Expressing unwanted opinions...

i realised what people mean when they say they get 'intimidated' by other people's opinions. After attending a two-day conference on the emergence of a new urbanism with all kinds of anthropologists, historians, social scientists and deep-thinking architects, every opinion of mine gets checked and double-checked in my mind, for every possible mis-pronounced word and words with alternate meanings. While i construct the sentence, lunch/tea is called, and that's the end of that. And what makes it worse is the 'I'm drawing from the work of XYZ when I say....' and 'I think it was XYZ and I who discussed this a few days ago...' What makes academicians talk to just each other in a crowd of 150? Or what's the obsession with the metaphor and the romanticism rather than the actual comparison? And the almost complete submission to leftist politics?

But the point of this post is not to complain about feeling left out of what was obviously a gathering of smarter people, rather archive for myself some opinions. Maybe they'll change over the years or even weeks.

One is obviously regarding the changing morphology of the city. Although physically the city is undergoing a change in image, i would think the older networks have still remained largely intact, although some have been pushed underground or into the background. All the uproar of the mall being the temple of the modern city is probably unfounded. Now i know i'll be killed for this comparison, but i feel malls to a large extent are what the mills were to the 60's. Both are simply the signifiers of the prevalent economic system, not necessarily being the main contributers to it. Lots of data indicates that mills actually handled a small part of the whole textile process, a lot of it being outsourced to smaller towns and smaller set ups since the 1920s. Malls are following a similar (maybe even more insignificant) process, serving as merely marketing tools. Most shops (except the so called marquee ones) don't break even, but the exposure to a ravenously consumeristic middle class helps other outlets of the same 'brand' located in the traditional shopping areas to get some kind of brand recognition. Compare with M.G. Road in Bangalore with a similar trend of image-making outlets, while their factory outlets end up finishing the sale.

The next one is about new methods of entrepreneurship in the city. Now the problem with talking about this is sometimes we totally fall short of words. Traditional terminology, most of emerging out of a modernist urge to clean up and simplify, has simply not kept pace with development of these new forms of space. Take a simple land use classification. How do you define a space that is an industry from 7 to 7 and becomes residential for the remaining part of the day? Or the space under a staircase which has a tailoring establishment, with the workers living in it? Or for that matter a rickshaw, for whom two pictures of Kareena Kapoor on the side panels makes it home? We talk about emerging urbanisms and emerging typologies, but no emerging terminology. And this is not just about wanting to come up with a hep new word or two. Classifying or defining wrongly or incompletely totally restricts one's imagination of the space. Putting every space into one of 3 separate boxes is simply being slow to accept new trends. Maybe looser definitions might help?

And if someone wonders why i couldn't say all this 2 days ago, i have no one to blame except myself and maybe one person who's name begins with So and ends with jamin, who made it perfectly clear, even without knowing i exist, how unread and gawaar i was. May your brain's memory cells be transplanted into mine.

In the news today...

Hot and sexy Himess-bhai is out with his own line of casuals (also, i hope, soon: nasal drops and razor blades) and making a stand for lardful people the world over by posing with his innumerable tyres poking out of what seems to be a very loose jacket. Hepy new year to him...

In the middle of one of Khar's bylanes are some tin patris with a board saying 'MMRDA - Bare with us for a better tomorrow'. So far, the road hasn't been hammered out of shape. Vehicles dutifully going slow near the sign actually hammer their heads after seeing MMRDA's new method of irritation.

Two AD Singhs slugging it out for their brand name (yes! that's what one of them calls his name!!!) in page 3. One of them (the 25-yr old sardar) just maybe a classmate of my brother's. Are you the same Amit Duggal who was called 'Dug-dug-dug-dug-Duggallllll-Dugallllllllllll' in school?? Can that be your 'brand name' now?

South Africa's cricket team has now officially decided to call themselves 'India B'. If the uproar over a single defeat and 'aaj hero, kal zero' treatment at home wasn't enough, the inability to play pace bowling broke the last straw on the camel's back.

'I See You' now graces my favourite billboard, after Sanober and her thunder thighs held sway for a few weeks following 'Don's one-month reign up there.

To RGV: Enough with the Mumbai underworld already!!!

Myths and sundry things

It always perplexes (wow, that's a tongue twister! and also rhymes with multiplexes... sorry im digressing) me to see the amount of time we decide to see the same story countless times without any twists in it. How many times do i want to see a Ramayana with the same emphasis on how perfect Ram was and how he was dealt with so badly?
That's why it was a little surprising for me to see a serial called 'Ravan' yesterday on T.V. and what absolutely shocked me was the fact that Ravan was NORMAL. He didn't interject his sentences with 'Muhahahahahhahaha'. He talked sensibly all the time. He didn't plan to loot, pillage or rape anything. Best of all, he tells someone he's gonna get screwed because his dad messed up with the gods. Imagine the Ravan of lore doing that!
i am reminded of Amita Kanekar telling us in 3rd year that the Mahabharata had 13 versions, one of them having the Pandavas as the bad guys and the Kauravas the good ones. Which might explain why i was such a confused child regarding the Mahabharata. Yudi loved to gamble, Arjun was a transsexual/crossdresser, Bhima was a cheater in battle and Krishna was the Emraan Hashmi of his times of all. And Duryodhana, whose biggest crime seemed to be wanting to be king, was the bad guy. Go figure.
Every few days the Bible is re-interpreted and newer additions made to it, Shakespeare's plays are adapted to the Mumbai underworld or the Hindi heartland, but rarely do i see a re-telling of our myths. i wanna see a story or play where Ravan and Sita elope to save Sita from a bad marriage. i don't think it's too tough to do, is it? Oh wait, the V.H.P. may be reading this....

Power...

This week i was part of a workshop in college in which a classmate and i were assigned to be teaching assistants, and due to certain unavoidable circumstances ended up running it. And i don't wanna run anything anymore.

i don't want people to stop talking to me cos i didn't cheat on their attendance

i don't want to lose years of friendship over a difference of opinion

i don't want to feel responsible for every second someone is behind schedule

i don't want to yell at people cos im getting panicky

i don't think i can handle power

That's all.

Slumming it Out...

Various documents remind me that as Indians, we have no right to land. We are simply caretakers of land for the government to claim when they arbitrarily choose to. Atleast in all of this, they could be a little honest.
Dharavi has opened my middle class, closeted eyes to a whole new world of wheeling-dealing. Claims are made of being the authority on the area by everyone. Some of whom we are against, some we work with. The ones we are against have engaged in fudging records and statistics so much that in the eventual rehabilitation, 40% of those who need to be rehoused will be left without any means of shelter. Which means on one hand we'll see multi storeyed SRA apartments, and on the other hand hundreds of shanties refusing to move. And you and i, the privileged few of this country will say, 'See these shameless slum dwellers. Even after constructing so many buildings for them, they still choose to live in those jhopadpattis.' The ones who we are working with sell dreams to these slum dwellers of living in SRA apartments. After months of effort (and don't forget money) spent by these slumdwellers in trying to get the dream in motion, when the dream gets caught up in red tape, they say 'Look at these shameless slum dwellers. We did so much for them and they show no energy, and now they complain that nothing is happening.'

So what is worse. Selling dreams or selling livelihoods?

Hmm...

The shirt joins in the celebrations too...
Post #96.. getting close to a century!