Book Spine Poetry

Inspired by brainpickings, which was in turn inspired by artist Nina Katchadourian.

Being Indian-
behind the beautiful forevers,
everybody loves a good drought

Being Indian- Pavan K Varma

Behind the Beautiful Forevers- Katherine Boo

Everybody loves a good drought- P Sainath

India after Gandhi-
poor souls!
the inheritance of loss,
multitude,
identity and violence-
a fine balance!

India after Gandhi- Ramachandra Guha

Poor Souls- Joseph Connolly

The Inheritance of Loss- Kiran Desai

Multitude- Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

Identity and Violence- Amartya Sen

A fine balance- Rohington Mistry

all these years,

the fear of freedom

the wonder that was India!

All these years- Raj Thapar

The fear of Freedom- Erich Fromm

The wonder that was India- Basham

Of eavesdropping on conversations in cabs...

So I overheard this rather interesting conversation today.

It so happened that I landed up in a cab with a stranger in the front  passenger seat. Cabs were hard to come by today, and we were both headed in the same direction- the cab guy was gracious enough to suggest that I hop on as well, (for he had taken on the other guy first,) and the dark, lanky passenger nodded his agreement.

As soon as the cab started the lanky boy in the front seat started fiddling with the newspaper on the dashboard.

Ye aaj ka hai?

Nahin, kal ka. Aaj ka nahin hai mere paas.

Arre, aaj ka paper dekhne ka hai.

Kyun, kya hua.

Burma mein logon ko kaat rele hain.

(Incredulous) Acchha?

Haan, bahut logon ko. Bacchon ko bhi nahin chhod rahe. Ek mahine ke bacche ka sar kaat dala. Usi ke liye log jama hai Azad Maidan pe.

Acchha? Kyun maar rahen hain.

Kya maloom, bahut kuchh to gadbad kiya rahega.

Ye Burma kidhar hai?

Nepal ke baju mein.

Acchha. matlab India mein hai?

Nahin. India mein nahin hai. India mein Assam mein maar rele hain. Kaat ke phhenk rele hai.

Acchha? TV pe dikha rahen hain ye sab.

Nahin, TV pe kahan. Sab daba dete hain aisi khabar ko. Kahin nahin milegi, na TV pe, na paper mein.

Cabdriver gets a phone call- his mom has called to apprise him of the trouble at Azad Maidan, and to ask him not to go there. He speaks to her, hangs up and relates the news to us.

At this point, my destination is near. Much as I would have liked to hear more of this conversation between the very interesting passenger and the simple, rather ignorant and easily believing cab driver, I had to ask the cab to slow down. The lanky guy shuffled around as I paid up, he got out of the cab and left without offering to share the fare.  As I entered the building, I realized he was there in the foyer, not ignoring me but not acknowledging either. We entered the lift together, and got off at the 10^th floor. On the way I stole a couple of glances at him- there is something oddly familiar about him. He waits for me to get out first. Chivalry, I thought, or has he just decided to let me lead the way since I obviously know where I’m headed.

I was late, and even though I was curious to at least ask his name, or check if he has come for the screening, (in which case I would have asked him to come with me,) I just rush through to the theatre. A minute after I find myself a seat, I see him walk past and sit a few rows ahead. The first film has ended and the second one begins.

And there he is, on the screen. Videokaaran.

Baromas

'Have you seen Harud? Its the best film on Kashmir yet, absolutely brilliant. Has convinced me, if there was any doubt, that fiction is the way to go.'

A couple of years ago a friend of mine who had made a documentary on the women of Kashmir, sent me this message. I mostly agree, though I also feel that we live in a fool's paradise when we imagine that the films we choose to be associated with make any difference at all. And yet, we go on believing.

Here’s another film then, very different in style from Harud, and yet equally relevant. I hope it does for farmers what Harud could or could not do for Kashmir.

Baromas

(from its facebook description)

Baromas is a feature film in Hindi based on the Sahitya Academy award winning Marathi Novel. The movie is produced by Sajith and Priyanka. The director is Dhiraj Meshram.

Update- and I still mostly don't look forward to the rains

And as if to prove my point, a day after I posted the last piece, I had another conversation with my maid Vibha.

