Category: Bombay, bas

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Bombay, bas

I, me, myself and my smartphone

Clearly, there’s nothing we need in Mumbai, including friends and family, if we have a m0bile phone in our hands.
Pooja Birwatkarby Dr Pooja Birwatkar

New to travelling in the local trains of Mumbai, I was slowly beginning to learn the basics of acceptable train behaviour. I started out with buying a first class pass, but I would travel by second class because many people scared me about how unsafe travelling alone in the ladies first class compartment was (even though most of these ‘advisors’ seldom travelled by train).

But my time with the second class convinced me to take the first class coach even if I was alone in it, which was seldom, because the city’s population won’t allow for empty coaches.

In the first few days, I found myself looking at the women travelling with me. And very soon, I found the fashionably-dressed women giving me strange looks. I realised what the problem was – I was probably the only person travelling sans ear plugs connected to a music player or a fancy phone, and not staring at my mobile phone.

Having been a psychology student, it had become a habit for me to observe people and study their mannerisms. But I had to train myself to not stare, so, I learnt to observe them slyly. And almost always, this is what I found: 90 per cent commuters are hooked to their phones, while the rest sleep or chat with their friends.

Isn’t it awesome, this technology that allows us to chat with our friends and associates at all times of the day? You are no longer alone if you have a phone in your hands – not even talking on phonewhen you’re physically alone in a coffee shop. A few years ago, one would feel uncomfortable waiting alone at a bus stop or a train platform, or even in a restaurant. But our phones, in front of our eyes at all times, divert us so well, we don’t even feel alone despite being alone. Our phones help us escape feelings of awkwardness in public spaces, and keep us so occupied, we hardly know who is sitting next to us.

But you know what? I miss the times when journeys were times when we smiled at our fellow passengers, had a few casual talks, and sometimes made great friendships with the mothers of cute babies travelling with us. I can only vaguely remember the simpler times when social networking did not dictate our first actions for the day and the last things we did at night. I sometimes brush my teeth in the morning with my eyes glued to my cell phone.

People have also found ways to scare us into forwarding certain messages to a fixed number of people or incur the wrath of some God (who, I suppose, has cracked a way to keep a tab on the forwarded messages and do calculations of who followed instructions and who didn’t).

Unlike a lot of people who constantly berate technology for reducing human interaction, I am not going to say that social networking is totally unnecessary – after all, it does help unite us with people we knew ages ago, and it helps us keep in touch with everything in a rapidly shrinking world. It gives us a daily insight into how others we know are living their lives – and sometimes makes us believe they’re having more fun than we are.

I admit I love secretly peeping into other people’s lives. If we had this level of communication growing up, we wouldn’t have to contend with coy glances at our crushes in our teenage years. We would wait for the other person to make a move (which never happened), and all we would be left with would be fond memories. Imagine now, if you had a crush on somebody, all you had to do was write a smartly-worded message and send it to the person, thereby saving yourself from potentially embarrassing moments.

And yet, a part of me wants to take the time out to actually talk to others, rather than type to them. It is indeed sad that we are forgetting to even make small talk when we do happen to meet people. The other day, a friend of mine said that when she meets her parents on her visits to India, she struggles to find topics of conversation. It is also distressing to observe grandparents or parents in parks blissfully unaware of what their little wards are up to, because they are so busy tapping away at their phones.

With every revolution comes a change in our social patterns, and it takes a while to accept these changes. Funnily enough, I am writing this article on my cell phone in a local train. Who would have thought this was possible a few years ago? Once I am done writing, I am going to plug in my earphones and browse through my phone, not looking left or right. And it gives me a little thrill to know that I have been writing about my co-passengers and the local train, and they have no idea.

Dr Pooja Birwatkar is currently pursuing post doctoral research and working in the area of science education. She has been associated with the field of education in the past as a teacher educator, and her area of interest is research in education. 

