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.

Poetic Justice.

‘People would not appreciate those clothes’, the preachy Keralite housewife warned the young Italian couple. I, however, begged to differ having seen the intense attention the Italian girl was getting. Word had spread. Everywhere up and down the train eyes were lighting up. People from every corner of the train were submitting to the spontaneous impulse to take a walk. Everyone wanted a piece of the smiling ‘firang’ in hot pants. (And I might add that this IS appreciation enough for clothes).
The housewife took no notice and kept speaking. Her lists of do’s and don’ts kept coming. Advice poured and everyone around her was drenched. Then she started talking about stuff that had no connection to anything. She went on about culture, tradition, morals, clothes- you get the drift. The helpless Italians just nodded not knowing what had set her off. The housewife, in fact, was so eager to impress on her values that she impulsively kept adjusting her dupatta. Her little kids, apparently hurt by the mother’s disinterest, were lying on the top berth staring at the roof for solace.
And then it happened.
Touch Me Touch Me Touch Me
Ah Zara Zara
Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me
Ah Zara Zara
Hold Me Hold Me Hold Me
Ah Zara Zara
Oooo ooo ooo.
sings the 7 yr old girl at the top of her shrill voice. The Italians are surprised; I am shaking with laughter while the housewife just manages a lame smile in response. An awkward silence followed. Eating humble pie didn’t suit the housewife, it constipated her ego. The rest of the journey passed in peace (sadly) with the housewife maintaining a dignified silence.

BOTTOMLINE: Save yourself the blushes, use protection. As you sow, so shall you reap.

LOST AND FOUND...

I’ll be wearing a white mundu and am hoping it rains. Then, I’ll enter the temple. IN YOUR FACE,GOD…….random fantasizing before my visit to Kerala.

I wore a mundu just for the heck of it. I went inside the temple cause an uncle highly boasted about the temple and insisted that I see the beauty of the temple which highly intrigued me and cause by then it had indeed rained! I enter the temple grinning madly.
Now 1stly this temple wants men to enter the temple bare chested and without shoes, wearing just a mundu. And then they expect me to buy oil to pour in a gigantic diya- like after being stripped off my pants I’ll carry my wallet in my underwear! As soon as I enter, a pundit hands me a vessel filled with oil and asks me to hand over 10 rupees. I say I don’t have money. He smiles and pointing his hands heaven wards says ‘Narayan Narayan’ and takes away the oil with the same slickness that he’s handed it to me.
Now, this temple is so enormous that I didn’t even reach till the idol. So big, in fact, that I have to ask people for the Exit. They frown but show me the direction. Apparently, this temple has 4 exits- a fact I didn’t know then. And as expected, I take the wrong exit- something named the North Nada which leads out in the exact back of the temple.
There I am- in a city that is highly reluctant to speak either English or Hindi and whose language I can’t understand. I have no shoes on, no money, no idea of where the hell I am, in an area that’s not exactly lit up to my liking and half naked with my nipples showing. To make matters worse everywhere I look around me I see hefty guys talking amongst themselves. And somehow none of those people find it funny, apart from me. Finally I spot an elderly woman who looks highly unlikely to mug me. I try asking her for the main enterance and her 1st reaction is to hide her gold necklace with her palm and she keeps walking in the opposite direction averting me- like I was a threat to her! I start walking vaguely in the direction that I’ve assumed my pious family to be waiting for me. I have to walk almost 500 meters barefeet, around a big pond!!! And as my family would later point out, the idol was the highlight of the temple and not the stone-carved exterior of the temple.

God did have the last laugh that day. And Murphy might have done the I-told-you-so in his grave.
Narayan Narayan.