So she took a day off because her child was unwell, and then turned up late the next day. When I enquired why, she said they were preparing for the rain, keeping stuff up at a height. So late, I asked with surprise, you should have done that in the very first week of June, Bambai ki baarish ka kya bharosa. Yes, she said, but we had heard that there might be demolitions, so we were waiting for that. But then there were the pre monsoon showers the previous day, and so much stuff got wet, that they went ahead and prepared for the monsoon anyway. What does this preparation entail- a brand new tarpaulin roof. They had a roof of course, but it was an old weathered sheet, enough to shield from the summer sun but not enough to bear the brunt of the fury that the monsoon rain in Bombay can be.

Anyway, whether or not demolitions follow, they have had to put up a new sheet to keep out the water. How often do demolitions happen, I ask. About three or four times a year, she says. I am incredulous. You rebuild every single time then, three or four times a year? Yes, she says simply. We rebuild. It takes them two to four hours to rebuild and get everything in order, provided they don’t lose much to theft.

Rebuilding a house, twice a year (she admitted later that there isn’t always demolition every time there is a threat of one, so it actually really happens about twice a year.) A house that will be defenseless once the monsoon hits with full force, and the streets begin to overflow with water that simply doesn’t have anywhere to go because we’ve built multistory buildings and blocked its natural drainage path. Upar se aane wale paani ko to rok bhi lete hain, she had said to me once, neeche se jo aata hai uska kya karen. (We are still able to prevent water from coming in from above, what do we do about the water that comes in from below- that collects in the streets and threatens to and sometimes does come in to the house through doors.)

Why I’m not looking forward to the rains

Why indeed? I mean, who doesn’t like pleasant weather and the romance of rains after the oppressive heat that is Bombay summer? Well, me for one. I’m not looking forward to rains.

It’s not like I don’t like rain. It’s beautiful of course. From my window. The moment I have to step out, it doesn’t seem so great anymore. Bombay in the monsoon sucks. It’s filthy most of the year; during monsoon it’s filthy and wet- ie gross. If you are not from the privileged class that travels only in cars, chances are you will have to wade through dirty water at some point or another, every single time you step out. And even if you are from the privileged class, in fact especially so, you will get stuck in traffic.

And then there is the matter of all those people living on pavements and in slums, with no proper drainage to speak of. Do they find the rain romantic when the water reaches their doorstep and beyond? Do they find it romantic when their roof starts to leak, or when the streets become rivers of floating muck, and excreta from several living forms? Do they find it romantic when they spend nights huddled under plastic sheets?

I’m not sure when I started to view the rain differently. I don’t want to be a spoilsport when everyone seems to be waiting with such anticipation, and there is joy all around. Maybe this conversation is partly to blame. At any rate, I can safely say, as lovely as the rain still is from my window, as stunning as the skies are these days, and luscious the green, I will henceforth always have mixed feelings about rain.

A day in May

Scorching sun, oppressive heat; no sign of the slightest wind, not a leaf stirring.

Househunting blues.

An owner trying to impress on me that the rent is justified, after all it is a ‘good society’, a reference to a building being gated, relatively well maintained and with inhabitants who are typically a little better off. A hierarchy even in buildings. ‘A good society’ does not mean good people, it just means people with more money, I think to myself but don’t say it. When will the Mumbai housing Gods smile down on me?

Sweaty, hot and depressed, I come back home and stare out of the window at the limping palm leaves that I am going to miss very much.

Call from Faiza. There have been demolitions in Ambujwadi and Sion Koliwada.

My househunting blues are now coloured with a tinge of guilt.

A healthy obsession... or maybe OCD?

I have what some might call a bit of an obsession. :)

I like to take informed decisions, but the process of ‘informing’ myself can sometimes be long. And I mean *long*, by most people’s standards.

The latest one concerned drinking water, and one would think that that alone should have been reason enough for a quick decision, but that would be underestimating my ability to procrastinate.

Anyway, to begin at the beginning: I moved into my current house at Yari Road about 6 months back. It’s a nice enough house, though the building is very old and not very well maintained, but that’s another story. Even when I had first moved in, the broker had informed me about the water situation- that the water in the tap is a mix of BMC (ie municipal supply) and borewell water, and therefore, I should procure drinking water from the couple of taps in H block that have continuous BMC water supply. For the first week, while I was still settling down, I got a 20l bottle of Bisleri while I tried to figure out what to do about drinking water. For those of you who are not from the country, let me tell you that the water that is supplied by our municipal corporations, though treated, is often not fit for drinking. There are all kinds of impurities and contamination to be found in the water, and while many of us seem to have developed a healthy immunity thanks to having grown up here, sometimes even we succumb to water borne diseases. And that is why there is a wide variety of water purifiers available in the market, all of which do brisk business.

