Four in this rickshaw

(Fourth post on the blasts in Mumbai. #1, #2, #3).

Through the rain, miserable rubble-strewn pavements and rivers of water, to Bhabha Hospital. (Two women I pass are saying to each other, the roads in Bandra are so horrible!). Three ambulances scream into the hospital as I approach, crowds surging outside, lots of cops. I ask one guy in a uniform, can I go in to donate blood? No he says, we’ll call you, for now please stay out of the way and don’t make things difficult for us.

Obvious reporters also in the crowd, discussing body counts. One says to me, 22 brought dead here, number might change. Woman in jeans and a Tshirt steps forward and announces to the crowd, it’s no use waiting here, those of you who want to donate blood, please go to Holy Family Hospital! (Nearby). Six men peel off from the crowd — again, I’m reminded of petals — and walk up the road with the woman and me.

At the next junction, a few rickshaws, and one offers to take us to the hospital. One of the men gets in, and they motion the woman in. She turns to me and asks in an urgent whisper, you won’t come with me? I can’t go in that alone!

Before I can respond, the men say to her, it’s OK madam! Come with us! Sit in front!

And I say, foolishly, but you don’t know me from Adam either! Luckily nobody hears me, and I get into the rickshaw, and she gets in after me. Four of us squeezed in the back, driver plus two more in front, and we head off for Holy Family Hospital to donate blood, all of us.

On the way she tells me, our sons are in the same class, right? Then I realize why she looks slightly familiar, and why, too, she had that urgent whispered plea earlier.

On the way too, the driver tells us all, I brought four bodies in this rickshaw earlier.

At the hospital, I try to give the driver some money and he refuses. Twice. Flatly. We all troop up to the blood bank. While we wait, dripping rainwater all over the swabbed floors, I ask everyone’s names. Binaifer the woman. Shoukat the driver. Ravi, Tabrez, Anil, Nawaz and Maaz, the others.

One runs a cold storage. One works for a film producer. One is a pharmacist. One has a mutton shop. One’s a student. All of us, here together on a topsy-turvy rainy tragic Bombay night, waiting to donate blood for our fellow Bombayites hit by this madness.

Anil and I, they won’t take our blood. Both of us have donated within the last three months.

Out on the landing, a sudden commotion. Doctors and nurses, green transparent plastic aprons over their clothes, appear as if from nowhere. Lift door opens and several nurses wheel a man in shorts on a stretcher, blood down his legs, into the ICU.

Homeward bound, the rain has finally eased. The memories haven’t.

Water in the water

(Third post on the blasts in Mumbai. #1, #2).

Those who have them (not me) are opening up their umbrellas, for it’s raining pretty hard as I walk away from Mahim. Guy just ahead of me, the point from his umbrella hits me in the mouth as it opens. For a moment I think that’s blood on my lips, then I realize it’s just more rain. Night like this, I’ve got blood on my mind.

Halfway up Mahim Causeway, I’m tiring of struggling through crowds on the pavements, decide to try my luck on the road itself but the traffic nearly mows me down. Across the road, a pandal with many lights. Curious, I cross over.

As I reach, two young men press glasses of water into my hands, as others are doing to the hordes streaming past. Please, help yourself, they say. And if you’ve got a long way to go, please come in and have some food before you walk on. Three different guys come up to me and say this. I thank them and walk on. It’s not even 2 hours since the bombs went off, and these guys are already organized with food, water, tables and shelter.

You folks at the Sai Seva Mitra Mandal, I’ve seen your sign there as I’ve whizzed past sometimes. I’d just like to say, there’s a special place in many hearts for you today.

Forced Samaritan Alto

(Second post on the blasts in Mumbai. #1).