 

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Bombay, bas

A bit of patience, with a side of tolerance, please…

At what point did we lose our manners, our patience, all our courtesies? And when will we get them back?
Pooja Birwatkarby Dr Pooja Birwatkar

The other day, after a long day at work, when I finally managed to prop my feet up and settle down for a cup of tea, my five-year-old son came running to tell me something. Looking at me, he paused and then began by saying, “Mom, I have to tell you something but when I am telling it to you, you let me complete it and listen to the entire thing and then react”.

I was taken aback. It led me to wonder: why did he say this to me? And then I realised that I had started cutting down his sentences even before he completes them and proceed to have my say. My lack of patience in hearing him out had been duly noted and this was his solution to tackle it. It led me to wonder about how seldom we reflect on two most important virtues in our life – patience and tolerance. Both seem to be doing a vanishing act lately.

Patience is the ability to tolerate any kind of delay, waiting or situations that frustrate us because things are not moving ahead, or not moving as anticipated. This tolerance has to be accompanied by non-agitated feelings or chances of not being upset. Of course, most of us have to learn to be patient as it does not come naturally to us.

So what has caused us to become intolerant and impatient? Much could be attributed to the technical age we are living in, where instant gratification is the motto. We live in a world where things look and appear easy to obtain, and hence we don’t realise their value. Since most of us treat our own lives as some sort of race that one has to run in and win to succeed, we are going to look at ‘patience’ and ‘tolerance’ as hindrances in our path.

The local train will teach you a thing or two about patience. If you accidentally step on someone’s foot or abruptly invade their space, you either get a scornful glance or a volley of abuse (or both). There is no common sense or logical thought at play here – why do we automatically assume that the push or stepping-on-toes act was a personal attack? It is the easiest thing in the world to be pushed or shoved around in a Mumbai local train. Nobody plans to hurt anybody else, so will we all just chill? Instead, try smiling at the person who accidentally hurt you and say, “It’s okay.”

It’s actually that simple.

I also see people frantically pushing buttons of their cell phones and I marvel at the amount of exercise they give their fingers. A few years ago, when mobile phones were still not the ‘in’ thing, people were not so anxious to communicate with others all the time. Now, of course, things are much different.

We also show impatience when we wait for the lift. Every person will press the button to call the lift, and if the lift takes time to appear, we show our frustration by pressing the Pressing lift buttonsbutton fiercely and repeatedly. Once we step in, we see that another person has already pressed the button for the floor you will be alighting at. But will we wait? No, we will go ahead and press that same button again.

The same impatience manifests itself at the traffic signal. The signal may still be red, but we keep honking our horns at the cars ahead of us. Do we expect these cars to sprout wings and fly away, leaving the road clear for us?

It’s about time we Mumbaikars learnt to just relax and be patient.

The positive side of developing patience is that it makes your life easy – your anger loses its edge and your emotions are more balanced. You learn to deal with your problems in a more constructive  way. Plus, you learn to be happier about yourself and others. A little patience goes a long way in sharpening our decision-making abilities as one not only deliberates on an issue but also avoids hasty mistakes. The empathy and compassionate virtues that grow with our patience affect our interpersonal relations to the maximum.

The commonly used word in our city to describe something good is ‘cool’. But are we actually ‘cool’ about things? We should be cool about the things that are tiny in magnitude, which unnecessarily stress us out. But instead, we choose to blow them out of proportion and say nothing about much bigger issues. There should be zero tolerance for injustice against women, children and senior citizens, against corruption and poverty, the way we have exploited natural resources and degraded our environment – but we show tremendous tolerance towards all these. So are we intolerant and impatient about everything, or selectively tolerant and patient? Think about it.

Dr Pooja Birwatkar is currently pursuing post doctoral research and working in the area of science education. She has been associated with the field of education in the past as a teacher educator, and her area of interest is research in education. 

