Ambujwadi 1 to 8

Other preoccupations may have drowned these reports I filed from Municipality-demolished Ambujwadi last week. So in the hope that some out there would like to read them, here they are again, all together in one place.
Ambujwadi 1: I’ve seen this before
Ambujwadi 2: Cut You Off
Ambujwadi 3: Impressive letterhead
Ambujwadi 4: Will you have some water?
Ambujwadi [...]

Imperceptible tilt

Wrote this for Outlook Traveller magazine some months ago. I like it, so I thought I’d share it here.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the Everglades … Emily and Peter run their rental houseboat, the Cobia, “hard into a deep shoal of silty marl.” The outboard motor “churns up a pungent sulfurous geyser” of the stuff, which you [...]

Conjecture, not evidence

It’s simple really. Suspicion, even if felt by countless readers, does not amount to evidence. Conjecture does not amount to evidence.
There was plenty of evidence that the man committed plagiarism. He got what he had coming for that. I have no argument there.
On the other hand, there is no evidence that the man committed [...]

A Short Tale

At Naresh Fernandes’s lecture that I wrote about earlier, I found myself chatting briefly with Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine. We didn’t have a lot of time, but we did exchange blog URLs (the visiting card cachet of the times, I suppose). And when I visited his, it turned out to be entirely appropriate, [...]

No bended knees

Many years ago, a neighbour — I’ll call him X — planted a banana tree in my building’s garden. Another neighbour, Y, inadvertently cut it down. He apologized, but to this day, X has not forgiven Y. Not just that, X actually believes the whole building hatched a conspiracy to cut down the tree. “I [...]

Ambujwadi 8: Vignettes

Near one end of the great vacant space, a man is bathing in the open, shivering slightly in the morning breeze. Near him is a large tiled pyramid lying at a strange angle. Larger than him. It looks just like two similar pyramids I saw just weeks ago … where? Oh yes, on the Devanapattinam [...]

Pardhis, plagiarism and pomegranates

Especially since I have just met a number of Pardhis and just written about them, a note about plagiarism.
In 1998-99, I had a fellowship to write about Pardhis and other such tribes (“denotified” tribes). That effort culminated in my book Branded by Law; but before the book, I wrote a number of articles on denotified [...]

Ambujwadi 7: That time again

Once again, I ask: when did you come here? Bhimabai Kale tells me, after Indira Gandhi died.
You mean 1984? I ask, just a little puzzled because so far I’ve been hearing that the Pardhis started coming here only in the early ’90s. She shakes her head. No, she says, I mean since the time of [...]

Ambujwadi 6: Solemnly Declared

Before I left for Ambujwadi, this report in the Times of India told me that the Bombay Municipal Corporation has asked the Election Commission to “delete from the voters’ list those slumdwellers whose illegal shanties have been razed.” That’s on my mind as I arrive in the place.
When they go off to get the pieces [...]

Ambujwadi 5: In search of Singapore

You see, says Mohammed Muslim Pathan as he walks around with me, you see, they want to make a Singapore of Bombay. That’s why they are doing this. But that will be a Singapore only for VIPs. Not for poor people like us.
Something makes me stop as he says this. I want to look [...]