Several men stand under the hole in the train at Mahim station, their manner and huddle suggesting that they are bringing out a body. But they are not, and suddenly one breaks from the huddle and rushes across the tracks, bellowing at spectators, get going get going get out what’re you looking at? He has a lathi, and seems willing to use it. I’m not yet close enough for him to target me, but I get off the tracks anyway onto a strip of rubble and filth separated from the tracks by a fence and from Tulsi Pipe Road by an unbroken concrete wall.

People are squatting on the wall, people are limpeted to the fence, people stand on the rubble and try to see what’s happening. Then the huddle breaks altogether. One young man approaches the audience and says, don’t wait here! Why don’t you go to Bhabha or Sion hospital and donate blood?

This section of the crowd, me somewhere in the middle, makes its way through the mud and indeterminate slush to the lone gap in the wall. Now I get a frontal view of the overbridge, and the stairs and the bridge itself are so packed with people that I fear they will fall off. Watching, watching, silently watching.

Through the gap and there is chaos and noise on the road.

People milling around, the rain starting up again, traffic trying to work its way through. A bus approaches and immediately a band of men rush up, banging palms on its side, demanding that it stop. Call out to an old woman standing in the crowd, direct her to board the bus. But I want to go to Bandra, says the woman. Someone yells into the bus, where’s this going? The answer is lost in the noise, but the woman turns around and becomes part of the crowd again.

Down the road, similar scenes, this time with greater purpose and urgency in the now driving rain, and with taxis and some private cars. Shopkeeper standing on the side tells me, they are trying to get rides for these people. But they won’t force the private cars, they are only asking the taxis. Yet as we watch the men stop a grey Maruti Alto, even push it backwards a few feet, surround it and yell into the windows. Several minutes shouting, I can’t tell why, then I see a few women crowding into the back of the little vehicle and it moves off through the crowd, who already have their eyes on the next car.

MH02 AK 6726, that Alto. Hope you got those women home and got home safely yourself.

Metal petals

Lot of traffic there, sir, says the rickshaw driver when I tell him to take me to Bandra station. Never mind, I say, let’s get as close as we can. Turns out we get all the way there in a jiffy, through pouring rain. Fire engines outside, distant disjointed sounds of sirens. Inside the station, people standing around talking, eyeing anyone who walks past. Nearly continuous announcements on the PA system, saying no trains are going anywhere on account of bomb blasts, please stay calm and cooperate with the authorities.

I walk down the platform — how odd they look, as if swept clean of the usual rush-hour or any-hour crowd — I walk down till the southern end. It’s dark here and I can see streams of people emerging from the darkness along the tracks, some see me standing on the platform and reach out, give me a hand up they say. Two men stop to tell me, bahut log marela (many people dead), there at Matunga or Mahim the whole top of the train is ripped off!

I jump down and start walking towards Mahim along the tracks. The great majority of the people are coming the other way, and especially on the stretch across the Mahim Creek (the famous Mithi River), the manoeuvring past each other is hard. But everyone does it in a sort of silent camaraderie you can almost feel.

All around there are snatches of conversations: been on at Khar, no between Bandra and Khar, no that’s at Santa Cruz. Near Gaiety-Galaxy cinema. Another one at Mahim. Churchgate? Nothing there. Also at Borivli.

One train sits on the track north of Mahim station, long dark and silent. Perhaps it casts a shadow, because it is even darker as I walk past, and I nearly stumble over the stones, the sleepers, the criss-crossing tracks and switches and other rail paraphernalia. What must it have been like here an hour ago, with bodies flying about and people running for their lives?

Another train just behind this one, and as I approach there’s a growing buzz of human voices on the road beyond the tracks, then from above me. I realize I’m walking under a foot overbridge. I look up and silhouetted against the sky, I see it’s almost absurdly packed with people watching. In front of me more people on the tracks, and then I see the compartment.

I flinch on seeing it, at the memory as I write this.

Suketu Mehta wrote once, and famously, of hands unfurling from a packed Bombay train compartment like petals, reaching out to grab that one more commuter and whisk him on board. Here the metal of the compartment is unfurled like some grotesque petals, side and top.

