CHAAR BAJ GAYE LEKIN PARTY ABHI BAAKI HAI!!!

IF fans invading the Wankhede pitch in droves was the lasting image of India’s 1983 World Cup victory, people lining up the streets in spontaneous victory laps, beer cans and giant flags in tow, will someday come to define 2011.
 Conspiracy theories laid to rest, transgressions forgotten, players are demi-Gods again. The euphoria never seems to wear off, even at 4 AM for these 20- and 30-somethings. Most of them weren’t even born or were too young remember 1983. But now it matters not. For the ghosts of 2003 can now be exorcised; 1983 can now be firmly replaced. For this generation was now experiencing something they had only heard of. Winning cricket’s Holy Grail.
 Marine Drive turns into an orgy of sights, sounds and the occasional smell. The ever-voluptuous cavalcade of Indian fans are out in the streets – clicking pictures that will inevitably end up on Facebook; lying on the parapet staring exultantly into the starless sky probably making notes for the sake of posterity, to tell their kids ‘I was there when it happened’; waving giant flags, some bigger than their bearers, while perched atop moving cars singing their throats hoarse.
 Police vans stand next to the road, happily turning a blind eye. For an era has just begun. The Holy Grail is ours. And the party has just started.

SETTING ASIDE PRIVACY

In Dadar, at the heart of the city, stands a 73-year-old building where privacy is unheard of.

 Walk through its corridors and you notice wide open doors; a man sleeping next to the stairs on the second floor landing, men sitting in the passageway playing cards; women making garlands in the same dimly-lit passage. And all the while, these people barely give you a second, suspicious glance. Inspite of you being a complete stranger and it being midnight.

 The paucity of space in the one room-kitchen houses of this building means that the passages outside the houses have become part of the house for these families that have lived here for over 2 generations. And while the passages serve as the living room, the terrace becomes the common bedroom. For, every night the families of this building sleep side by side on the terrace, their places marked by an unwritten code, a thin sheet of cloth being the mattress and the starlit sky acting as a ceiling.

 And yes. Despite the wide ajar doors, despite people sleeping on the terrace together – voyeurism and perversion find no place in their ethos. Despite men and women of all ages, from too many families sleeping on the same bare floor under the same ‘roof’. Hasn’t any untoward incident ever happened, I ask. ‘Never,’ says my friend who’s lived there all his life, surprised at the question.

 No wonder then, this is one of those rare buildings in Mumbai where neighbour-phobia has been firmly weeded out.

A TEETOTALLER’S TALE

ON the second day of that wretched three day dry spell imposed on the state due to the Ayodhya verdict, a tiny bar at Nariman Point opens its door covertly to customers. But with a catch. The tables in the bar are back to their positions but the seats aren’t. The few customers present when I and a few colleagues reach there aren’t sitting. They stand.

The logic, as a senior colleague explains, is simple. ‘The drinks finish faster when you’re standing,’ he says smiling. And the faster they finish their drinks, the better. I wouldn’t argue with the logic. Not when the Govt imposes a three day dry period as a ‘preventive measure’. You know, because sober people (and the people who stock up alcohol for dry days at home) don’t riot. OR maybe I’ve had one Sprite too many.