Monday, May 29, 2006

SEVEN ISLANDS AND A METRO

Mumbai is now my hometown – rather, the address that I fill in the Permanent Address columns of a thousand registration forms – both on paper and in the paperless, virtual world - bear Mumbai as the place to which I am permanently tethered to. It is ironic, because I am the aimless vagrant and less dramatically, because I have never really lived in the city. I have lived here as an itinerant, in the interregnums between the established milestones in my life. But it is Mumbai where my parents are, it is here that I did my post-graduation and made wonderful friends to last a lifetime, started off a new phase of life in my first job post my MBA... consequently, the city awakens in me a keen bout of nostalgia and a fair sense of belongingness.

And it is a city that assaults your senses and challenges the person inside you, irrespective of who you are and what your beliefs are. It is a city that is uniformly loved and loathed, but seldom ignored. Simply because Mumbai does not give you that option. She opens up in front of you and shows her myriad colours, much like a peacock on the dusty Delhi-Jaipur highway and you cannot, but be seeped in into her folds.

Its problems are manifold and well documented. Millions travel to and fro in her local trains – serpentine worms coursing through her belly carrying milliards of eggs inside; passengers packed like sardines. Despite having the country's sturdiest mass transport system, Mumbai is crumbling beneath the weight of her freight. The number of local trains are proving inadequate; the roads are permanently clogged with traffic; the pace of new infrastructure is losing the race to the greater pace of an ever expanding population; the local populace is increasingly being marginalized by outsiders and xenophobic demons are rearing their ugly heads; slums are mushrooming all over, disfiguring the face of the maiden and assaulting the dreams of many who want the city to be Shanghai - but proving resistant to half-hearted attempts at demolitions by politicians who peddle the Shanghai dream and look for votes in these very slums simultaneously, without a trace of the inherent dichotomy; gigantic cement-mixers keep rumbling in like military tanks at Tiananmen and crush the dwellings of migrants who have lived in the outskirts since fleeing from the horrors of partition; the custodians of the law are running amok threatening the encomiums heaped on the city as the safest for the fairest in the country; communal politics is seeping into the veins and the arteries, splitting up people, compartmentalizing them into their own burrows; the Mafia may be down, but is not out yet and newer Chhota Rajans and Dawoods are emerging from the shadows of their notorious predecessors.... the list of woes is long and emasculating.

But like Saladdin, Mumbai manages to survive. She tricks her way past the seemingly insurmountable hurdles, faces up to a few and puts off a fight good enough to push Armageddon away by a few light-years and in most cases, she simply ablactates herself from the issues and allows them to mellow and then die down. And she is adept at the art of survival. She has faced the marauding navies of the Arabians, dodged the cunningness of the Portuguese, stood up to the naked ambitions of the British, stoically borne her barter between Spanish princesses and English monarchs, lived through the loss of her mill lands, endured the activism of Datta Samant, George Fernandes and their smouldering armies of plebeian warriors, picked up the pieces after riots that would have shattered the fabric of her sisters and winked at the virulent diatribes of self-appointed custodians of the local culture.

She has fed all who have come to her for nourishment, refusing to differentiate her sons from those of her sisters. Hordes swim to the El Dorado, ending up on pavements, slums, mujra houses, bars, factories, construction sites. A few amass wealth, some find their dreams fulfilled but countless, faceless others struggle on, but with hope in their hearts. A persecuted community from far-off Persia found her to be their promised land and rose to the pinnacle of their success and fame here and shaped many of the things that we like about her. She has embraced all - from the ancient Kolis, Pathare Prabhus and the East Indians to the new converts known as bhaiyyas. Zoroastrians, Syrian Catholics, Bene Israeli Jews, East Indian Roman Catholics, Bangladeshi immigrants, Sindhis and Gujaratis – they are as much bhoomiputras as the Marathi manoos. She dazzled the Europeans with her grandeur and culture, while providing the restless youth of the country with the ideal grounds for fomenting revolutions to unshackle ourselves from them. She has stood up for her daughters when they were violated and ensured that the law did not drag its feet when it came to handing out punishment. She taught her sons that colour, caste and creed are the vices of the pusillanimous. She nurtured an institution like Bollywood, which continues to be the single most efficacious glue holding our nation together and gave us messiahs like Tendulkar who would embody our national pride like no other. She taught us commerce and trade and put us on the path to economic glory.

