Tag Archive for ‘Mumbai’ at Asian Window

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Tag Archive for 'Mumbai'

The Thackerays’ primitive charisma

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on February 20, 2010

in India and Politics

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Aakar Patel in Mint-Lounge:

Bal Thackeray

Politicians respond to constituencies. Their positions are deliberate.

What is the Thackerays’ constituency? Mumbai’s Marathis, whom the Thackerays speak for.

Congress does not represent Marathis in Mumbai, and they have surrendered this space politically to the Thackerays. This can be seen in their organizational structure

Neither the Mumbai regional Congress committee’s president Kripashankar Singh nor its treasurer Amarjit Singh is Marathi.

Of Mumbai Congress’ 18 vice-presidents, 12 are not Marathi. Of its 19 general secretaries, 13 are not Marathi. Of its 13 secretaries, eight are not Marathi. Of its seven executive members, none is Marathi.

Of Congress’s seven members of Parliament from Mumbai, six are not Marathi.

Of its 17 MLAs, 12 are not Marathi. Of its two housing board chairmen, neither is Marathi.

This surrender hasn’t come because Congress does not want Marathi votes, but because it cannot get them. Congress is inclusive by nature and cannot offer Mumbai’s Marathi what the Thackerays can, which is anger and resentment. More:

How slums can save the planet

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on February 19, 2010

in Economy

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Dharavi, Mumbai, where population density reaches 1m people per square mile

From Prospect:

The magic of squatter cities is that they are improved steadily and gradually by their residents. To a planner’s eye, these cities look chaotic. I trained as a biologist and to my eye, they look organic. Squatter cities are also unexpectedly green. They have maximum density—1m people per square mile in some areas of Mumbai—and have minimum energy and material use. People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi.

Not everything is efficient in the slums, though. In the Brazilian favelas where electricity is stolen and therefore free, people leave their lights on all day. But in most slums recycling is literally a way of life. The Dharavi slum in Mumbai has 400 recycling units and 30,000 ragpickers. Six thousand tons of rubbish are sorted every day. In 2007, the Economist reported that in Vietnam and Mozambique, “Waves of gleaners sift the sweepings of Hanoi’s streets, just as Mozambiquan children pick over the rubbish of Maputo’s main tip. Every city in Asia and Latin America has an industry based on gathering up old cardboard boxes.” There’s even a book on the subject: The World’s Scavengers (2007) by Martin Medina. Lagos, Nigeria, widely considered the world’s most chaotic city, has an environment day on the last Saturday of every month. From 7am to 10am nobody drives, and the city tidies itself up. More:

We’re all Shah Rukh

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on February 4, 2010

in India and Politics

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The RSS, the BJP, Mukesh Ambani and Rahul Gandhi are on the same side — against the Shiv Sena. Can Mumbai finally find its voice? Samar Halarnkar in The Hindustan Times:

On June 26, 1963, US President John F Kennedy, showing solidarity with beleaguered West Berliners, famously said (in a grammatically incorrect statement): “Ich bin ein Berliner.” I am a Berliner.

After 9/11, the French paper Le Monde declared: “We are all Americans.”

On Monday, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said: “Count me as a Bihari.”

The wise often argue that silence speaks the loudest.

Not always. Not now. Not in India.

There is a reason the world’s best car companies install powerful horns in the automobiles they sell here. Indians need to say it out loud. Injustice triumphs when the powerful are silent, when standing strong only needs a voice.

So, in a city where business tsars and Bollywood stars are infamous for grovelling whenever a politician frowns, it was a relief to first hear Mukesh Ambani and later Shah Rukh Khan stick it to parochial politics and the Shiv Sena, incongruously named after Shivaji the Great.

“You can only say what you believe in and stand by it, and hopefully I will have the strength to do so,” Khan said in New York about the Sena’s threat to ban his latest movie, My Name is Khan, and to prevent his return to Mumbai. “As an Indian I’m not ashamed, guilty or unhappy about what I said, neither am I sorry.” More:

Herodotus, and the Parsis at Thermopylae

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on January 31, 2010

in Faith and Religion

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Aakar Patel at The News:

In 480 BC, Persia’s emperor Xerxes attacked and defeated Greece. He bridged the Hellespont, the slim neck between Europe and Asia now called the Dardanelles, and marched his army of Iraqis, Iranians, Egyptians and Indians across to Macedonia and then south into Greece. Most Greek states on his path surrendered to him. Sparta lost one skirmish against his army and then refused to fight. The people of Athens abandoned their city to Xerxes and fled to an island in the south called Salamis.

