Tag: Borivli

Categories
Event

‘Koffee With Kahani’ goes off with a bang

The Metrognome and Silver Innings hosted their first storytelling event for senior citizens at Borivli and got a great response.

It was a simple enough task – write a story, then present it to an audience. There were just two conditions – a senior citizen must write the story, and he or she must team up with a youngster to present it to an audience.

Navanita Parmar presents her love storyWhat was the need for this? Says Sailesh Mishra of Silver Innings, who we teamed with for ‘Koffee With Kahani’, a storytelling session over snacks and coffee, “When we were young, our grandparents told us stories to amuse and educate us. Sometimes, they made up stories on the spot. This activity helped generations bond with each other. These days, though, with families going nuclear and even with grandparents and youngsters glued to TV sets, the art of storytelling is lost. There is hardly any conversation between our elders and us. So this activity will, we hope, bring back our storytelling tradition in a fun way.”

We set December 28 as the date for participants, and selected three great love stories written by Navanita Parmar, Jimmy Dordi and Arun Pandya. The teams set to work, working with youngsters Sanket Jalgaonkar, Renu Jain and Sadaf Surti to present their stories. Of the three, Navanita’s story was a fiction, with the other two stories were real life incidents.

The turnout for the event was great – a mix of senior citizens and youngsters turned up at the Veer Savarkar Udyan, Borivli, to hear and watch three love stories. All three stories were great – Navanita’s moving story was set in the backdrop of mental illness and separation, Jimmy’s story was a hilarious reenactment of his own honeymoon 45 years ago, and Arun’s story was a fun flashback to the time that he as a young man shared a few magical moments with a stranger in the monsoon. Hemendra Jimmy Dordi collects his winner's trophy with his teammate Renu JainBengali provided background vocals to set the stories to music – in Navanita’s story, the gifted singer even provided siren sounds!

The audience voted for Jimmy’s story as the best of the three.

Said Arun, “This was a fun exercise and we enjoyed our rehearsals, too. All three teams would rehearse their lines together and suggest ways to better each other’s presentation. There was no spirit of rivalry at all.”

If you or someone you know would like to be a part of the next ‘Koffee With Kahani’ event, drop us an email at editor@themetrognome.in/silverinnings@gmail.com and we will get back to you with the event schedule, registration process and rules. 

(Pictures courtesy Sailesh Mishra)

Categories
Listen

Where music comes to the people

National Streets for Performing Arts (NSPA), after entertaining commuters on Western Railway, wants to spread the cheer at other Mumbai spots.
by Medha Kulkarni

June 27, 2012 was an interesting day at Churchgate station. In the midst of this busy railway station, a group of musicians assembled for their first-ever performance. It was a small performance involving two buskers, Jishnu Guha from UK and Sureshji, an Uttarachali folk singer, (both talented vocalists) and within minutes, a crowd had gathered to hear them.

This group was the National Streets for Performing Arts (NSPA) at work. The NSPA was born last year out of the idea to take the performing arts to the people by reclaiming public spaces for street performances. By its own admission, the NSPA seeks to champion public spaces as an alternative platform for performance, encouraging greater interaction between artists and the community, creating spaces of cultural interaction and energising the very city and its people. It aims to support the livelihoods of less privileged and independent performers across diverse genres.

A big factor in starting the NSPA? “To rekindle an atmosphere of street performances in urban India (starting with Mumbai) that aims to bring some joy to the lives of millions as they go about their daily commute,” says founder Ajit Dayal,52, best known as the founder of Equitymaster, Personal FN and Quantum Mutual Fund, when asked about the inspiration behind this unique initiative. Recalling his childhood days of watching street performers in Mumbai city and noting how street performers continue to brighten the lives of residents of cities like London and Paris, Ajit says he wanted to “recreate that in an organised fashion in Mumbai.”

 

Following their debut performance at Churchgate station, the NSPA launched full time performances on October 8, 2012, with music performances at Churchgate station on Mondays, Borivli station on Wednesdays and Bandra station on Fridays from 9 am to 11am and 5 pm to 8 pm. NSPA chooses its locations with care, ensuring that the site would be frequented by large numbers of people but in a spot that doesn’t cause any trouble or inconvenience to commuters.

