Malvika's Ramblings

ATM

She turned and spat (Over the shoulder shot, please note): I eat girls like you for breakfast.
I thought it certainly seemed so. Just a moment ago I had said – Excuse me, but there is a line.
But she had rushed past me to wedge herself between me and the door. In she got, ready to lick her rupee notes. I fixed my gaze on a crow pecking a dead rat. Tall, broad. No use. I had been as assertive as a wall they ask people not to pee against.
She shoved her ATM card into the machine. Beep beep. Blink blink. It ran with the allure of a casino slot machine. What would it pop up? Bananas in a row? Clowns? She punched in her pin no. And then... nothing.
The slot machine jammed.

Terrace

Stepped to the terrace. Big. With electrical points for the music system. A store-room too, from the top of which beer could flow. In pipes ending in folks’ mouths who needed to drink no more. Everyone feeling sexy, Rihanna-like when they’re actually sweaty, a little wheezy with kajal smudged to the chin. Make-out corners. A slab which could serve as the bar. Parapet on which lights could tinky-tonk. Parapets for people to pee off on all of earth - their kingdom below.
Landlady-to-be interrupts: You Jain too? Fantastic! There is a Jain temple close by that you could go to.
Me: Lovely! How much advance do you want?

Canteen

Maurya

“Do you follow such stories?” asks uncle, as we recline on the sofa watching TV, hot tea mugs in hand on a Sunday morning. His daughter is still sleeping, as are my other three flat-mates. Aunty is going around looking at the unclean fridge, lack of pestle and mortar to smash ginger with. She is looking around at stuff that wrings her heart, but she cannot complain about to her daughter on this short happy-family weekend. The daughter, when awake, tinkles endlessly with delightful talk. This is a short break of sane desultory, quiet leisure. Or so I think.
“No uncle” I say, as I look at a kid with lots of face powder, playing the young Chandragupt Maurya on TV, on a windswept temple porch, thinking aloud – Oh what dilemma is this? Caught between my duty to the state and my mother’s wishes, what should I choose?
Ok.
5 minutes later uncle says, “You know people who are in administration, those who govern others, should know history. They should know how empires came up, how they fell. How masses of people were mobilised…”
I add “Yes, like a leaf should know what tree…”
“No, you are not getting what I am saying. There is difference between a worker and a manager. Now these kings and all, they were managers. Great people. Why is a manager more important than worker?”
I try “Because he gets things done.”
“No, you are not getting what I am saying. A manager, he is the one who gets things done by other people. Takes care that there is maximum efficiency. And if everyone does his best, you know how it helps?”
“There is …”
“No. It helps in building the nation. You get me? The Nation. I have seen people becoming big. How people just stay workers or become CEOs, and directors. I have told people who have started business without having the mind for it, get back to your job. And talented people, who are wasting themselves at a desk, I have told them to start their business. And then, what a meteoric climb I have seen! Come, get a paper-pen and I will show you.”
As I spring up, and Chandragupt Maurya’s internal conflicts are put on mute, Aunty enters and says – “He is never so free usually, to be explaining stuff like this. The rest of the girls should be up as well."
“Well, those who are up shall gain”, I add with a sparkle, since we are in the mood to build nations, seize the day today anyway.
Aunty thinks of girls who are dozing late into the afternoon, unaware of the refrigerator’s inventory, unaware of the maid’s comings and goings. At this rate of activity, what fine careers can they carve? What kind of wives would they make? She laments quietly, as a girl rolls in bed, enjoying the snug bed, so far away from the constant Mumbai drizzle. She rolls over yet again, cushioned by pillows, so far from her daily office chair that forces her to do calisthenics. Her arm dangles over the bedside like a liana in Amazon forests. She curls her rosy, cosy toes no longer soaked in Ghatkopar’s flooded street, occasionally twitched by a live wire, or soft with furry flotsam.
Armed with paper and pencil Uncle explains how a person should divide his jobs. How common logic says spend forty per cent of your capital and keep sixty as profit, but he says spend sixty per cent and keep forty, in order to hook better and better clients. I nod, understand. How could I not? He explains the same point and many others, underlining the figure written on the page, then ticking it, then encircling it. I assure him - I get it. I do. I make a mental note, to apply the very practical wisdom Monday onwards.
Maybe I should go meet my Dad. This was the kind of stuff he told me when I was in school, when I lived along the lines of hard sense, so that life always seemed like it was in the correct place.
The maid interrupts to hand me three hundred rupees found in my pants. The doorbell rings and the pest control guy asks for a suitable date to come gas dead all that Mumbai rains threw up. Do you know, that’s also how they find and get rid of Mumbai lovers, from the mangrove thickets near the seashore?
And perhaps uncle waits, for the end of this Mumbai trip of late afternoons and the ascent of the Maurya dynasty. Waits for the morning when he can begin the morning building fortune.
(The image is the first one that Google threw up on searching the blog title)

Waiting for Improv tonight

So much to do. So many books to read. So many mountains to climb, literally. Durant’s Story of Philosophy waiting, American humour waiting, Woody Allen’s plays waiting.

Then training, running, swimming, cycling slopes. Trekking as well, in deep, juicy forests.