 (Pictures courtesy www.carwale.com, www.wikihow.com)

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Bombay, bas

There’s a ghost in Mumbaikars’ lives…it’s called ‘EMI’

Buying a house in Mumbai comes with its own monthly nightmare – paying off EMIs and watching every rupee spent.
Pooja Birwatkarby Dr Pooja Birwatkar

To have a dream house of your own in Mumbai features in everyone’s list of what their life in the city should be. In the context of Mumbai, however, one has to let go of the word ‘dream’ and has to be content merely to have a shelter over oneself, which one can call home.

Way back in time, when my parents were groom-hunting for me, I used to scan the matrimonial ads in papers out of curiousity. The ads from Mumbai would always particularly strike me as a bit odd, because they attached a lot of importance and stress on mentioning “has own house in Mumbai”. Later, on the verge of marrying a Mumbaikar, I realised the significance of this home-owner status.  Like most couples, we began our struggle with a house hunt and finally got the keys of our house on the morning of our wedding day. While most people go trousseau shopping, we went house hunting.

Buying a house (sorry, I should say ‘flat’ or ‘room’) is not a joke. Taking a housing loan is inevitable. While in the process of getting the loan, you get introduced to something called EMI ‘EMI’ (Equated Monthly Instalment) and trust me, this monster in disguise exists for almost a life time.

Most of us live under the fear of this EMI monster. It strikes every month, usually on a particular day, wiping almost a major chunk of one’s salary. Till you don’t pay the EMI, you are miserly about spending your salary, as there is anxiety and tension that your bank account should have enough funds for the EMI monster to gulp in one go. And, of course, once the monster has had its share, you are left with barely enough to sustain through the month before falling into another vicious circle of salary-coming-EMI-monster-striking.

Nevertheless, you live in the hope that one day either the EMI would cease or reduce, but thanks to the country’s financial situation and the ever-rising home loan interest rates, either the amount goes up or the number of years increase or if you are unlucky enough, both go up. Either way, your hopes crash every few months as the banks make startling announcements. Sometimes one feels that if we were to die before we finished paying up, our future generations would bear the brunt of this EMI.

For those of us who have additional car and other amenities bought on loan, the EMI ghost is a perpetual visitor.  On a positive note, the EMI has actually led many of us to enjoy the materialistic pleasures of life, but the problem is that we seldom acknowledge them as our whole focus is on fighting off or removing this from our lives.

Come to think of it, Mumbaikars are actually paying a very heavy price for the small houses that we get in return. The same amount could buy us a mansion in other parts of the country.

Plus, our entire lives are spent in maintaining our houses. We earn for the house alone. I have seen a lot of people celebrating the day the last EMI is paid. But the options are limited, too. Either you buy a house or pay a hefty rent with the sword of an 11-month lease hanging over your head.

I sometimes wonder: with so much migration and increasing population of Mumbai, what would the future be? How much would Mumbai expand, and where would the coming generations go? The houses that most of us currently live in are merely sufficient for nuclear families. The joint system of living is not practical in Mumbai, because the space crunch doesn’t allow for a joint family system. If given a choice, we would love to have big families where our kids would be looked after by their grandparents and we would continue to soak in their love and warmth

Matrimonial ads now need to make a special mention: that, apart from one’s own house, the said house is also EMI-free. For most of us in Mumbai, this EMI is like a baby which refuses to grow up for fear of leaving the parents’ home. 

(Pictures courtesy www.commonfloor.com, rkrealtech.co.in)

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Bombay, bas

How summer has changed!

The vacations of our childhood were very different from those of our children today. All that remains is fond nostalgia.
Pooja Birwatkarby Dr Pooja Birwatkar

‘Summer holidays’. The term itself makes most of us nostalgic. There is a lazy tone that attaches itself to the term even as we speak of it. You tend to go back in time and see old memories flash in front of your eyes.

The summers of my childhood were pretty special. Summers were like a king in shining armour, saving us from the monster named ‘school’. ‘Do nothing’ was the mantra we followed in the holidays. Lazy afternoons were spent playing ghar ghar or board games. Summers also meant the advent of the divine frut – mango. Sure, there were water melons, jamun and sugarcane, but none could ever threaten the supremacy the king of fruits enjoyed.

