the rape capital of the country with a cuisine that is rich and spicy that goes by the sobriquets of Punjabi and Mughlai.

The train tracks that guide trains into Banguluru do not prepare their passengers for the mess that is Banguluru today. One gets to see open green fields and a glassy glint in the distance that could just be the end of the rainbow – but nothing else.

From the air the story is very different. An aeroplane gives a macro view of things unlike a train the tunnels you into the very heart of the city. The first thing that comes to view as one enters in Mumbai airspace to land are the variety of colours – the blue/green/brown sea the colour depending on the distance from the shore, the brown air that hovers above the city and the swathe of blue coloured plastic sheets that protect the tiny shanties from the rains, interspersed among the shanties the tall multi stories, these as if signalling the soaring unbridled ambition of the city’s denizens. In Delhi too one flies through a brown haze – called smog-in the winters. At night one can see the capital’s secular arteries and veins lit on which zoom and trundle a variety of vehicles – everything from Lamborghini’s to bicycles. One descends into shades of green fields of Bangaluru.

The thing is, though I now have to live in Delhi, given a choice I would not like to live in any of the three cities. There are some common reasons – for example the traffic in these three cities would drive a Zen monk crazy. It is not only the energy and time wasted in being part of traffic jams that drives one up the wall, it is seeing the selfish desperate audacity of others breaking rules to get ahead of the jam and in the process causing greater confusion that is  frustrating. It is also the callous consumption of the residents in these cities that has resulted in a problem that now seems insurmountable – increasing air pollution, waste and increasing density of vehicles.

Mumbai a place to learn the meaning of turning a blind eye

One thing that gets my goats is the annual ritual that Mumbai has just before the monsoons. The media like the municipality gets into tizzy about the metropolis’s preparation for the rainfest. Everyone from the politician to the bureaucrat promise deliverance from the problems caused by the rains and the media faithfully transmit it to the Mumbaikars.
 

But every year the story is the same – floods, overflowing drains, cancelled trains and photos of long lines of commuters walking on railway tracks through sheets of rain. For a city that is the home of the dream industry – the parrot like annual repetition of this scene is very depressing.

One cannot fathom the resilience and the power of hope that gives the aam Mumbaikars the fortitude to travel for hours in crowded compartments to get to work and return home for a few hours. Nor can one imagine how the population can live with a stench that is a mix of rotting garbage, fish, the sea and human detritus. It would seem that Mumbai gives us the true meaning of the term ‘turning a blind eye’ – the rich live as if there are no poor and suffering, the politicians choose to forget the promises they make, the poor in their efforts to survive are oblivious of the sacrifices they are being made to endure, and the aam admi just trundle along not seeing anything beyond their noses.

Though one could argue that the city has a rich repository of culture and that the city is alive, a question – at what cost? A city where the majority of population live in slums, where one cannot escape the rich-poor divide which does not seem to shrink, where those governing the city have not yet been able to find a solution to the monsoon problems is no place for anyone.

Delhi the capital of testosterone

Delhi has always wanted to become the Mumbai of the North. In the last few years it has finally succeeded. The roads get flooded in the monsoon resulting in jams and delayed metro services. But Delhi has another thing which I have issues with it – the testosterone that everybody seems to be carrying around. It is not only seen in the rapes that happen in the city, it is also the road rage that one is forced to deal with. 

On the subject of roads this is one of the few cities where I have noticed that official cars with government officers in them don’t stop behind the zebra crossing at a signal, where policemen on motorcycles drive on the wrong side of the road with sirens on full blast but in no hurry to catch any wrong doer.

To tell you the truth I have stopped both policemen and other people breaking traffic rules. The policemen have been kind enough to hear me out and then proceed with what they were doing; the chauffeurs of babu’s and the rich have told me to move on, even as their mistresses, or masters for that matter, perused their files or phones; the common person on the other hand has threatened to beat me up.

