Salaam Bombay!

A flyover near Peddar Road at peak hour due to a strike that disrupted the traffic


My journal would be the best place to translate these thoughts into words but I choose to do it here for many of my friends are curious to know what my first day in Teach India was like. I will describe it bit by bit. After a hectic day in college, I took a bus to my destination which was a municipal school in CP Tank. Which age group I was going to choose, what would be my days and what subjects I would teach were playing on my mind all along. As I was looking out of the window, I saw these highly decked up women in low cut blouses standing across the road. One woman outside almost every house, staring at the traffic. I had seen a red light area only in movies before and it dawned on me where I was. I shook myself out of daze and focused on my prospective students again.

In no time I was climbing the stairs to the third floor of an obscure municipal school building. What I saw there was a far cry from what I had anticipated. Children of age groups 5-12 were to be seen on the floor, some scribbling in their notebooks, some running around and others simply yawning away their time. Kids as young as a few months old crawled beside their elder brothers and sisters. I was greeted by an enthusiastic ‘namaste didi’ as soon as I entered the room. The coordinator informed me that teaching in that centre was considered the toughest challenge as the kids there were literally from the streets. Children of the commercial sex workers and single parents and the ones who had fled from their homes formed the bulk of the crowd.

I tried to break the ice with most of them. I largely succeeded barring a few of them who stared at me as if I were a Martian creature. This five year old bundle of audacity was keen on knowing me inside out in the very first few minutes of our meeting. I couldn’t stifle a grin when he asked me in his broken Hindi if I would come to his place with him. Not so politely though, in an almost intimidating tone. In the adjacent room, the older lot was preparing a dance for an upcoming Rakhi programme. Most of them slept on the pavements and the market areas as I found out in course of their introduction. They wanted us to view their performance and even told us what they would want to learn. The two hours I spent with them seemed so less. They all wanted to know when I would next come. I returned with a promise of seeing them the following week. I can’t wait to go back to them. After all, I have so much to learn. Life’s way beyond what I have lived so far.

Mind your Rs !!

The Taj on Day1 of Clinton's visit

Whoever has managed to impress someone with an accent? All the same, when has that stopped people from making comical displays of bizarre accents! The last straw are the people who choose to do so in public. Huh, imagine what an ordeal it is to hear such people indulging in public speaking! I had to go through one this morning and the fact that our woman was speaking for an NGO she works for made matters all the more hilarious. More than her speech, I was concentrating on the rolling of her tongue at all the odd places that gave her that aao-so-aao-weird-accent!

I looked around to see if others were as annoyed as me but people have a knack for masking their emotions, it seems. It was no way I could believe that the brown woman in a semi-Indian attire had foreign roots. Gaining such a heavy accent in a few years of studies abroad was out of question. Even Katrina Kaif who grew up in 18 countries doesn’t have such an incredible accent, for God’s sake! Maybe I am focusing too much on this lady.

Okay, the other important news is that Hillary Clinton stayed in the Taj for two days. When I was on my usual weekend visit to the Gateway, I was appalled at the security arrangements there. This was before I had read about her visit in the papers. I thought it was one of those terror threats or hoax calls that keep happening in this city. Thank God, it was none of them.

The other thing that happened was an interactive session with Milind Deora (the sitting MP from Mumbai South) in college. I love this young and electric brigade of Gen- Y politicians. Politics seems so much more accessible and cleaner business now. Here was this young man wearing a full sleeves white shirt, black pants and a disarming smile discussing the flaws of the system and his aspirations with the students. So candid and easy going! He seemed one of us even as the girls oohed and aahed at the end of the session. And the most interesting part was that he proposed to organize a trip to the Parliament for us. Ohh…how sweet! I hope we have more politicos like him in the time to come.

PS. I just heard Hillary Clinton on one of her interviews on the T.V and believe me; our woman from the NGO beats her hollow in rolling the tongue!! Tut-tut.

Project Fever

Last week went quite hectic with a mound of project reports to complete. I am still sitting on some of them while a few have seen the light of the day. Nevertheless, projects are a fun part of academic life (read media), one gets to meet interesting people all the time. What’s more, one learns to deal with sundry people, right from the ‘Hey dude, wassup?’ kinds to ‘Sorry, I don’t have much time’ types.

As a part of a Media studies project my friend and I had to visit a few radio stations and ask them some stupid and other not-so-stupid questions. The expedition began with Radio One’s office at Tardeo. We were sitting in the lounge when a tall and fair guy with curls opens the office door for us his chewing gum bubble going off on our face. ‘Yes?’ No… You gotta learn some manners dude! Anyway, this person turned out to be the Creative Head who was going to answer questions for us. For each question I would throw at him, he threw questioning looks back. As if wanting to ask-Is it a valid question? We wrapped it up fast and thanked him for his precious contribution. ‘No probs man…no probs.’ I don’t like people who aren’t Goans and yet address their sentences to ‘men’. They sound so damned sexist. I wouldn’t have liked him anyway.

We moved on to Fever’s studio at Andheri. They sat us in the Board room and after a while, a stout man with scanty hair walked in. My friend and I threw the how-is-he-gonna-treat-us looks at each other. He happened to be the ex. National Creative Director of Fever. We were still skeptical about things when he ordered coffee for us. And trust me, the man loved to talk! Over mugs of coffee, I had to take down endless pages of information he blessed us with. Such an unassuming and down-to-earth character, we were falling in love with Fever. We were also shown around the studio which was a splendid visual delight! Didn’t someone tell us not to judge a book by its cover?

The next studio we visited was of Meow which we had a hard time locating. Then this Creative Head guy sat us in an obscure place which looked more like a store room and turned out to be a bigger jerk than the first one. All our questions seemed to be lost in the rings of smoke he so stylishly and shamelessly blew on our faces. Neither of the two parties could quite stand each other. I suppose there is not much I want to write about him. I would rather talk about the last and a pleasant experience with Aakashwani, the government run radio station. True, they don’t have flamboyant offices and cool dudes but they have a lot to offer. Our visit there was worthwhile and the normal looking people there treated us well. All said and done, I am a little more experienced now !!

Raindom!

There are times when it is just inevitable to write a post, however reluctant or occupied one is! My wait is over finally…the rains are here! The skies have literally opened and it has been pouring since midnight. I love the sound of the rains through the window. And I love the feel of it against my body. I even love to get splashed by a speeding car and I love wading through knee deep water. How romantic I make it sound! More than anything, I love sitting in the college canteen on a rainy day like this, chewing the fat with friends for hours over piping hot coffee. Trust me, it’s lot of fun! Any crap under the sun starts making sense on such a day.

We all had been longing for the rains. The situation was getting from bad to worse. Imaging having no water supply in a bathroom in south Bombay! I had to go without a bath for a few days. Okay, this sounds snobbish but then it’s the way it is. The town had never seen a crisis as far as water is concerned. This also reminds me of the bizarre poster I saw the other day. This was put up near Pizzeria in Churchgate. ‘Let’s Blame the Politicians for the Failed Monsoons’. Come on, now what have the poor politicians got to do with the rains huh? Yeah, they are definitely responsible for a lot of things but….rains? Anyways, now that they are here, let’s all rejoice to our heart’s content.