Whispers from Bandra

One balmy Bandra morning, I stand guard outside Suzette Creperie & Café, waiting for fellow breakfast aficionados. In the lead-up to acquiring a table, a vague pretence to a queue has formed, in the manner of people not quite willing to acknowledge the rigid orderliness of a line. Bandra folk seem torn between lazy repose and the necessity of having to show oneself near the premises at all. Their present consternation at having to put up with a full house eventually sprouts into fretful conversation. I hear a woman’s voice - “Well, how much longer? You know, I’ve got errands to run”. It is my initiation to the suburb and I’m pleased that it is the right kind. The choice of phrase is immediate reaffirmation of Bandra’s Catholic roots and a history distinctly separate from that of Bombay. Here, ‘errands to run’ it is. 

….

Increasing fondness for Bandra visits, rather inevitable given its time-honoured melange of charms, leads me on the trail of Bollywood, friends in tow. We are looking the for the wall murals of the B.A.P (Bollywood Art Project) that lie scattered across Pali Hill. In our search, we get lost in the labyrinthine byways and alleys that characterize the gentle sloping up before descending down towards the sea-facing Bandstand Promenade. It turns out to be a blessing though. One such alley eventually gives way to a courtyard of sorts contoured gently by the facades of two-storeyed houses with tiled roofs and wooden balustrades. The tree that is central to the courtyard has a sign hanging from one of its stumps. The sign reads – “Audition for Salman Khan picture. Contact 8350018942”! 

....

I am still chuckling about it while awaiting my order for lunch at a restaurant. Its innate amusement value notwithstanding, I see it as proof of the tangled nature of luck and serendipity in this home to Bombay’s film industry. Just as my lunch arrives, two twenty-somethings join me at the table. It is a crowded affair at this restaurant. When I begin to tuck into my meal, one of them launches into encomiums for Anurag Kashyap. While initially coming across as fan adoration, its nature abruptly shifts to that of a working relationship. It dawns on me that this is about assisting Kashyap on Gangs of Wasseypur! Having deduced this, I now find a casual conversation about what is essentially someone’s work, electric. "Anurag is so chilled out! You wouldn’t believe this but aadhe time hum bas stories sunaate hain. So, he’s given me a reco (sic) for Karan Johar’s next magar mujhe pata nahin. I like the atmosphere in Anurag’s set." In this moment, Bandra couldn’t be more about Bollywood for me. 

….

For all the talk about its old-world charm and artist’s village appeal, over the last five years, Bandra has entered the popular Indian consciousness as one half of an engineering marvel: the Bandra-Worli Sea Link. Yet, this does not appear incongruous as one would immediately expect in the manner of say, Montmartre being paired with the words IT and Park! Partly, one must put this down to Bombay’s ceaseless ability to make room for the new. Nevertheless, I suspect Bandra pulls its weight as a name with which something larger than life finds a fit too. As such, this engineering feat now dominates the southern end of Bandra wherever there is a view to be had. While different views of it are lessons in perspective and geometry, the predominant one I have sampled during taxi rides skirting Bandra is a shimmer of delicate white strands from a distance. No matter how often I see it, every glimpse is a veritable Darshan. On one such ride, a cabbie, seeing admiration writ large on my face, puts a different spin on the topic. He holds that on the subject of views, one group that must be vexed more than anything else ought to be the residents of the Mahim, particularly those along the seafront. What was once a view out into the Arabian Sea has now been reduced to a view of the sea link. His valediction on the topic is sparse and pointed: Bandra’s gain, Mahim’s loss (sic).

….

May last year, on the date of announcement of election results, it emerges that the NDA has won. Accompanied by a friend, I am walking back to Bandra station after an alfresco dinner at Saltwater Café. Faithful to the route suggested by Google Maps, we find ourselves walking through the Muslim-dominated quarter of Bandra leading out to the impressive façade of the Jama Masjid. All through our walk, we find groups of people huddled, whispering with quiet urgency. In the bedlam of murmurs, it is hard to discern anything specific. Eventually, a throwaway sentence falls on my ears - “Aaj pata nahin har musalmaan ka vote kidar gaya hai”. Friend and I cast knowing glances at each other, perhaps in shared reflection of how this chance encounter is a peek into the minds of our populace. 

….

Four encounters, four whispers, each revealing a different facet of Bandra. Perhaps I have only looked at what I wanted to. There is such a thing as perspective. 