She is fraying at the edges now and has seen a fair number of sunsets to acquire that aura of one who has been there, done it all. Newer challenges keep coming up daily. But she has taught her children to tide over them. Sunil More was not spared by the law, the common man refused to be a mute spectator when Uzer Patel went on a ghastly killing spree at the Gateway, strangers helped each other stoically through the worst city floods that Mumbai had ever seen, the more radical of its political parties is getting more inclusive.

It is time to raise a toast to her !!

Thursday, May 25, 2006

A month of Magic

"All I know of life, I knew from the football field"
Thus spake Albert Camus.

And football frenzy nears its climax as the World Cup approaches. A fortnight remains and for millions across the globe, football would be the theme that will rule their lives for a month of sheer madness.

Football is by far the most popular game on earth and one which has the maximum number of adherents in the form of nations playing it.

And for those who are enamoured of its diverse charms, ESPN-Star's recent advertisements about the game would seem absolutely germane - Agony & Ecstasy; Celebrations & Catastrophe; Despair & Delight; Victor and the Vanquished - a game of 90 minutes can indeed teach one everything about life and beyond.

Who can forget the tears streaming down the face of that peerless genius Diego Armando Maradona as Germany dethroned the defending champions in Italia '90 , who wouldn't have wept along with Gazza as England contemplated the life beyond, in the same tournament? Roger Milla and his band of merrymen proved that there was skill and entertainment beyond the traditional powerhouses and won millions of hearts in the process. Bebeto chose to share with the whole world his exhilaration at his impending fatherhood and millions opened their arms to embrace his baby. Karl Heinz Rummennigge, in the finals of Mexico 86, showed in a short period of 20 minutes that hard work, discipline and organization can make the seemingly impossible, nearly possible; only to be pipped at the post by the magical skills of the divine Maradona. Michael Owen proved that talent is unstoppable in those magical moments of France '98 with his "Goal of the Tournament", while Senegal made the mighty French eat humble pie with their awe-inspiring run in 2002.

Demigods proved that they too had human frailties - Zico and Roberto Baggio would be etched in our memories for their catastrophic penalty misses, while a generation of football lovers would be haunted by the tragic sight of the proud Oliver Kahn clutching the goalposts, his head hung in despair and his eyelids twitching to contain the inevitable efflux from his eyes, contemplating the fumble that enabled Ronaldo to extinguish German hopes in far-away Tokyo.

Unknown entities have achieved immortality during the course of this tournament - Toto Schillaci may have been an unknown before Italia 90 and indeed, sunk back into oblivion soon after, but his Golden Ball winning efforts in that tournament would give him, his eternal seat in the supreme pantheon. Sami Al Jaber would prove that the Middle East were no middlings when it came to footballing skills, while Davor Suker and Zvonimir Boban would give a fledgling, young country a reason to be proud of themselves.

The veteran and the tyro, the young and the old, the established and the challenger - they all want to be a part of this celebration of football at its highest altar. Not all, would however, make it to Germany 2006 and amongst those, who do, some would bid their fans goodbye at this highest of platforms.

Zinedine Zidane would don the French colours for his last hurrah and the sporting world indeed, would be much poorer without his sublime skills to feast their eyes upon. Wayne Rooney, billed by many, as the inevitable superstar of this edition, races against time to be fit and England must now make plans without their talisman. Dietmar Hamann found that yeoman service counts for nothing when it comes to the greatest stage of football and tearfully announced his retirement on being ignored by former club-mate and current coach Juergen Klinnsmann, while Polish goal-keeper Jerzy Dudek came face to face with the vicissitudes of fortune, when he was surprisingly excluded from the Polish squad, less than a year after taking Liverpool to victory in that titanic Champions' League final. Such is the capricious nature of Dame Luck.