With a small team of eight members, each a passionate lover of art and performance, NSPA manages to pull off successful events each time and the response from the general public only acts as good encouragement. “The response has been encouraging, proving to both us and the artists that the city of Mumbai is receptive and open to an initiative such as this. We hope to continue the performances at the railway stations and soon expand to parks, gardens and bandstands in the city and across the country, thus weaving art into the very fabric of the city and making performances as regular an occurrence as the trains , the buses and the commuters,” says Shrishti Iyer, Performance Co-ordinator at NSPA.

Apart from the regular performances at Western Railway stations, the NSPA has been collaborating with major art festivals in the city like the Indikaleido Festival, Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, the BMW-Guggenheim Lab etc.

Encouraged by their initial success, the NSPA is now seeking to expand to Central railway Stations, Horniman Circle Gardens and bandstands across the city, apart from other public spaces.

If you want to keep track of their performance so you can catch the next one, all you have to do is ‘like’ their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/nspa.streets for regular updates and notifications.

Categories
Patrakar types

Security? Who’s that?

Fresh out of a serial bomb blast strike in Hyderabad, you’d think the police everywhere would wise up, right? Wrong.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that the police are a bunch of dodos. What else could explain what I’m about to describe next? And, trust me, this has happened before as well.

A few days ago, I was looking for a Borivli-bound train at Churchgate station. If you’ve been to Churchgate station, you’ll know it is characterised by three things: its subway, its Wimpy restaurant right opposite the public restrooms, and the benches on which bored policemen and policewomen sit and chat with each other, occasionally taking down details and checking bags of random commuters.

It was to two of these policemen that a scared-looking young man, probably on his way home from work as well, ran up to, breathless with excitement. “Sahab, wahan ek bag pada hai! (Sir, there’s a bag lying there!),” he said, pointing in the direction of Platform 4. His face was flushed, and I noticed a tremble in his hands. “Please come with me,” he implored the two cops.

To his chagrin, the two cops merely glanced at each other sleepily. “Tu jayega ki main jaoon?” one asked the other. (I swear I am not kidding). As if by some tacit consent – one of them probably owed the other some small debt – the sleepier of the two rumbled to his feet. “Chalo,” he said to the young man.

I followed the two to see what would happen next. If there was an unidentified bag with a potential bomb in it, I wanted to witness the action.

The cop followed the young man, unhurried and supremely bored. The young man, meanwhile, raced ahead looking for the spot that he had seen the bag in. When he found it, his face lit up with the glow of achievement – he was, after all, rendering a great public service by pointing out unidentified baggage, which is what public service announcements exhort us commoners to do all the time.

The bag was finally found, and I confess my heart sank when I saw it. A black rucksack, placed next to a pillar, adjacent to Platform 4. It was bulky and could have held practically any kind of explosive. The young man pointed at it and backed away, eyes wide.

The cop, whose name should ideally figure in next year’s Gallantry Awards list, nonchalantly approached the bag, and I swear I am still not kidding – poked it with a finger, then pulled open a zipper and started rummaging through its contents.

The young man backed away, horror written all over his face. With a last look at the cop happily emptying the bag of its contents  (a few books, some loose papers, an ID card, stray stationery), he walked away and soon melted into the crowds. I wanted to stop him and tell him to not be horrified. Because I have seen cops do exactly the same thing every time a citizen points out suspicious baggage on railway platforms or on the streets or inside trains – they start by tapping the baggage with their lathis, then poke and prod with their fingers, then empty out its contents before pronouncing, “Kuchh nahin hai ismein.”

At the risk of sounding extremely uncharitable, if there ever is a time for a bomb to go off, that time is when a lazy, foolish policeman approaches suspicious baggage and starts poking it. Too bad we citizens are not empowered to call the bomb squad ourselves.

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so.

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

Categories
Trends

Kharghar is most-searched home destination

Whether buying or renting homes, Mumbaikars are increasingly zoning in on Navi Mumbai’s Kharghar, says a real estate website survey.

Buying a home in Mumbai or even in its surrounding areas is becoming a prize-worthy feat. Impossible real estate prices, home loans that squeeze the life out of one for years, and houses that tick only some of the boxes for buyers looking for ideal homes, all combine to make the home-buying experience a nightmarish one for Mumbaikars.

Naturally, people are seeking newer avenues. As per a survey released three days ago by website 99acres.com, Kharghar (Navi Mumbai) was the most-searched localities in 2012 in both the buying and renting categories. The survey, titled ‘Real Estate Search Trends of 2012, says, “Increased connectivity, new project launches and affordable rentals could be one of reason for the growing popularity of this area.”

