napping under shiva's watchful eyes

water sellers in the fort area

rickshaw wisdom

"Jalo magar diya ki tarah!"

michael in mumbai

P.S. Thanks to Tanzeel for sighting this in the Crawford market area

shopfront in bhendi bazaar

truck art

mumbai: where does the garbage go?

I have been trying to understand Mumbai's water and sanitation infrastructures. How many of us know where our water comes from, where our wastewater and garbage goes, who lives next to the immense amounts of garbage we generate, whose livelihoods are linked to it? We are so disconnected from all this thanks to the tap, the flush, pipes, the overhead water tank, the garbage bin and garbage truck, and the thousands of workers who keep these technologies working.

One piece of information I have come across is that Mumbai generates more than 6000 tonnes of garbage per day (one tonne > 2000 pounds, so imagine what 6000 tonnes of garbage means). Most of it ends up untreated at the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai's (MCGM) three garbage dumping grounds - the Deonar Disposal Site, the Mulund Disposal Site and the Gorai Disposal Site. I've been doing research in a slum settlement next to the Deonar site which is the largest of the three dumping grounds. Spread over 132 hectares, the Deonar dumping ground has been receiving Bombay's garbage since 1927! Today, it receives some 4000 tonnes of garbage each day. This garbage originates from 15 of the city's 24 municipal wards, mostly from the entire area from south Mumbai to Juhu as well as areas in central-eastern Mumbai.

Deonar dumping ground:
In the distance what you see is a HUGE pile of garbage, some two stories high

Garbage sorting and recycling: The livelihood of over 50% of this settlement's 5000 families is linked in some way or the other to the dumping ground. Men, women and children sort through the garbage, clean whatever they can, prepare it for recycling it, etc. Most of them manage to make Rs.100-150 a day.

While the dump is indeed economic sustenance for many of the settlement's families, the health effects of living next to the dump (in some cases, on the dump) and working in it are severe.

preparing for bakri id

Today, on my way to one of my fieldwork sites (Govandi), I saw scores of men and children on the streets not far from the Govandi railway station walking around with goats. Quite many of them were holding small branches of leaves which the goats were happily munching on. Later someone told me that Bakri Id is on Saturday. Poor suckers... the goats... but at least they're enjoying their last meals. On the way back home, a rickshaw passed by mine and a man and his goat were in it. The goat was eating leaves from his hand. Tried to take a picture with my mobile phone and managed to get only a blurry photo.


Later I saw a maruti-van taxi with two goats in it. I think I'm going to be dreaming goats tonight.

My rickshaw-wala was in a philosophical mood and this is the exchange we had:

Rickshaw-wala (without my having said a word, but I guess he felt like sharing his thoughts): "Yeh tehevaar sab miljul kar manaate hai" ("Everyone celebrates this festival together").

Me (I didn't know what to say right away so I just repeated his words): "Sab miljul kar manaate hai?" ("Everyone celebrates it together?").

Rickshaw-wala: "Haan" ("Yes").

A minute later:

Rickshaw-wala: "Yahaan se kya le jaate hai?" ("What do you take from here?").

I thought he was asking me what I was taking from Govandi. For a second I thought that maybe he was wondering whether I had come to Govandi looking to buy a goat (who knows, maybe Govandi is the place to buy goats). But since I really didn't know why he was asking me that question, I dumbly repeated what he'd just asked me...

Me: "Yahaan se kya le jaate hai?"

Rickshaw-wala: "Kuch nahin. Kuch nahin saath me le jaate. Sirf bhai-chaara le jaate hai." ("Nothing. We don't take anything with us. We only take bonds of brotherhood.")