Then salsa of course, so that it’s not all fresh air and adrenalin, but sway and charm, footwork and flirting with the mirror. And not just with the mirror.

Life’s too short.

A person I knew of, Suzanne died. Fell into a crevasse while leading a mountaineering expedition. “She has done more living in 34 years than most 60 year olds," said father Timothy Allen. "She was loved by a lot of people on a lot of continents."

And then design, branding, logos. Giving a look to ideas. Loved the racebook of MTB Himachal. The icy blueness of the Himalayas cut through. No rigid grid and columns yet extremely neat. The text seemed to scale up cliffs.

So much inspiration around the corner. So many places to aim for, so many dingy pubs, roads on different seasons, cultures and sub-cultures.

It’s just this weather. The day begins sitting with a tea-mug at the balcony, facing little Tibet. Or that’s what I’d like to believe. Slums atop each other, climbing up on a slope on the Mumbai hills. All covered with blue plastic overnight, after the first showers. It even seems misty, or is that just Himalayan nostalgia.

OK, someone just came to my desk. Interrupted. All story lost. Maybe I should just concentrate on how we can use Saif to promote stuff.

(and oh, i have decided to put up a pic of whatever Google first throws up on searching the blog-title)

Rage Drink

Click on image below to read

Lucknow

Nawab Wajid Ali Shah from http://lostcityproducts.com/blog/?cat=119

Lucknow. A city of nawabs who liked to bare a nipple in their royal attire, of schools where white school boys were once served beer, of Mutiny that besieged terrified British wives and their babies and babas, of the courtesan Umrao Jaan – equally accomplished at shaayari and seduction.

A city of gastronomic orgies. Where Tunde Miyaan serves you his lip-smacking kebab and paranthe carelessly, nonchalantly as he knows customers will pounce like pariah dogs outside a meat shop. Where the Id festival stocks narrow lanes with twinkling lights, doodh and sewiyaan. It’s only here that young fellows in delicate achkans, whizzing on their bikes – Pulsars and Karizmas, finally come to a halt.

But let’s not relegate the city to myths and fables, fantasy and allure. The city now takes immense pride in it’s generous sprinkling of malls, similar looking structures offering global indulgences like multiplexes, popcorn (“Plain mixed with caramel please”) and Big Bazaar.

It all began with Barista and then CCD arriving in the city. Before that Ganj-ing was the in-thing to do in Lucknow; Ganj-ing as in loitering up and down Hazrat Ganj, once a wide boulevard, with stops like the British Council Library, Burma Bakery and Mayfair Theater decked with sepia prints of Hollywood icons. Now of the three, only Burma Bakery remains. Perhaps, between books, cinema and coconut biscuits, the last were the most difficult to forego. Ganj-ing meant skipping Aminabad to look at more western clothes hanging along the pavement around Lovelane.

But if you want to entertain guests, show them the authentic maal, Aminabad is where you go. Here you can buy chikkan suits, pair them with dark sunglasses for an elite luncheon or simply don a salwar-kurta to pass a hot intolerable afternoon with no electricity due to load-shedding. Chikkan-kaari - complicated embroidery on see-through fabric, not just above but below the cloth too, showing off its intricacy in shadows; much like Lakhnavi women glimpsing from veils and hijabs, quickening their steps past tea-shops where men lounge.

Mangoes, MB club – Timepass in Lucknow. Come April and you’ll find yellow walls of mangoes as you drive down roads. Come July showers and flimsy tarpaulin of make-shift stalls sinks under the weight of the downpour and finally tips a flood all over mango mountains. Dussehris, safedas, langdaas and chausas. Fruit to be soaked to a delicious coolness in buckets,and devoured by a family and relatives sitting in a ring. Fruit to be carted off to business associates by the peti, and received in turn to mark good relations.

MB Club – a club with a marked colonial hangover, where men hold their whiskey long and lovingly and women don't mind their tipple either. Once a privilege of feudal lords and prominent defense citizens, it’s a place to pass a mellow evening in, as shikaar goes on overhead in miniature Mughal paintings; a retreat after a day of horse races at the cantonment, where Telibagh ki Rani and Bijli give each other stiff competition, kicking up dust and loud cheers. Maybe you’d sight here, the winner of the May Queen Ball held the previous night at Surya Club before looking away politely.

Out on the roads, you can now not help but run into intimidating statues of the Chief Minister Mayawati and her idol Dr Ambedkar. Recently, the city has gained quite a fortress-like demeanor with thick walls, I-won’t-budge-an-inch pillars, and parks that make an authoritative statement. You’ll find the manifesto of Mayawati’s party crammed in small print on huge hoardings at traffic lights. And not just one, but three or four hoardings so that drivers in no direction may feel left out. Perhaps the policemen still bring traffic to a stop when a politician, or anyone with a laal-batti atop plays Schumacher on the roads. Gunmen and supporters careen by, hanging on jeeps or discussing important matters of statecraft behind tinted windows.

However, Lucknow itself feels secure enough. It’s the hinterlands from where violent stories reach, of the antics of the goons in the fields. Meanwhile housewives in Nirala Nagar or Gomti Nagar continue to pen shaayari, hoping to publish a book one day, spurred on by what else, but the city’s atmosphere.