There was a peculiar method to eating mangoes at our household, as I’m sure there was in yours. One, mangoes would be served Eating mangoes in summeronly after lunch. Two, we had to wear minimal clothing before we ate them. Three, we had to eat them sitting on the floor 🙂 

The once-a-year affair with Rooh Afza would begin. Who can forget the rose-flavoured cold milk shakes that replaced the routine hot glass of milk, or the ice candies we used to make of it?  The house would burst with relatives and friends or we would go to nani’s or dadi’s house, while a privileged few would go to hill stations for the holidays. There were no evening curfews to interrupt our playing sessions. We learnt most things like cycling, swimming, craft, needle work and other creative things in the most playful manner as the days wore on.

Those of us who have lived outside Mumbai would surely remember the times they’ve splashed water on the hot verandas to cool them down. The slight dip in temperature as the water evaporated from the hot ground was a feeling that words simply cannot describe. Filling water in air coolers and earthen pots were duties we were given, and we did them with the utmost sincerity.

From amongst the aromas of summer, my favourite one is that of the achaars that were made. Stealing the kachcha aam  meant for achaar and eating with salt was a joy that justified the guilt of stealing. Another memory of summers is that of the electricity going away for most part of the day, and people fanning themselves with handmade fans. And oh the joy, when the lights would come back on and the fan would dry the sweat from our bodies!

children play in water in the summerAnd of course, the last day of summer vacations would suddenly remind us of untouched homework, which we would try to complete (unsuccessfully) in one day.

But the summers I see now are way different from those of my childhood. Summers in Mumbai start with the sighting of alphonso mangoes at traffic signals. We still begin our summers with this fruit, but now the cost of the fruit has resulted in us rationing it. And children here don’t have the luxury of watering the lawn or playing with water pipes. Working parents make a beeline for summer activity camps to keep their children ‘occupied’, at a price. Children don’t drink Rooh Afza, but packaged juices and colas. Children are mostly indoors, in front of the television or playing games on their computers or cell phones. If relatives do come to stay, it is for a brief period, and most working parents can’t make the time to visit grandma’s.

I wish summers had retained their old charm and my children could experience what I have seen and enjoyed as a child. But with the passage of time, there has been a paradigm shift. We have to accept the changes that come and accommodate them. But still, some part of me still yearns for simpler times. 

I echo what Geroge RR Martin (of A Game of Thrones) says, “Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.” 

‘Bombay, bas’ is a weekly column on getting around Mumbai and exploring the city with a fresh perspective. 

(Pictures courtesy www.improvisedlife.com, www.annabellebreakey.com, plus.google.com)

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Bombay, bas

Mumbai celebrates six festivals this week

What’s awesome about a cosmopolitan city is that there are several occasions to celebrate – this week, there are six!
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

It’s safe to say that Mumbai has been in celebration mode since yesterday, Sunday, April 13. Or at least, Punjabis and Oriyas have started the celebrations – the harvest festival Baisakhi was celebrated yesterday, on Sunday, and the Oriyan New Year, Bishubh Sankranti, also began yesterday.

Other communities to celebrate the start of new years and harvest festivals are Bengalis, Malayalis, Tamilians, and Assamese.

The Bengali New Year, Poila Baisakh, falls on April 15 this year. Likewise, the Assamese will usher in their new year, Rongali Bihu, on the same day.

The Malayalis will usher in Vishu Kani on Tuesday, April 15. As per the Malayali calendar, the New Year starts on the first day of Chingam, but people in the Malabar area consider Vishu as the astrological New Year.  The term ‘Vishu Kani’ refers to the sighting of an auspicious item or symbol at dawn on Vishu day, thereby ensuring that the entire year is auspicious and peaceful. It is a day of much feasting, with food traditionally balanced between equal proportions of salty, sweet, sour and bitter items.