Having said that, BMC water is actually not bad in most places. There is a friend of mine who scoffs at me and drinks water straight off the tap, but then he has the constitution of an ox. I have in fact had water at his place many times and survived it, but that simply wasn’t an option I was willing to consider as a permanent solution. Besides, much as I would love to trust our government agencies, it’s just not practical. So as I sipped on Bisleri that first week, I happened to visit a friend who lives in the same building. I was surprised to learn that she had no idea that the water in the tap wasn’t entirely BMC and had happily been using it, albeit with a storage water filter. I corrected her, and told her how all the residents, or most of them anyway, get their drinking water from H block in cans. That’s what all the big white cans lined up on the ground floor are for; they pay the guard a monthly fee to fill them up and leave them at their doorstep everyday. But she couldn’t be bothered, she declared, and neither could I, I decided.

And how about the purification? Well, as far as eliminating microorganisms is concerned, the surest, most effective way is boiling water and that’s what I decided to do, in lieu of getting a filter. Sure it’s tedious, and sometimes one plain forgets; the worst is when you plain forget after you’ve put the vessel on the burner, and an half hour later you smell something burning- you run into the kitchen to find a red hot steel vessel, disfigured for life! But you get used to it all after a while.

So what happened now, six months later? Well, lately I’ve noticed a layer of oil in the boiled water. Also there is a residue of salt in my plants, left behind by the evaporated water I assume. Both these trouble me needless to say, and when my maid mentioned to me (not for the first time,) that I should reconsider where I’m getting my drinking water from, and worse- that she never drinks water at my place because I use tap water, that really was the last straw!

I got myself another big bottle of Bisleri and got down to the task of researching to figure out a solution. Here are the findings of two days of off-and-on and half a day of concentrated researching and reading:

The kind of purifier you use depends on the quality of water in your area (but of course.)

In my case, since part of the water was ground water, it was likely to contain oil, solid contaminants, and dissolved salts. All of these are hard to remove, and only by a process called reverse osmosis. RO filters are some of the most expensive in the market and are not efficient- they waste 2 to 3 times as much water as they purify. These factors effectively ruled out a wall mounted water purifier connected to the tap.

This left the other solution- getting water from downstairs in a water can. I am not very comfortable with the idea of a plastic water can to get and store water, however temporarily. This is not to say that I have managed to eliminate plastic from my life- not by a long shot, but I am trying!

Even if one gets BMC water, there is the matter of purifying it, although this task is much easier since this water does not contain oils and dissolved salts and is already treated with both UV radiation and chlorine.

Therefore, even a simple storage type water filter should suffice (which typically uses activated carbon though companies nowadays have patended technologies, using two or more steps) though even in this case, boiling is best.

I have read reports of doctors saying that one should boil water even after filtering/ purifying using a purifier! By the way, the right way to purify water by boiling is to bring it to a rolling boil and let it boil for about a minute if you reside near sea level, and for 3 minutes at higher altitudes. It doesn’t even need to boil really, it just needs to attain a temperature of 72deg for about 5 minutes, but since this is harder to achieve practically, bringing to boil and letting it boil for 1 minute is recommended (although is there was a way around it, it would lead to substantial saving in fuel consumption.) Storage of this water needs some care so as to not contaminate it post boiling.

And while several top companies such as Eureka Forbes (the market leader in water purifiers), Tata and HUL, all have very affordable storage water filters in the market, do a basic search for reviews and you would realise almost none are hassle free, though HUL clearly scores better than the others. (I won’t get into the technologies they use, for while I am vaguely aware of them, I am none the wiser as to which is better.)

But, there is an environmental cost to boiling water- it uses LPG which is not a renewable resource.

So there it is then- that is my dilemma. Most people would just go for a filter I suppose and it is probably the wiser choice. It saves one the hassle of having to boil water and does a reasonably good job of purifying water of BMC quality. A filter like HUL’s Pure-it actually uses a two stage process where it eliminates solid articles by passing the water through thin semi pervious membranes, and chlorinates.

Heck, most people would have done that without the research and the waste of a couple of days! :)

I’ll just draw solace in thinking of myself as a little better informed- for whatever it’s worth.