The Quest for a non PoP Ganapathy idol

After three years in Catholic/ cosmopolitan Bandra, it was wonderful to be in Shivaji Park during the Ganapathy Celebrations. We didn’t visit any of the pandals, but when every store in the market seems to be selling colourful festival related paraphernalia, and everywhere you look you see hoards of people moving around in their festive best, it is hard not to get caught up in all the excitement.
Till we’d moved to that flat overlooking Dadar Chowpathy, I had only seen the Ganapathy visarjan on TV and in movies. I had never imagined I would ever have a ringside view of the third most popular spot for visarjans in Mumbai. I stayed awake all night watching people wading far into the sea with the idols. It was one of the most memorable nights of my life.
The next morning, reality made me weep – the beach was strewn with the faded and broken remains of the previous night’s visarjan. Ganapathy heads looking desperately for bodies they have long lost. Pieces of trunk, still glittering pink in the morning sun. Broken portions of well rounded torsos. Pieces of dhotis, garlands and mukuts sharing space with the early morning faeces.
I am not surprised newspapers never publish photographs of the day after – people would make public bonfires of the publication, burn effigies of the editor and stone the office building.

Anybody with an iota of imagination can imagine what must be happening to the idols after immersion when they are brought back to shore by the tide. I am sure no true lover of Ganapathy would want that to happen to their favourite deity.
Every year, newspapers cautiously publish reports of how the population of aquatic life has gone down in the ponds where visarjans take place. At the start of summer, when water bodies start drying out, people take photographs of disemboweled idols languishing at the bottom of ponds and lakes – Plaster of Paris idols look beautiful, but they just do not dissolve.

Ecosensitive citizens speak of going back to clay idols. You read about organizations that make idols out of paper machie. There was talk of implementing a bill to make it mandatory to buy only biodegradable idols.

But, do you know how difficult it is to locate a idol not made of PoP? I searched every store, stall, and pushcart in the market next to Andheri station and found not one idol that was eco-friendly. You find PoP idols coloured to resemble terracotta ones, but a genuine clay idol is not a rarity – it just doesn’t exist.

The kids wanted a big idol for Ganapathy, and I could not disappoint. But the size makes it impossible for me to do what I normally do with idols – place them under one of my potted plants in lieu of a visarjan. I do not want my idol to face the indignity of being smashed to pieces in the sea and have marine effluents giving them additional coats of colour. After a ceremonial dunking, perhaps I will just place it under one of the trees in the compound and hope that people give it the deference it deserves.

A for Aligator

“A for Aligator” screams the older one.
“B for Bear”, pipes up the younger.
Cat, Dog, Elephant, Fox – the two of them alternate almost effortlessly as you turn the pages of the Animal Alphabet book.
You hold your breath, but they easily leap over “G for Giraffe” and “H for Horse” too.
Now you are sure they are going to trip up, but they don’t.
“I for Impala”, declaims the older one.
“J for Jaguar”, shoots back the younger.
You had not even heard of those animals till you were in high school, but yours was not the generation of Animal Planet and Discovery Channel.
Orangutan and Panda are no less accessible to them than Sheep and Tigers.

You wonder awhile if you are doing the right thing by teaching them names of animals they are unlikely to encounter even in a zoo. Rote learning does have some benefits, but you are not a great fan of it. Must you necessarily inflict it on your kids?
“Mamma, again?” asks the younger one.
“Later”, you shoot back.
“But I want, …” starts off the younger one, but his brother cuts him short.
“Let us look at the pictures”, he says. “See, this is a Panda. Panda eats bamboo. You know what bamboo is? Come I will show you.” He strides confidently to where the lucky bamboo shoots are, with the younger one trotting dutifully behind him.
You smile. Maybe it is not all rote learning after all!!!

You also make a mental note to read up on Newts and Rhinoceroses – after all, you don’t want to get caught on the wrong foot when they start asking questions.

Of fish and jellyfish

My nearly five-year old is learning about vertebrates in school. When we were doing his homeplay the other day, I was seriously impressed with the speed with which he rattled off names of mammals and reptiles (writing those names down took a bit longer, but that gave me time to access my memory banks to find out if turtles were indeed reptiles or not).

Then we got to birds, and my problems began – he insisted that bats were birds, because bats could fly. It was less difficult telling him that bats were not birds (birds have feathers on their wings, do bats have feathers?), than convincing him that bats were mammals (when even I haven’t seen bats suckle their young, isn’t it asking for a leap of faith to ask him to believe that?). Finally, he gave in – perhaps seeing Bruce Wayne with his mother before Bruce Wayne became Batman had something to do with it, but I am not complaining.