Bangaluru cosmopolitanism at a price

I would be the first to say that Bangaluru has a very cosmopolitan section of society easily visible by their sense of style. I won’t be wrong in saying that Bangaluru has some of the most stylish and beautiful women in the country. It also has a vibrant night-life that ends at around mid-night; but till that time one can savour a variety of cuisines, try out artesian beer and dance to various genres of music. The best downer that the city provides for its revellers after a night carousing about town is dealing with rickshaws that charge an arm and a leg or just refuse to accept you as a charge. There have also been instances of conscientious citizenry (who are not the police) trying to preserve their idea of India and its culture, thrashing people in these places.

Conscientious citizenry is the other thing that is common to these cities. Where Delhi has full throated young blood trying to soothe or boost their fragile egos by bludgeoning their male counter-parts or by molesting girls, Mumbai and Banguluru have hordes dedicated to protecting a myopic, conservative and mythical concept of Indian society. These types of citizenry in Mumbai and Banguluru are more organised, they have leaders who espouse narrow political and moral beliefs. The followers of these leaders are happy to share these views with others, communicating them through violence or threats thereof.

Cities and their food

Each of these cities have their institutions for food; Mumbai everything from Baghdadi or Bade Miyan and Zunkha Bhakri to the restaurants in the rarefied environs of multi-starred hotels. Delhi with its history laced cuisine and the restaurants that swear they carry on those traditions to those offering international cuisines in rustic surroundings of villages within the city and in air-conditioned edifices of malls and five stars. I am going out on a limb when I say that though Bangaluru has its MTR and Vidyarthi Bhavan it does not have a cuisine identified it, that is why Bangaluru has gone in a different direction with independently run restaurants offering a range of cuisines and a population willing to risk their taste buds and open their wallets for the experience.

But these cities have their traditional foods that would satisfy any gourmand – the vada pavs and vegetable sandwiches of Mumbai, the chole khulche of Delhi and the food in the many small stand-up eateries called Darshini’s of Bangaluru, these that cater to the common man are what keep the cities going. And this is what makes these cities special to me. Based in Delhi I realise the value of the chole khulche stall not only for me but also for the everyday people. My trips to Mumbai are made easier with the ubiquitous vada pavs and sandwiches, or crunching through the multi-stories of a vegetable sandwich makes Mumbai more habitable. There is always a plan for at least one breakfast and lunch at a Darshini closest to where I put up in Banguluru; the world seems manageable as one tears off a piece of oily crispy dosa standing inside these small eateries that open onto the chaos of an overflowing road.

Death Penalty, ideology and other such things

The Financial World Sept 27 2013

Once bitten but not twice shy

 Finally on the 23rd of June I was able to get back to my routine of going for a run in the morning. So at 5 am I hit the road at a slow trot. The humidity in Delhi was oppressive and bore down as a heavy weight on my shoulders, but nothing could diminish the joy of waking up to an early morning run.

From my residence I passed the Saket Mall where I was greeted by a pack of dogs. Nothing usually happens, but that morning one of the dogs was as surprised as I to find my right leg in his jaws. He trotted away shaking his head in disbelief, I too stood there incredulous. The pain was inconsequential when compared to the shattered camaraderie that I felt for the canine species in general. I felt betrayed and I am not ashamed to say that I chased the animal not in an attempt to pursue the well written remedy of biting the dog in return but of getting closer so that the stone, which had found its way into my hand by then could reach its intended target.

I now realise that this relationship that I felt I had with these stray canines was no different from that of the many TV presenters on 'nature channels' believed they had while they man-handled animals in their attempts to de-mystify them for viewers many miles and time zones away.

I was treating the strays not only as kindred spirits but also as 4 legged anthromorphs. I had assumed that my predilection towards dogs combined with the strays living in close proximity with our species would result in better understanding if not appreciation of each other.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten that the main difference between a domesticated animal and a wild one is one of being able to curb one’s animal instincts. Domesticated animals are able to curb their animal instincts because of training. However, stray dogs are not domesticated. They are in fact wild animals living in a concrete jungle. They have adapted their ways to survive in a hostile environment. So instead of recognising the danger that they pose to us humans I had enveloped them in a warm blanket of concern, empathy and marvelled, like many others, at the canines ability to live off the land.

