Of Mumbai and Bhaiyyas

What prompted me to write this piece was a very innocuous remark by a colleague in recent times. We were discussing about tourism in India. I thought that the biggest impediments in Indian tourism were the difficulty in getting along and the cheating mentality of the people. Don’t raise your arms in indignation and cry that I’m not a true Indian citizen. What I say is true and you know it from the bottom of your heart. When I as an Indian went to Delhi for the 1st time, my parents were worried to death, because of the reputation that our national capital has earned as being the most unsafe place in India for women. And then there is the famous “Dilli ka thug” image, which even Delhiites will uphold. As a Mumbaiite, I would be shit scared of any foreigner (Indian or otherwise) roaming around in the streets of Mumbai. Maybe of the 10 people they meet, 6 are helpful, but the remaining 4 do damage of gargantuan proportions to the image of the city.

Now the reason why I am blabbering about all this has some link with the tactics that Mr. Raj Thackery used recently to gain foothold in Maharashtra politics. The argument was that North Indians, specifically Biharis are the bane of Mumbai.

My colleague was referring to the rape of a foreign woman in Goa. In recent times, the headlines have been inundated with cases of molestation and rape of foreign national tourists in Goa. The hitherto peaceful place – the one Indian tourist spot that is actually world famous for its beaches and churches – is now no longer considered safe. And my colleage remarked “Saale Bihari pahunche honge wahan bhi” (Those bloody Bihari’s have not spared Goa also). A couple of days back I read about a foreigner being molested by a taxi driver in Mumbai. The taxi driver was a Muslim, but my 1st thoughts were a mirror image of what my colleague said. I was surprised at myself.

I was too young to recollect the incident accurately, but Raj’s his uncle had tried the same tactics a decade or so back and it had back fired. But at that time, the focus was South Indians. With the exception of a certain group of Tamilians (who are kind of world famous for their pan spitting and bath only when you start stinking attitude), all south Indians are generally peaceful creatures with a reasonable civic sense and an above average standard of education. All the offices in Mumbai, all the business have south Indians as a majority workforce. Alienating south Indians would have meant a major blow to the economy of the city and so we still live in Mumbai and I consider myself a Mumbaiite first and then a south Indian, so deep is the sense of belonging to that city instilled in me.

But Bhaiyyas (UPites and Biharis) – they are normally poorly educated, they have nearly no civic sense and when it comes to the absence of neatness, the quality just transcends communal boundaries – a Brahmin and a Muslim from UP are equally efficient in dirtying the place they live in. They are hard working folk. Majority of the life line services of Mumbai – taxis, vegetable hawkers, daily wage workers – most of them are Bhaiyyas. But there is also another quality of theirs that unites them above their religious differences. One member of the family comes to a big city, hoping to eke out a meager living. He finds a city like Mumbai to be an ideal city – he can live here better than in his village. He gets his family, he in addition gets his brothers and friends and very soon you have his entire community living in some corner of Mumbai. It then becomes his private space and there is soon a settlement there consisting solely of his acquaintances. That is how a slum is typically created in a city like Mumbai. Naturally these slums are not equipped for the population boost that is to follow and in due course of time, the resources of the city start straining.

Now, having said that – do we have the right to decide who can live where in India? I thought we were on a mission to unite the country. Isn’t that what India is famous for – Unity in Diversity? Isn’t that one of the things that made us proud of Mumbai? Didn’t we pride ourselves on the fact that we celebrate all festivals that India has to offer because we have a representation of the whole of India in Mumbai? So can’t we accept the fact that India has neat people and not so neat people, people with a high sense of morality and a not so high sense of morality, people with a high level of tolerance and with a not so high level of tolerance? India is made up of all these variety of people, but aren’t we still proud of India? What is a country but what its people make it out to be. And whether we like it or not, Bhaiyyas make up a huge proportion of our population. So how can we boycott a particular creed of the community just because we don’t like them? Did we forget that this great country of ours is a Democracy and our Constitution protects every ones right to live – I don’t recollect it saying anything about living in a state or a part of the country – it talks about the country as a whole? So when did we decided to re-write the Constitution to suit our needs and conveniences? I do agree that from a city planning and management perspective, not just Mumbai, the whole of the country is fighting to extend amenities to the ever growing population – but do we just decided to kill of a huge part of the population that we consider an inconvenience because we can’t plan well? Wouldn’t that make us akin to Hitler’s Germany? Is that what we are aiming for? Maybe we are… maybe I’m just left behind in this race to make India a superpower, maybe I misunderstood or over estimated the power of our centuries old culture and traditions. What use are those to us anymore? We have to be a superpower – even if it involves selling our souls to the devil………

A Temple of Thoughts

Yesterday evening, I went to the temple. I have been on a month long trip abroad and it felt good to be back among the familiar smells and sights of the Ayyappa temple that I have taken to frequenting every Saturday, courtesy my husband. I am a not a particularly religious person, meaning I don’t go to temples often, I don’t perform pujas – heck! I even forget to light the lamp in front of the pictures of Gods that we have at home. I am far from applying sandalwood paste and vermillion to my forehead in religious reverence. But it felt good to be back.

I thanked the statue of Ayyappa for bringing me back safely, I told the small statuette of the Bhagawati, that she looked good and I was really happy to see Ganesha again. I told him “hi”, I asked about his well being, I did my usual 10 crosslegged salutations in front of him and then I was done. My temple ritual was over. I stood to a side allowing other, more reverent devotees to see the Gods.

While standing there I thought that this is like going to meet a friend. I recollected the joy I felt when I saw my dear friend in Chicago after almost 3 months. The feeling was almost the same. Before, she goads herself to believing that I am equating her to God (she anyway believes that she is God personified), let me clarify that it is the other way around. For me visiting the temple is not a religious activity, something you have to do to stay in the good books of God. It is like visiting a friend. Sometimes I have private conversations with God – I tell God about what’s bugging me, what went wrong and what went right. I thank God for the good things and don’t forget to blame him for the mis-happenings in my life. And then I say Bye & a C Ya without a promise as to when I we will meet again. I don’t expect God to do anything after I rave and rant to him / her. I just have a load off my chest when I get it all out. Now it no longer is my problem, its for God to worry about it.

It’s not as if I don’t think about God when I’m not at the temple. I think about God as often as I think about my parents and my friends. The only difference being that God being a resident of a different level, is not privy to modern communication systems and does not possess a telephone. That kind of makes a two way communication difficult but I communicate to God through my thoughts – it’s the purest form of communications, simply because we are not disciplined creatures, we don’t have control over our thoughts, we think all kind of bull shit and God is a party to all those musings – there is no secrecy and no deceit – it’s all pure and it’s all true.