The show must however go on and we wait with bated breath for a month of magic.

Cosmopolitan, Metro, Big City????

It was the British who gave our country an unified homogeneous look and divided it into different presidencies to ease the difficulties of administering a country, many times their own in terms of both area and people. Thus were born the presidencies of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras apart from the capital at Delhi. None of the cities thus thrust to prominence, had had any glorious past, apart from Delhi – which had been a witness to the many vagaries of history and culture, old and new, organic and inorganic, peaceful and the terrible; right from the mythical times of the Mahabharata.

Indeed, the emergence of these cities as the principal urban agglomerations in India was a gradual and hence, well-cured process. Art, culture, science, literature, polemics – the various fruits of wisdom established their roots in a sustained manner over the years. And then they percolated down to the lowest strata in society – the plebeian route to equanimity of success and well-being.

Each city became the focal point of their respective part of the country and attracted acolytes from all around. Sindhis, Gujaratis and Parsis flocked to Bombay – the capital of a Presidency that counted all these disparate people as its subjects. Calcutta became the melting pot of an even more diverse set of people – ethnic Chinese, Biharis and Oriyas – members of the Bengal Presidency just like the native Bengalis, Jews, the Dutch in Chinsurah, the Danes in Serampore, the French in Chandernagore, Gurkhas and Assamese. Naturally ecumenical in their constitution, these cities strode to the forefront of the modern India at the beginning of the 20th century.

Independent India borrowed its concept of metros from this legacy of the British.

Indeed, for a long time, post independence, we were happy with the status quo – with a closed economy, India trudged along the path to modernity and prosperity at a snail's pace. Circa 1990s – and Manmohanomics meant that India will never be the same again. New claimants arose for the coveted title of metros as newer sectors of the industry came into their own and blazed a trail of glory across the global rostrum. Hyderabad and Bangalore became the darlings of this new wave of Indian optimism and gung-ho and were duly admitted into the elite league of Indian megapolises.

And on the fateful dates of 12th and 13th April, 2006 – Bangalore exposed the folly that had induced thousands to believe that they were residing in a cosmopolitan urban Indian metro.

Rajkumar had stridden across the world of Kannada movies as a peerless colossus for decades and had duly attained the status of a demi-god in the eyes of his admirers. But he surely would have been heart-stricken to see the way his memory was vandalized by those who claimed to be the custodians of his legacy. As its Annavaru departed for his heavenly abode, Bangalore erupted in unprecedented and mind-boggling ferocity to perpetrate an act of diabolical cowardice on innocent people.

The showcase city of India's rapid stride towards modernity and prosperity decided to exhibit its hidden streak on unsuspecting outsiders – I was a victim of a xenophobic backlash as my office car was trapped near Sankey Road in Sadashivnagar. Sensing that the occupants (myself included) were not conversant in the local language, the crowd decided to smash the car as best as it could, shattered the wind shield and finally torched it, with all its contents inside. In what seemed an eternity of a time, I was dragged out of the car, asked a few questions in Kannada and then summarily abused by all and sundry for daring to come and earn my living in Bangalore. The city was not ours, I was told – it was for the exclusive use of the sons of the soil. We were rapacious marauders, defiling the city of the natives. Kicks and blows rained in before the crowd spotted another potential victim in the car behind us and I managed to make good my escape.

Not all were so lucky however. A few people lost their lives, policemen were brutally bashed up and the city's denizens let loose a reign of terror for a full 2 days.

In the eyes of many, the bubble had burst. Some cities still have a long way to go before they can call themselves metropolitan and cosmopolitan.