I had mistakenly fallen for the pithy 'proximity breeds familiarity', which even we humans avoid in some of our intra species interactions, to assume that my relationship with these animals was one of mutual bonhomie.

The fact that strays are not solitary but live in packs, something which their forest dwelling relatives do, indicates that they recognise the urban environment as wild. The only reason they do not hunt is because humans inadvertently feed them with the waste generated in daily life.

This waste also breeds a variety of other creatures everything from, flies and mosquitoes to rats and cockroaches, who we see as pests. So even while we try to exterminate them, our hearts bleed for the street dog, we feed them and we clothe them, we have no problem with them lolling around our hospitals and we go to untold lengths to avoid confrontation with them.

Why so?

The answer is easy and it goes beyond the philosophical and the treat all animals with respect trope. We have extended our feelings for the canines in our homes to the strays. We have gone to such an extent that we have even got court rulings to help the strays live safely.

There are rulings on where and how to feed the unlucky critters and even on how many meals a day should they be fed.

This is a double boon for these animals, first they feed off the waste generated by humans; next humans go out of their way and make 'home deliveries' to feed and protect the strays.

In the wild would sensible people brook any man-made interference to the lives of the animals there? There is a reason why zoo's and wild life areas have 'dont feed animals' signs. Its not only for the safety of humans and animals, its also recognition that man is not master of all he surveys and more importantly it is necessary for nature to take its course.

Should we adopt the same form of behaviour for dogs that live with us and dogs that live on the street? There is a difference between ensuring strays are not ill-treated and treating strays like kings. The former is akin to ensuring that peacocks are not hunted down or tigers are not poached while the latter is similar to feeding animals in the wild. We should do the former and not the latter
Most will not consider stray dogs to be vermin like other creatures living off the waste of the land. However, the way we show our concern for them is putting a spanner in the works of their interaction with the urban environment.

Spaying and vaccinating the dogs for rabies is touted as a way to solve the problem of strays. But one doesnt really know how well the programme of sterilisation and vaccination of the strays has been going on. For example in Delhi, in 2008, a MoU/agreement was signed between the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the Animal Welfare Board of India for 'Humane Stray Dog Population Management', which included sterilisation and anti rabies vaccination for which a Society for Stray Canine Birth Control was jointly created by the MCD and AWBI. Its budget was met equally by both organisations.

This money was to be allocated to 10 NGOs working on Animal Birth Control. According to the agreement the NGO's were given a target of number of animals to be controlled per locality for which the NGO's would get a certain amount of money. However, in 2011 there was news that the MCD was going to set up its own sterilisation units.

Reports of a recent survey indicate that there has been an increase the number of dog bite cases in the city, 30608 dog bite cases in North Delhi alone in 2012-13 while in the previous year for the whole of Delhi it was 17634? One needs to make mention that there was no clear differentiation given between bites from strays and from domesticated canines.

When I went to Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya Hospital today (26th June), for the day three injection in the anti-rabies treatment series there were three others who had come for the same treatment, and I was in the 'injection room' for not more than five minutes. One can appreciate the preponderance of dog bites by the fact that rabies shots are kept filled in their syringes at the ready on the injection tray. This is of course unhygienic and may just reduce the efficacy of the dose.

While trying to get more information on this issue, I came across a website of an NGO dealing with strays. They say that they mark spayed and vaccinated strays by tattooing the inner thigh, they mention other NGOs brand or cut into the ear of these animals. Collars don't seem to be an option even though they are the best form of visual recognition and verification. I wonder if this is because putting a collar on a dog means that there is need for regular monitoring of its welfare (replacing collars etc) that would go beyond the mandate of the NGO, also it is cheaper to brand/tattoo/cut the dog, the issue of cruelty can be swept aside as the animal is under anaesthesia.