Great hole in the side reminds me, incongruously, of the times my dentist looks at a cavity in my teeth and says, huge hole! It’s impossible to even imagine where the door was in this thing. Just a great leering hole.

I’ve travelled in these very compartments, at this very time of day. Hundreds of times. I know how packed they are, how people hang from every inch. What happens to those people packed like that when a bomb left by a non-human goes off in there?

Short and salient

Navi Mumbai Anniversary Special in today’s Hindustan Times. Notice from Nerul Gymkhana, announcing the upcoming “Increase of Life Membership Subscription from Rs 80,000 to Rs 150,000.”

What, you will naturally wonder, do you get for this nearly doubled payment for a life membership?

Luckily for you, the notice answers that in one crisp sentence:

The short and salient features of Life Membership offered are that the main applicant and his/her spouse shall be members for his/her lifetime.

Oh.

A full 16

“What else could they have done?” responded Madhukar Sarpotdar of the Shiv Sena. This was when he was asked to explain why his party reacted to an apparent “desecration” of a statue by stopping trains (led in that, of course, by our fearless Mayor himself), burning buses, stoning shops, shutting down shops and assorted other vandalism.

“What else could they have done?” An excellent question indeed.

Excellent answer: they could have done a lot of things. After all, over the years this party has built up an enviable record of achievements worthy of emulation.

Consider. In 1995, the great state of Maharashtra gave itself a Shiv Sena Chief Minister, Manohar Joshi. In 1996, his Government held a celebration to mark a year in office. And what did Joshi proclaim was his Government’s “greatest achievement” in that one year?

This: the renaming of Bombay to Mumbai.

In 1991, the Pakistan cricket team was scheduled to come to India. One match was scheduled for Bombay, at the Wankhede stadium. The Shiv Sena didn’t care for this, so one night — do this by day when there are people who might watch? Not on your life — they sneaked into the stadium, dug up the pitch and poured oil in. Tour cancelled.

There was a public meeting soon after to — you’re going to laugh and laugh — actually protest this achievement. The Shiv Sena assaulted people leaving the meeting, opening a crack on the head of a woman journalist. (Didn’t pour oil in, though).

In 1997, a crack team of partymen rampaged through the Canossa girls’ school in Mahim, terrorising students and teachers.

In 1999, another crack team ran wild in the BCCI office, destroying Indian cricket trophies.

In 2000, yet another crack team destroyed an entire hospital in Thane, chasing seriously ill patients through the corridors.

There’s more. Trust me, there’s more. Yet I think that in any such recounting of achievement, first prize has got to go to one Mohan Rawale.

Rawale was the party’s MP from central Bombay. During his campaign for re-election in 1996, a newspaper interviewed him about his record as a parliamentarian. He spoke with fond nostalgia about one parliamentary day in 1992:

I ran into the well of the [Lok Sabha] screaming. I managed to stop the proceedings for a full 16 minutes. That, I think, was my greatest achievement.

Yes, it was! Without doubt! What I wouldn’t have given to watch this achievement that day!

It’s lucky he didn’t stop at 15 minutes.

Also, eat your heart out, one Manohar Joshi.

Not coming up in India

In not-quite-loving memory of Kenneth Lay, here’s a little more about Enron, again paraphrased from Abhay Mehta’s Power Play.

From the time Enron first tested Indian waters in the early ’90s, they had a major concern that they expressed again and again. So it was that on September 30 1992, the then chairman of the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB) wrote to the Government of India to apprise them of this concern:

[P]ublic and judicial scrutiny of business policy and decisions as per the [Companies] Act will not be acceptable by a company like DPC.

You see, Enron wanted to work in India. But Enron did not want to follow Indian law in India. Enron told MSEB so.

And MSEB’s chairman was obliging enough to pass the message on to Government.