Meanwhile, Tamilians will celebrate Puthandu today, on April 14 this year. Puthandu is also celebrated in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Mauritius. Traditionally, a tray comprising a mirror, flowers, three fruits, betel leaves and jewellery is placed in a suitable corner of the home on Puthandu eve, and viewed first thing in the morning on the New Year day. This is said to set the tone for the rest of the year.

Enjoy the festivities, Mumbai!

(Picture courtesy www.hellotravel.com. Image used for representational purpose only)

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Bombay, bas

Why I don’t mind when the lights turn red

Nobody likes being stuck in Mumbai traffic, but it actually gives time for introspection or a few minutes of relaxation.
by Dr Pooja Birwatkar

As a new driver, whenever cars which had been level with me suddenly zoomed past, I would wonder what the matter was. Now, after considerable driving experience, I realise that they’ve spotted a traffic signal that is green and are trying to rush past it before it turns to red

Despite the amount of driving I’ve put in already, I still slow down seeing the green light from afar. Most vehicles rush ahead while I wait for the signal to turn red. You must think I am mad. After all, who would actually seek out a red light at the signal? But I do it for various reasons. I have developed a sort of life of my own at the traffic signal. It is now an important part of my daily commuting life and I have learnt to make the most of it.

Firstly, stopping at the signal provides a breather. Your feet, hands and brain all get temporary relaxation as you sit back and actually listen to what the RJ on the music channel is saying. There are some people who still honk from behind you and as you glance at the rear mirror to see what all the commotion is about, you catch a quick glimpse of yourself. This prompts me to readjust the mirror to look at myself more closely. But don’t do this if you are even a little bit insecure about your looks – car mirrors are notorious at telling the truth about your face, warts and all. My rearview mirror reminds me if I need to make a salon appointment or touch up my face.

While I am waiting, I also check for fuel reserves, readjust the seats and mirrors, and make a mental note of cleaning the car.

A great thing about waiting at the signal is that you get to know which fruit is in season, and what its current rate is. I am sometimes sorely tempted by the sight of luscious mangoes and red strawberries, but thanks to a movie which showed these sellers actually polishing the fruit with spit, I have learnt to resist. I do, however, resolve to visit the market and buy some fresh fruit.

I also check my cell phone for calls and messages. But a piece of advice here – do this quickly, because the moment your call is connected or you’ve almost finished texting, the light changes to green and everybody starts honking at you. And don’t try making calls while driving. Your loved ones are waiting for you at home, and the people on the road also have families and homes to go to.

The wait at signals also gives me time to mentally tick off the tasks I’ve finished or add more tasks I need to get through. What I should make for dinner is usually decided at the signal nearest to my home.

If you’re waiting, you should also look around. You’ll learn which new movies, TV serials, products are in your city, as also which celebrity is arriving soon. I’ve always been updated about the next phase of polio drives through hoardings. I also try to see how many of the cars around me I actually know – this knowledge helps me keep up with my five-year-old who knows more car names than me and frequently tests my knowledge.

Waiting at the signal also reminds me of my civic duties. Of course, there have been times when I have tried to cross the signal and the lights have turned red. It has been too late to reverse, so I’ve just waited and kept an eye out for a traffic cop, who, sure enough, jumps out at me from behind a tree.

The wait also makes me introspect – I compare my life with those of the people living on the city’s streets. Little boys and girls who should be in school are either out begging or kids at street signalsselling stuff. I always use this time to teach my son about gratitude and empathy, even as I learn a lesson or two. I don’t mean to sermonise, but if you can, do buy something from those street urchins.

I also get idea for most of my articles like this one while waiting at the signal. And I am not the only one who appreciates traffic signals. Several movie plots have liberally used traffic signals for important turning points in their stories. In the movies, many romances have played out at traffic signals, and bichhde hue bhais and behens have also come together.

I really like waiting at traffic signals. Do you?

 

(Pictures courtesy election.rediff.com, in.reuters.com)

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