Thats when I realized he meant what do we take with us when we die... and I smiled at my stupid misunderstanding and said: "Haan." ("Yes")

car sighting

my bambaia (bombay) diwali

diwali lights on a nearby apt building

I'm renting a flat in a quiet lane off the noisy Lokhandwala market in Andheri. The entire stretch of the market is lit up at night for Diwali and its almost as bright as daylight. 10 pm and the shops are still open and doing brisk business. Some Vyapari Mandal (a traders' association) has arranged for the lights and there are speakers set up every 10 meters or so along the sidewalk - yesterday night they were blaring Hindi film songs.

happy diwali

loitering men

old woman taking a chaat-break from shopping

There are also people selling flowers on the road-sides everywhere, lights or no lights.

So bought some flowers to hang above the door to my flat. I don't think I have acted this festive since I was 16 years old. Even felt tempted to do a rangoli but didn't think there was enough space at the flat entrance to do a good one without someone stepping on it within 24 hours.

juhu beach: the vast expanse at twilight

dusk at juhu beach

the coconut-water-seller

family outing

rickshaw interior 1

(For those who can't read hindi, the saffron colored bow-and-arrow sticker on the backrest says "Shiv Sena" - thats the name of the political party in Maharashtra known for its regional chauvanism which has come to extend to an anti-Muslim politics as well)

(For those who don't have the wonderful eyesight to read the light-blue sticker right in front of the driver, it says: "Phool hai gulaab ka, sugandh to liya karo; Maal hai garib ka, paise to diya karo")

(And there was another sticker that lies outside this photo which says: "Amiro ki zindagi biscuit aur cake par; Driver ki zindagi steering aur ek par")

This is the beginning of a series of rickshaw interior photos. I've always found the interior of a rickshaw interesting, particularly the front part where the driver sits, because this is where the rickshaw-wala personalizes his rickshaw in small ways - this could include stickers of gods, small photographs/images of bollywood actors and actresses, the lime+green chilis on a thread (that I believe is meant for good luck, probably financial luck - I have a pretty dull knowledge about such practices), plastic or fresh flowers, etc. These things always spark my curiosity about the rickshaw-wala, although many rickshaw-walas don't own the rickshaws they drive but lease them on a daily basis (maybe even a hourly basis) so they might not always be the ones who decide the decor.

juhu beach walks

the culture of the Marathi katta...?

I recently went for a sarod concert by Brij Narayan, a disciple of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. I'd read about the concert in the Mumbai Mirror. It said that the concert was organized by Acharya Atre Katta. When I called the listed phone number, a woman told me the concert was in the open air at the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee garden in Borivli west. Besides the annual Dover Lane music concert in Calcutta and a one-time concert organized at the ATIRA grounds in Ahmedabad, I have never attended Indian classical music concerts in the open air in India. So I was somewhat thrilled. But apparently the open-air concert memories I was drawing upon weren't the right ones. The Shyama Prasad Mukherjee garden is a relatively run-down garden in Borivli west. Okay, so the garden isn't too bad and the concert could have been enjoyable if the noise of the traffic on the road outside had been non-existent. Actually the traffic also would not have bothered me had there been less talk and more of the sarod. But this post is not to explain my disappointment with the concert. Rather, it is to say a few words about a kind of public culture in Mumbai that this concert seems to be a part of.

Acharya Atre was (wikipedia tells me) a "prominent Marathi writer, a great poet, an educationist, a brilliant newspaper founder/editor, a political leader, a movie producer/director/script writer and above all, a superb orator." Judging from the Marathi speeches that the concert began with and ended with, Acharya Atre Katta is a Marathi organization of sorts, founded in his name in 1997.

In Marathi, "katta" - this blog tells me - is "a small wall, a kind of boundary but in Marathi slang it means a place to sit and waste away time." The blog also mentions that a katta exists in every corner of Mumbai. It is "a place where people meet, talk, share and grow up." "Each locality, each building has its own katta." In a katta, "rich, poor, high class, low class does not matter."

I don't know whether the Acharya Atre Katta always organizes events like this concert (this one was organized to celebrate its anniversary) or whether it usually involves a more informal gathering in this garden where people sit, talk, etc. If the former, then this "katta" certainly seems like more of a formal organization as compared to what the blog suggests about the Marathi katta. If the latter, then how is this any different from the people I see in the garden near my home in Ahmedabad where particular groups of people regularly meet - often at specific spots in the garden - to sit, talk, etc. Is there a word in Gujarati that has a meaning similar to the Marathi katta?