In March 1993, the finance ministry approached the World Bank for funding for the plant. The Bank replied in April, seriously underwhelmed. It observed that DPC power would “displace lower cost [power] in the off-peak periods.” Also, the “Bank’s standard project economic analysis” led it to conclude “that the project is not viable.”

Bad news! But the Government of Maharashtra decided to ask the Central Government to persuade the Bank to review its decision. UK Mukhopadhyay, Secretary of Industries, Energy and Labour in Maharashtra, wrote a letter to the Centre and observed:

[The Bank] does not support the project. It, however, points out very clearly that this project would be a very good project if it was not coming up in India.

An excellent reason to build the plant in India, right there.

Mukhopadhyay also wrote:

Conserving [coal] during the off-peak hours will actually enable MSEB to meet the peak demand [a] little more efficiently.

The befuddlement Abhay Mehta himself feels is clear. He writes: The GoM was seriously advocating conserving coal-based power whose variable cost was 30-40 paise a unit, to justify LNG power [from DPC] whose minimum variable cost would be Rs 1.50.

Reasoning like this notwithstanding, the Bank remained unimpressed. Asked to review its March funding decision, it answered in July 1993:

[W]e reconfirm our earlier conclusion that the Dabhol project … is not economically justified and thus could not be financed by the Bank.

Naturally, six months later DPC and MSEB had agreed on the Power Purchase Agreement.

Naturally.

In that path blooding, I swear

Boris Becker: “I just can’t believe … that I can think of nothing to say.” (on a large billboard in Bombay — quoted from memory, may not be verbatim but is pretty close).

Rahul Dravid: “I can’t think of anything to say.” (on the website).

Both speaking about Aamby Valley City. And I’m wondering: it’s an endorsement, an endorsement worthy of being splashed on enormous billboards, that these guys can think of nothing to say?

***
“Remove outer packing before consumption.“

Message printed on the plastic that covers individual Britannia cheese slices. Lucky they told us, but wish I had read it earlier. This plastic tastes horrible.

***
Sign on a vacant plot in Sion: “This plot belongs to Mihir Madgavkar.“

Another sign on same vacant plot in Sion: “Simplified Society: Mihir Madgavkar is expelled by Simplified Society.“

***
Gola shop in Matunga has, among many others, these flavours available: Row Mango, Trapik Jam.

I tried the Row Mango. Dismal. Foul. Very green, bright fluorescent green.

Nearby milkshake shop has, among many others, these flavours available: Bunty Babli, Jelly Milly.

Still suffering the green effects of the Row Mango, I resisted these.

***
Seen On Tshirts Dept, considerable trouble to get these just for you so please appreciate:

“Mon Fyer. Mon en Goolam”

“All Livers are Evil and Should be Punished”

“Season all the winter Seasion the many game were started in that time many injuries in that path blooding.”

Cyril Connolly?

No. Semi-carnally.

(See Eric the Half-a-Bee).

Pending stuff

Some pending matters.

Asked in Mouse-ying along to the music about Tom playing Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody #2. In case you missed the discussion in the comments, that’s Tom of the cartoon pair Tom and Jerry, and I’m referring to the 1946 Oscar-winning Cat Concerto. Tom plays the piano, to much trouble-making and usual fun from Jerry, but Jerry soaks in the applause at the end.

In Rana on the board, I had a picture and asked if anyone could recognize where it was taken. Again in case you missed the vital discussions in the comments, that was taken at IIT Kanpur, during the 1978 Cultural Festival. That’s members of the audience on the stage during a skit that I was part of. As I mentioned in passing to one of the people who commented there, there are at least a couple of names discernible among all that’s written on that board. It would be a delight to run into Himadri Rana or Shahana Das Gupta one day and say: hey, I have a picture in which your name is up on the board! (I expect them to give me strange looks).

100-statement question was for the logicians. For an answer, I can do no better than point you to the comments there, especially to Sailesh Ganesh’s detailed explanation. I like this problem, and the exercise of thinking about it.