The second most-searched locality by users looking for property purchase in Mumbai, as per the survey data, is Mira Road. Panvel, Borivali (west), Malad (west) are other popularly searched localities in the city. “The real estate market of Mumbai has always been an attractive destination for buyers because it provides high return on investments and even if there is slowdown in the market the purchase transactions in the city has actually moved up in the last four to five months,” the report reads.

Traditionally, rental values have been high in Mumbai due to the overall demand and supply imbalance in dwelling units. “Detailed analysis of the search trends for renting property shows that localities of Navi Mumbai and Andheri to Dahisar area have been most searched for by people looking to stay on rent. While Kharghar takes the first rank in the rental space as well,  Andheri (east), Andheri (west) and Powai have also emerged as popular localities for renting purposes,” the survey says.

(Picture courtesy photos.tarunchandel.com)

Categories
Places

Disused, neglected and forgotten

The Mandapeshwar Caves in Borivli have a rich historical past. But there’s a huge slum right outside it and nobody visits except on Mondays

by The Traveller/ the traveller@themetrognome.in

It’s not every day that you have a protected heritage monument in close proximity to your house. The Mandapeshwar Caves in Borivli are a short walk from my home, and as we are wont to do with valuable things that we have easy access to, I hadn’t given it much thought in all the time I was growing up in the area. In fact, a few of my friends had been to see the caves before me, and they live in south Mumbai.

So last week I decided that I would check what the Caves were like. My friends had said that the ruins were lovely, which didn’t make any sense to me. I have never found ruins lovely. I have never understood the poetry in broken rock. Call me a mundane, limited intellect. If I visit a place, I like to see it clean and whole.

The Caves were certainly clean, but obviously not whole. To give you a brief historical insight into them, they are said to have been built in about 550 AD by Buddhist monks. As per information on Wikipedia, ‘During the occupation of the Kanheri caves (at Sanjay Gandhi National Park), these monks found another location were they created a hall of paintings. The cave was created by the Buddhist monks and then they hired travelling Persians to paint. The Buddhist monks asked the Persians to paint the life of Lord Shiva. This makes this cave interesting as it brings many religions together. Buddhist cave, Persian painters and Hindu God. (sic)’

There are, of course, no paintings there today, but even the briefest of glances will reveal that the Caves bear the stamp of Shiva. There are stone carvings of Shiva in different forms, and not a single placard anywhere to explain the various poses of the statues. In fact, I was left to come up with my own theories about the statues and the placement of inner rooms, since there is no sign board anywhere to explain the Caves’ history.

A funny thing happened when I was there. Armed with a camera, I asked an authoritative-looking man seated on a plastic chair just outside the Shiv temple inside the cave, “Is it okay to take pictures?” He gave my camera a bored glance, then said, “Haan haan, le lo.”

So when I started clicking, I was surprised to see a harassed-looking man run up to me. “Madam, agar photo lena hai toh Sion se permission lena padega,” he said very politely.

“Aap kaun hain?” I said, slightly defiantly.

“Idhar ka chowkidar,” he said, equally defiantly.

The authoritative-looking man had, meanwhile, disappeared.

To sum up, despite a few spots inside the Caves, such as the Shiv Temple, which is cool and quite lovely, I was very disappointed. Not with the ruins the place is in, but because there is no worthwhile restoration and upkeep. “Monday ko hi bahut bheed hoti hai,” the caretaker (his name was Ghani, he said) told me. “Aur raat ko? Poori khuli jagah hai, log aake sote honge,” I remarked, casting an eye on one of the Caves’ two inner sanctums.

“Nahin nahin, raat mein security hoti hai,” Ghani said firmly. I couldn’t believe him, though – even on his watch at 12 noon, three men were fast asleep in an alcove off one side.

Outside, in another telling incident, a barber was shaving a customer seated on a high rock outside the cave. There is a sprawling slum opposite the Caves, one of the largest in this suburb. A little guide book that Ghani showed me failed to mention that the Dahisar river used to run by the Caves, or that the ruins of an old Portuguese Church stand above it. The book also failed to mention that these Caves were one of the four Buddhist caves in the city, the others being Jogeshwari, Elephanta and Mahakali Caves. “Aap Sion se (where the Archaeological Survey of India office is located) permission leke aaiye Madam, main aap ko saare photo lene doonga,” Ghani promised.

There’s no need for permissions. I’m not going back. I can do without being disturbed over gross neglect of history.

Know a good spot in Mumbai with an interesting history? Tell The Traveller about it at thetraveller@themetrognome.in.

 

 

 

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