I am also curious as to who the members of the Acharya Atre Katta are. Something tells me that they are middle-class folks. On the other hand, the concert was free and open to all - a corner of the public garden was taken up by the small stage-structure and chairs; when the chairs filled up people sat on the grass, the benches and the dusty low walls here and there to listen to the performance. Some people seemed to have entered the garden on hearing the music and stood around listening to the performance for awhile. Although the majority of these folks looked like they were from middle-class backgrounds, there were others who weren't, especially amongst those who entered the garden on listening to the music.

I also found it interesting that the Acharya Atre Katta hadn't booked the garden exclusively for the concert to keep out people who might come to the garden that evening for other purposes. So there was a woman who had clearly not come for the concert (I overheard her asking her husband what it was all about) who was reclining on the grass; she drank some water from a bottle she was carrying, then gargled with some of the water and spat it out on the lawns. There was a heavily built man with long greasy hair and a black netted sleeveless shirt walking about the garden like he owned it. Young couples - lovebirds immersed in each other - sat facing a blank wall of the garden to seek privacy. Children played in a small sandy playground at the other end of the garden. Although I like my Indian classical music concerts without distractions, there was something nice about the way in which this concert occupied a relatively public, open space without trying to regulate this space. Does this have something to do with the culture of the Marathi katta?

Anyone have anything to say about the Marathi katta, do leave your comments.

juhu beach: in anticipation of the waves

I was people-watching at Juhu beach

krishna devotees on juhu beach

I've encountered the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKON) folks (better known as belonging to the Hare Krishna movement) all over the place. They're always dancing it seems. My first 4th of July fireworks was at the Berkeley marina in 2002 and my memory of the evening is marked by the presence of the Hare Krishna folks. Of course this was Berkeley so all kinds of folks turn up - but at the time it was just strange to experience my first American independence day celebrations with the Hare Krishna folks informally singing and dancing as we all waited for the fireworks to start. They also used to frequently turn up at the spot where Telegraph Avenue hits Bancroft Avenue, and dance themselves to glory. And they also made their way onto the campus - once a Hare Krishna guy came up to me while I was sitting outside Dwinelle Hall and invited me to come for Janmashtami celebrations at Berkeley's ISKON center (centre? I'm still trying to get used to British/Indian spellings again). I told the guy I wasn't religious, but he just wouldn't leave me alone. I have no problem with them claiming public space - in fact I rather enjoy seeing them - but why impose on me to join?! Had to get up and walk away.

Anyway, a week ago I saw a bunch of them at Juhu beach during one of my evening walks. Couldn't catch them in action (i.e. dancing), but they looked kind of nice against the sand and the sea. I particularly liked the fact that the guy up front was carrying a speaker on his head.

ganesha on juhu beach

Most parts of juhu beach are pretty clean. When it isn't, its largely because of the remains of some religious ritual involving the immersion of an idol(s) and/or paraphernalia of such a ritual - flowers, leaves, thermocol pieces for some strange reason, etc. So it was somewhat of a pleasure some weeks ago to find that an immersion ritual had led not to a holy mess, excuse the pun, but a small ganesha idol embedded in the sand. Tried to take a couple of photos with my cellphone.

walking juhu beach

I've taken to almost daily walks in the evening at juhu beach. its summer so i usually get there just in time for the sunset... the beach looks beautiful at dusk and as the darkness is enveloping it. the water glistens and the clouds make the vast sky look different every day.

A few days before it was high tide and the wind was crazy. i could feel my hair being messed up in an irritating way while walking in the direction of the wind. walking against the wind, the feeling was different. the humid wind hit my face and by the time i'd walked 15 minutes, my brain was a pulp... there was no possibility of coherent thought. then there was only the sky, the water, the sand, the humid wind and the dark figures on the beach...