Fish was a lot more difficult. I was anticipating problems with whales and dolphins – they look like fish and swim like fish, so why are they not fish? I knew we had seen a clip where the baby dolphin was suckling the Mamma dolphin, and was thinking of reminding him of it.
But the problems came from an unexpected quarter. He insisted that jellyfish was a fish. I tried telling him that just because jellyfish had fish in its name, it did not become a fish, but his argument was a bit more profound – but jellyfish lives in water, it has to be a fish. Ditto, starfish.

There were lots of explanations centered around how fish had fins and jellyfish and starfish did not, and about how fish laid eggs but jellyfish and starfish did not, and of how fish had bones but jellyfish and starfish did not. Information overload! All that he had been taught in school was that fish were vertebrates and fish lived in water.

I know for a fact that my son trusts his mother, and he will eventually accept what she tells him including seemingly unbelievable stuff like jellyfish and starfish not being fish. But I do wish it had never come to that.
Why confuse the kids by introducing the concept of jellyfish and starfish, when you know you don’t have simple explanations for obvious questions like why they are not fish. With so many species to choose from, why choose two that are sure to confuse the kids?

I guess I should just be happy that his teacher hasn’t introduced him ladybirds – they have wings and they fly, why then are they insects and not birds. Specially since they do not bite or spread diseases like the other insects do.

My Family and other Superheros

“Mamma, Peter Parker and Mary Jane are doing what?”, asked my two and a half year old. Only Peter Parker sounded more like ‘pitterpalkar’ and Mary Jane came out as ‘milijay’.
He also knows Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent. And his brother is trying to introduce him to Sachin Tendulkar and Michel Phelps.
He knows the names of all the kids who have ever been in the daycare centre he goes to – it was only when he mentioned “Ninika”, that I came to know that the kid I used to think was Naina was actually Nainika.

So was I worried when his class teacher told me he had trouble naming the people in his family?
Not at all. After all, why would he know any name except that of his brother? As far as he is concerned, his father is called Papa, and his mother’s name is Mamma. His grandmother is Patti, and grandfather Dada. The people he knows by name are assorted aunts and uncles, but I am sure he doesn’t even regard them as family. It is not that he doesn’t know our names – it is just that he doesn’t yet realise we do have names.
That night night, I made him repeat my name and his father’s name, and by morning, he had them word perfect. It is not too difficult a concept either – Spiderman is also called Peter Parker, why then should it be so strange to find out that his mother and father both have other names also?

There was only one thing I did not anticipate. Till a few days back, the game we played while waiting for the school bus to arrive was, “Who’s papa is this?” – he never got them wrong – but now he tells me who’s papa it is, and then asks me for the papa’s name. I need to get to know my neighbours a lot better now.

Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park

I first visited Hyde Park with Bertie Wooster. Speakers’ Corner was where he ran into his friend standing on a soap-box in a false beard and mouthing Commie rant in order to impress the father of the girl he was hoping to marry. I am not particularly sure how the story turned out, though I am sure Jeeves saved the day, and Bertie Wooster ended up either with egg on his face, or a hangover cure in his hand.

What is do remember is that I was fascinated by the idea of a place where anyone could stand up and talk about anything they chose and nobody could haul them off to prison or sue them for slander.

So when I found myself in London and had a free Sunday there, one of the first places I hauled myself to was Marble Arch. Speakers’ Corner was every bit as enthralling as I had expected it to be – there was the man in a salt and pepper beard (real, hopefully) talking about redevelopment in urban areas, the young black man in jeans and bomber jacket getting excited about the discrimination against people from the Caribbean, a middle aged man talking about how difficult the government made it for an unemployed single father to bring up three children. There even was an anachronistic piece in tweeds that had actually brought along a wooden soapbox – her thick plait bobbed for emphasis as she spoke about how the government should not have given up its colonies.

It was my last day in London- there were landmarks I could have photographed, museums I could have visited, souvenir stores I could have gone to. But I could not tear myself away from Speakers’ Corner. Heck, I even bought myself a cappuccino and a hotdog and had lunch watching the people speak. Most of the stuff the people were talking about meant nothing to me and even the things that I did not necessarily agree with- but the experience was compelling.

I was almost tempted to grab a place against the fence and start talking about something, anything. What would the people gathered there have made of an Indian girl in a funny accent ranting about how the only people in England who made her feel uncomfortable were the people of Indian descent? They would probably just have wondered why I did not think to equip myself with something to stand on.