Stray dogs attacking and or biting humans is a form of man-animal conflict which needs some thought on how it should be dealt with. We need to come clean on what we want to do with the strays. Do we want to ensure that they are not ill-treated by other humans? Or do we want to make their life comfortable or in other words interfere with the natural process of living in an urban jungle? If it is the latter then there must be more responsibility than just feeding, providing warm clothes to these animals. It goes without saying that spaying and vaccination are programmes that have to continue.

I thought I was smart enough to recognise that the mongrel pup who entered home when I was 7 years and was baptised Snooty and who lived with us to the age of 15 is very different from her kith and kin that continued to live in the boondocks.

I made the mistake of not respecting the difference between the life in her adopted home and the life that she left behind. There were no territorial ambitions at home, there was no threat from other species or canines, food wasn't a cause of anxiety, further my father trained her, all this curbed her natural instincts. These very same instincts are needed in a jungle for a stray dog to survive. This is something we need to realise and then accordingly frame a programme that ensures both strays and humans can live together in peace.

Published in http://www.powerpolitics.in/Issues/August2013/page64.php 

Another one bites the dust!

Even as there is another Dodo in the making, one realises that technology becoming redundant is a prime example of the human's god like abilities – innovating, creating and then finally disposing.

I went to the CTO on Saturday to bear witness to another technology getting off our life support system. I wasn't alone, there were many like me. Most had never been inside before nor had they ever received what it spewed out. Some journalists from radio, print and TV had come to record this farewell, they captured faces and quotes and another moment of history that would soon be forgotten.

The crowd was young, you could have counted the grey hair in the hall on your fingers. The one grey spot among them reminisced, to anybody interested, how this technology had connived with others and got him married, sent him to the eastern front in the 1971 war and seemed to have served as milestones in his life. 

The other side of the counter was a different matter. There was grey everywhere and it was noticed. The young who had come to bask in the glow of something that was being propelled into the black hole of history saw those with the grey in the same light as the technology that was operated by them.

They both were irrelevant, their soon to be obsoleteness made all the more apparent by this sudden and short burst of interest.

Terms like VRS, inept,  unnecessary, waste of government money, were mouthed not as foul language but as hard reality of the young world they seemed to inhabit. These were of the generation that understood that bits and bytes and 0s and 1's made a language, they had never experienced the world of dots and dashes. They all clutched more than one telegram form sending messages to friends and family with things like 'congratulations this is your first and last telegram'.

Through the dark humour of reality it did not come to them that the grey that
they see today was jet black once. That both the human and the technology operated 24x7 sending and receiving messages that not only brought the world closer but also changed it.

This technology did keep up with the times. The 0s and 1s of the computer age replaced the dots and dashes, the key board replaced the Morse Code Machine, and so the telegram found a little corner of relevance in the world.

But today in India where more people have access to a cell phone than a toilet the relevance of the telegram has finally come to an end.

Soon people will forget that CTO meant Central Telegraph Office, it could come to mean Check This Out or Click To Operate, and by then another queue would form to catch a glimmer of another fading star.

 Web Based Telegraph Service

 The queue at CTO

CTO Janpath New Delhi

The Old and the New

Telegram Messages

 Inside the counter

The strange case of the cold, demand for justice and cricket

 

My train to Delhi was delayed by eleven hours. I had checked the status of the train on the web where it did say that the train had been delayed, but for some reason the tele-service mechanically proclaimed that the train was on time. This was a very real dilemma of who to believe and the kind of loss that would result from choosing one from the other. Finally I did go to the station with my luggage and lunch, and came back to have that lunch at the dining table. This gave me an opportunity to watch,later that evening, Sunil Gavaskar and Imran Khan - former captains of their national cricket teams - discuss that day's one-day-cricket match in Eden Gardens which India lost.