Moments from Central India - Episode 1: Leaving redux

There is something peculiar about being displaced against the direction of the line of sight. It isn't merely about being a mild physical anomaly. It extends to the mind as well. As I'm being borne backwards from Dadar by the Jan Shatabdi Express to Aurangabad, my mind refuses to disengage from the metropolis that I'm oriented towards. It dawns on me that there is such a thing as leaving a place and all thoughts associated with it behind. Staring vapidly outside a window at the landscapes shooting forward, I find it hard to forget the trappings of work. Soon, I am distinctly aware of my mind replaying the events of the day in reverse. 

It begins with a vignette in which I am fretful, rushing back home in an auto-rickshaw and wondering how everyone else waiting at home is playing it so cool. I am late and yet have received but one phone call asking as to how things have progressed. Then the scene loops back to the loveliness that is the folding action representing the closing of a work laptop. There is something about the manner of this activity that clears the mind. I'm struck by how the mind is once again influenced by the mechanics of how we do something. The next vignette is characterized by infinite limbo. I'm stuck waiting for something to arrive and it never does in this replay for the scene does not segue forward. Dazed, I look to my mind for succour and it obliges, looping to the next vignette. This is a flashback of sorts for I'm presented with the arrival of my uncle and aunt from Dubai, a happier memory to dwell upon. 

The six of us - Ma, Pa, Kaamya, SM, Pushpa - are seated in my bachelor pad, now feigning a pretense to being something more. On cue, I rewind to some hasty rearrangement the previous morning before my parents and sis had arrived. I am in the middle of my living room and, a biannual upheaval. After a significant chunk of time spent achieving the quixotic dictum of a thing in its place and a place for everything, I am somehow left with residual energy for fussing about with a colour scheme of sorts. Eventually, I decide on a combination of earthy maroon and demure orange. A trio of petit cushions make their way on to my coir bed ...... and the final vignette segues to the maroon interiors of the Jan Shatabdi at this point. Part of it had begun to feel like work again, belittling the move towards cozier memories. 

The six of us are now seated in the train. I try to detect any sense of facial discomfiture wrought on the others by preoccupations. Sure enough, I catch all of them at various moments grappling with their own sense of work left behind and upcoming. Pa wears any such preoccupation in languid fashion, in the manner of someone who is used to the consternation it brings from years of experience as a practicing Chartered Accountant. Ma is keen to get a discussion on familial complications out of the way before touring begins in earnest. I sense she is too dutiful about our trips to let anything serious get in the way of fun - a paradox! After many attempts at meaningful conversation, we are defeated by the physical anomaly alluded to earlier. The best antidote to the mental bedlam these things result in is sleep. Kaamya lands a winner at this by seemingly being able to doze anywhere, anytime. I see it as her own response to a general malaise at continual displacement that has consumed the better part of the year for her. 

Pushpa and SM have, after a series of booking misfires, emerged on the other side of vexation where things are clear again by way of resignation. Their respective work situations nags at their thoughts as well, compounding the issue. My aunt isn't sure if she will be granted leave at the school in which she teaches. Uncle, IT man, stands poised to spend a good hour each day on the trip on the phone; only we don't know it yet. Kaamya, in the midst of a PhD, has her recently completed field work and the prospect of an unpeopled winter in Denmark to contend with. By and large, our countenances are writ with vague concerns. It occurs to me that this is an all-adults trip, a first for us. 

Every now and then, the vagueness is dispelled with a joke - someone has had a series of light bulbs go off inside their mind! We are a faithful group in conversation. Sensing the importance of such an opening, everyone pitches in with something alike in tone and mood. This leads to a spell that is markedly pointed in the manner of its participation and its effect. The subjects inducing such spells are as diverse as the nature of Kolaveri chap Dhanush's new-found sangfroid in performances, the degree of truth (or untruth) to the pronouncements of family astrologer Raasikkal (Lucky Stone) Raghavan, or even how we have finally reached our hometown Madurai's rail soul mate Manmad after years of talking about it. In a family dominated by ferroequinologists (now that's a hell of a term), the occasional rail joke can be lost to outsiders in the dizzying depths of a shared hobby! 

And when the laughter dies down, the vagueness returns. Inevitably, at some point, the baton doesn't get picked up and everyone settles into their own mindspaces. This trip is to be one such, I think at this point, where many of us are beset a touch more with care than we've known on trips prior to this. In a way, that is novel too. Having reached a seamless transition point of the reverse chronological exercise my mind has been perpetrating on me, I am less beset with concern now. A deep breath and a sigh later, I settle into the line that's been my refrain for a year now. The years shall run like rabbits. For in my arms, I hold the flower of the ages and the first love of the world. These two lines of Auden are so incredibly context agnostic on their own that I fit them to whatever I'm feeling when I evoke them for my comfort.  

Looking out to see vistas of hills punctured by pretty wadis, I am more certain in the notion that we are going somewhere else now.