The moment passed. I did not get on the soapbox. I did not air my views.

But neither did I ever forget that one place where anyone could say anything. Whether or not anyone heard you was not the point. Whether the people you would have wanted to speak to heard you was not the point either. The point was that you were free to say anything you wanted. Anything!

I often through fondly of Speakers’ Corner at Hyde Park. Then I discovered blogging.

Seasons - Monsoon

Hot corn cobs popped on embers of coal,
Watching the giant waves, being showered by spray.
Monsoon memories for free.

Multicoloured umbrellas to twirl over your head,
Splashing through puddles, running in the rain.
Monsoon memories for free.

Jeans that are specked with splashes of mud,
Clothes drying indoors, the faint smell of must.
Monsoon memories for free.

Enjoying the drizzle from the safety of home,
A mug of steaming coffee, plates of pakodas well made.
Monsoon memories for free.

Sticking out your tongue to catch the raindrops,
A faint burst of sun, the sudden downpour.
Monsoon memories for free.
_______

Drabble (n) - an extremely short work exactly one hundred words in length. The purpose of the drabble is brevity and to test the author's ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in an extremely confined space.

Where are the beggars?

Time was when you just had to stop at a traffic light, and a hoard of beggars would miraculously materialise. Some would be little kids in raggedy clothes informing you that they hadn’t eaten for two days, while others would be older men and women telling you that their particular god would bless you if you parted with a few coins. There would be the usual quota of women clutching babies and thrusting an empty feeding bottle onto your face, and the boys with misshapen or missing limbs.

Today when you stop at a traffic light, you have paperbacks thrust at you and boxes of tissue paper. Women selling gajaras and men with cheap Chinese toys. You made the mistake of stepping out without an umbrella – no problem, those rainbow coloured things with wooden handles cost just Rs. 200. Late for a date with your hot girlfriend – just pick up a bunch of roses at the next traffic light and tell her you got delayed at the florist.

Cheap Chinese imports seem to have spawned an entire generation of merchants – it is as now as difficult to spot a beggar as it once was to avoid them.

You know you should be rejoicing – isn’t this the India you always dreamt about? A India where everyone was gainfully employed? Where there was no hunger and everybody could afford to send their kids to school? It does seem to.

But the skeptic in you refuses to accept what your eyes can see. Sure, people are selling things at traffic lights instead of begging, but is commerce really edging out poverty, or is this just a new form of poverty?

Begging, some people always maintained, was a very well organised business venture. The beggars you saw were merely the front office. The brains behind the venture were the people who acquired the beggars, taught them their lines, and actually deployed them exactly where they were likely to be most successful. It was the people behind the venture who kept the daily takings, but in return for that, but it was not a bad deal for the beggars because in return for their labour, they were given food and shelter.

If that were indeed the case, then it is probable that the brains behind the 'begging business' realized that the margins were much higher in retailing than in begging, and so shifted to that. If that were the case, the lot of the beggars has not changed - only their job description has. The paucity of beggars, in that case, indicates nothing at all.

Even if you choose to be optimistic, and say that at least some of the new breed of itinerant merchants are self employed, the question still remains - "How much profit are they really making and how much of it are they getting to keep?" It is unlikely that any of them could have had the initial capital to invest in stock, so they must either be selling goods on behalf of someone else for a small commission, or they must have taken a loan from a moneylender.

Given the immense pool of labour available, it is unlikely that the commission on a Chinese toy that costs Rs. 10 would be more than fifty paise - given the volume of sales, that amount would be just about enough to ensure survival in the city.

Moneylenders always charge usurious rates - rates so high the person is never able to pay back fully, but not enough to force the person to abandon the business totally.

Whether they are working for a commission, or whether they owe their stock, the new breed of salesmen and entrepreneurs could not be doing very much more than just surviving.

You do not see too many beggars these days, but the lives of the people who were earlier forced to beg to survive cannot be much better today than it was a few years back.

But there is still hope. When you live on charity, you get used to it and don’t really try to pull yourself out of your dependence on it. But when you know you are producing value, you strive to produce more, in the hope of someday being able to better your lot.

I am not sure if I see it happening in the near future or not, but someday, perhaps people would start lending money to the new breed of merchants are reasonable rates, and they would be able to gradually pull themselves out of poverty.

The beggars have morphed into salesmen. Soon they could be entrepreneurs.