Chhavi Noticed This!

So the BMC has decided it will now prune trees to prevent stray branches from falling. You know what that means, right? They’re just going to start chopping everything down in sight. My neighboring building society head told me that they’d chopped down the tree between us because “mosquitoes are breeding there”. He claims to be a horticulturist. Who never went to school, evidently. Because in his next breath he also told us it didn’t matter because “Only Tulsi” gives out oxygen, other trees are not important. I nearly slit my own wrists. Maybe these little clay gods will protect this peepul from being ‘pruned’ BMC horticulture style …

This gem from the old market in Siem Reap, Cambodia. If only I could sell MY rants, too. I have so many – from Delhi’s lack of civic sense to my uncle’s Islamophobia, to the state of our educational systems in India, not to mention the state of radio in India….
Anyway, these are handmade LADY rants Mine aren’t very ladylike, I’ll admit. So for those, you’ll really have to travel to Cambodia.

What a thrill, right? To see my brother’s film posters on buses and walls But the movie was unfortunately timed; it released with 8 other films and was almost totally ignored by the mainstream press (Ok, the Mumbai Mirror did review it and decimated it, but the Times Group seemed to have decided to boycott it. Others said they’d had to choose three or four of the eight and “Toss” just didn’t make the cut).
So, we tried to salvage some of it by creating a buzz in the social media fraternity and while that didn’t really take off either (logistics, quick-changes of movies in theatres, I left for Cambodia), it interestingly garnered a mention as a sort of case study in Campaign India magazine. It didn’t talk about the results, but I’m glad someone noticed the effort! Read the story Do Indian Bloggers affect consumer views? here. What do you think?

Is this bliss or is this bliss? I’m not trying to romanticize the life of this beast of labor or anthropomorphize this dude here but I caught sight of him recently at Warden Road and he was so striking, I had to stop and video him. I swear to you, he looked like he had hit hay nirvana. He was smacking his lips loudly and his eyes rolled back into his head. I think there was no doubt whatsoever that he was beaming to himself in sheer happiness. So I stopped to watch, and soon a small crowd of people had also stopped to smile at the bull and each other. Well, all except the bull’s maalik. Guess he hadn’t gotten to his own fodder, yet.

Thank goodness this is only supposed to happen once in this lifetime. It was such a bad experience I’d be loath to wish it on an enemy! To start with, the registration location (“Badminton Hall”) was ridiculously hard to find and there was a lone policewoman trying to impose order outside. She did eventually let 10 people in at a time. Her directions about what to do inside were literally directions: “Turn right.” What I saw is what you see. And beyond these people were ceiling high stacks of paper. After waiting in two lines (once to receive a “number” – ward? Jaago Re neglected to mention this one) this absolutely rude woman said she couldn’t accept my PAN card as proof of my date of birth (regardless of what their web site says) and if “sir” said it was ok, she’d take the voter registration application. But “sir” flipped past the PAN card and fixated on my mobile phone bill as not being valid proof of address, instead. After raising my voice and demanding his name and ID number (to the absolute unconcealed delight of at least 300 people), I finally got them to accept my application and give me the counterfoil.
It didn’t seem to matter to them that they don’t make the decision about whether my application is accepted or rejected, they’re so used to playing God, they wouldn’t even take it! I was shaking with disbelief and anger about how difficult the bureaucracy makes it for even the people who DO want to vote.
All around me, people were being turned away for missing documents. There was someone in line ahead of me who’d returned for the fourth time! Why is the correct information not publicly available? And how can these officials be this rude to fellow human beings?

One of our dogs died Friday. We rushed her to the Bombay SPCA because it’s the only all-night vet hospital we know of. They treated her with a callous irresponsibility we are still raging against. She would have died anyway, she was badly hurt, but they certainly protracted our pain and hers (the subject of a complaint letter that has been circulated widely now). But what stays beyond to haunt me beyond my grief is the horror of the place. Remember how the Scarecrow in Batman visits upon someone an image of their deepest abhorrence? For me, this would be it. In an atmosphere of despair that sucks your soul dry, abandoned and sick animals cry all the time. Howls, whimpers, almost-human shrieks rent the night. Anyone with a brain and a heart would be tormented. I’m never going there again. p.s. please don’t post condolence comments.

Once in a while, I see something that takes me back to my childhood with such an intensity that I have to stop and take a breath. Remember these Phantom cigs? I’d lick their pink tips and pretend to smoke them (back when I thought smoking was ‘cool’.) I seem to remember competing with my friend Rima to see who could make the end most pointy before it broke.
Maybe these have always been around and I haven’t been paying too much attention. Some candies I adored as a kid have disappeared, but others, like Parle’s Melody Chocolate Toff, have been resurrected, with shiny new 21st-century packaging. Harnik, here’s blowing phantom smoke rings at ya!

I haven’t been to Crawford Market in forever. Actually, I’ll have to check with my mother to find out if I’ve ever been at all (I’m acutely wary of implanted memories based on my mother’s stories of a time gone by). Today at lunch, Tan and I whizzed by two storefronts that were completely bedecked with flower wreaths (“All the better to drown you with, Sheranwali“) for Navratri, we presume. Ramzaan and Eid just finished, now it’s Navratri and Durga Puja and next up is Diwali. I LOVE being back. All this exuberant color is instant seratonin!
Oh and a sehra is the headpiece of flowers worn by the bridegroom when he’s up on his white mare, fetching his new bride with the baraat, unable to see a damn thing, at least in Punjabi

Since I got tagged by aditya, I’m doing a random post that doesn’t quite fit ☺
To be true to my own blog, the photo is of a place I have lived in. This cool dude used to show up and hang out in my balcony last year in Delhi

4 Jobs I’ve Had (in chronological order): Girl Friday at King College, News producer at boston.com, producer at an Indian radio station, & freelance radio content producer at my company News Radio India Sonologue.
4 Movies I Could Watch Over and Over: Dr. Strangelove (or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb), (more…)

We used to know a pair of lhasa apsos called Samosa and Moongphali Anyway, this is not about them. This is about where your samosas come from Behind the halwai, in a dingy, cavernous room is where the raw samosas – still tender in their doughy skins – await their flash in the pan. So, I’m romanticizing Sue me. But the contrast was too stark to not post. Enjoy your next samosa… Oh and the post’s title? I knew a kid who couldn’t say “samosa”