Sunil Gavaskar made some pertinent observations about the Indian cricket team. He said that the IPL is destroying cricket in general, which Imran Khan agreed to. Indian cricketers are choosing self before the nation in opting to play for the IPL. He explained that test cricket was the foundation for all forms of cricket and a cricketer who did well in test cricket would do well in the shorter forms of the game but this was not true in the reverse case.

Test cricket is a long dawn out affair; some of the qualities that a test cricketer builds from this game and needs to excel in this game are temperament, skill, perseverance, patience. I am sure he would agree that the game also needs the players to build and have stamina, concentration, unflagging team spirit and self motivation besides other things which a non-sportsman like me may not be aware of. What Sunil Gavaskar was indicating is that test cricket is the foundry which toughens the cricketers, enabling them to deal with other forms of the game. By cricketers and cricket management choosing to opt for the shorter and more lucrative forms of the game these sportsmen and administrators are building a team which is hollow in every aspect of the game as they havent gone through the winepress that builds and hones the skills and qualities of a good cricketer.

This philosophy as explained by Sunil Gavaskar can also be used in dealing with the current social problems facing our country. Take for example the case of the outcry for justice for rape victims post the brutal gangrape of a young women in a moving bus on the 16^th of December and her subsequent death. After the youth took to the streets with their demands for justice, stricter punishment which ranged from chemical castration to hanging others – from politicians to film stars followed suit. Jaya Bachan shed tears and the lawyers of Delhi declared that they would not represent the accused.

These demands and gestures are all forms of the IPL mindset that beset Indian cricket which have now come to roost within our society. Why do you think rape cases take so long in court? One reason is that lawyers themselves ask the court for adjournments. Lawyers in our country think of the legal process not as a way to get justice but as a method to ensure that the case does not come to trial and thereby allowing the accused to continue living within society.

What exactly was Jaya Bachan shedding tears about? The way women are treated in tinsel town – ala casting couch or the manner of their depiction in movies through vulgar item songs, lurid lyrics and scripts and the clothes worn?

Why is there a hue and cry by society and youth about police and government insensitivity? Dont these very people complain when they are stopped for minor misdemeanour’s? Dont they jump the line on occasion by asking for favours from powerful contacts? Why do they try to bribe their way through police sanction when they are caught transgressing – traffic rules for example? How do they tolerate young children working in homes of their own families or in families of their peers?

It is easy to paint ourselves out of a picture and put the blame on others. What is happening today to women is not something new. We need to ask some basic questions - why do mothers, and inlaws try to kill her as a foetus, why is she not allowed into religious places? And where are we in this picture? Rape is another form of brutality that the female sex has to endure in Indian society.

The point is that this is another instance of missing the forest for the trees. These demands are for quick solutions that do not question the systemic problems faced by women and our role in perpetuating them and our responsibility of preventing them.

This is much like another debate that is doing the rounds of some news channels – that of the cold and homeless. TV channels display shock and anger as poor outstation patients live on the streets of Delhi in the biting cold as they wait for appointments at India's best and largest hospital. The basic question that they repeatedly ask is why isnt the government and the hospital constructing more shelters? Another pointless question which is trumpeted is 'isnt the government shocked'? These half-baked questions do not resolve the problem and only depict the channel as being concerned.

The point is why do patients have to come to Delhi to be treated? Why are private hospitals not following the court's orders to provide beds and treat the poor? It is not enough to ask the government what they are doing, one should also question why government plans and schemes and court orders are not followed.

It is not enough to demand stronger laws and harsher punishments to stop rapes, nor will problems of the sick coming for treatment be solved by building shelters. What Sunil Gavaskar said about cricket has a lot of substance in the current issues faced by our society. We need to build a temperament that respects laws and each other. We as individuals and society need the skill and patience to prevent crimes from occurring and we need the perseverance to use our institutions in a manner that makes them work and deliver.

Seeking quick fix solutions will not solve the problem as they do not question our role in perpetuating a problem and our responsibility in fixing it. It is not without reason that 'be the change you want to see' and 'Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country' were words spoken by two people who are beacons for freedom and democracy.