Xerxes had invaded in anger, after Athens interfered militarily in one of his colonies on the west coast of Turkey. Reaching Athens, he burnt all of it down, including the Acropolis. Then, realising that the Athenians would not defend their state, took his army back to Asia.

We know all this because it was recorded by a Greek historian, Herodotus, who was born a few years before the invasion. It’s a simple and conclusive story. But over the centuries, one part of the invasion, that skirmish with the Spartans, has been used by Europeans to tell a different story. This is the story of freedom-loving individuals (Europeans) defending themselves against slavish barbarians (Asians). And this brave stand of the Spartans, according to the movie ‘300′ and a recent BBC Radio 4 programme called ‘In Our Time’, “saved civilisation”.

It is a bold claim to make, because it assumes that civilisation is entirely European and there was no civilisation on the Persian side. It is also a factually untrue claim on two counts. The first that the skirmish, the battle of Thermopylae, was fought between 300 Spartans and 5.2 million Persians. The second that Xerxes lost the war.

Xerxes is Greek for the emperor’s Old Persian name, which was Kshayarsa, from the same root as Sanskrit Kshatriya and the modern caste name Khatri. More:

Taliban may be descended from Jews

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on January 17, 2010

in Science

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Click here to watch part 2 and here for part 3

The ethnic group at the heart of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan may descended from their Jewish enemy, according to researchers in India. Dean Nelson in the London Telegraph:

Experts at Mumbai’s National Institute of Immunohaematology believe Pashtuns could be one of the ten “Lost Tribes of Israel”.

The Israeli government is funding a genetic study to establish if there is any proof of the link.

An Indian geneticist has taken blood samples from the Pashtun Afridi tribe in Lucknow, Northern India, to Israel where she will spend the next 12 months comparing DNA with samples with those of Israeli Jews.

The samples were taken in Lucknow’s Malihabad area because it was regarded as the only place safe enough to conduct such a controversial project for Muslims.

Shanaz Ali a senior research fellow, will lead the study at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Tel Aviv. More:

Mumbai’s messy motorways

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on January 13, 2010

in Economy and India

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From the Wall Street Journal:

Traffic has become so bad in my home of Mumbai that I don’t bother to make friends on the north side of town anymore. I have to rudely refuse all dinner invitations from suburbanites because it takes more than two hours to reach them some days.

I’ve been monitoring Mumbai’s motorways for more than a decade: first from the front of a Honda scooter and recently from the back of a Hyundai Sonata. Back in the 90s there was already too much traffic but at least there was enough space to squeeze my Honda Kinetic past the idling cars. Today even that space is gone. The tightening knot of sub-compact cars, rickshaws and Tata trucks has expanded to the curb and beyond. Scooter-straddling families are stuck in the mess with the rest of us – except for the few that ride on the sidewalks.

I, like many Mumbaikars, am strangely proud of my city’s traffic mess. Any traffic story from anywhere else in the world, I can top. My best, awful story involves the traffic jam from hell in the late 90s. The 30 kilometers to the airport took seven hours – the last 30 minutes pushing my Padmini taxi through waist-high water. I still made my plane though. My flight’s crew was stuck in the same jam. More:

Residences of the rich and famous

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on November 22, 2009

in Society

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A rendering of 27-storey Antilla in Mumbai, the future home of Mukesh Ambani family.

Aakar Patel in the News, Pakistan:

Indians invest in two things mainly: gold and property. India is the world’s largest buyer of gold, much of it being turned into heavy and ornate wedding jewellery; and most Indians (Gujaratis excluded) would rather invest in property than in equity.

The world’s richest man, Warren Buffett, lives in the same three-bedroom house in Nebraska he bought 51 years ago. That would never happen in India, because for us our status comes from the size of our residence.

The billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, Britain’s richest man, bought a house in London’s Kensington Palace Gardens for 70 million pounds (about 560 crore Indian rupees) in 2004, and it was then the most expensive residence in the world. It had 12 bedrooms and parking space for 20 cars, and was sold to him by the Formula One championships owner, Ecclestone.

In 2008, Mittal broke his own record and bought another house in the same neighbourhood for his son, and this cost 117 million pounds (Rs 936 crore). For his daughter, Mittal bought a house in Delhi that cost Rs100 crore ($ 22 million). None of this would have dented his wealth, estimated by Forbes magazine last week, even in these times of recession, to be $30 billion (Rs140 lakh crore). More:

Bal Thackeray vs Sachin Tendulkar

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on November 17, 2009

in Cricket, India, Politics and Sport

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Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray

Bal Thackeray, the leader of the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena, has criticised cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar over his remarks that Mumbai belonged to all Indians. The right wing party champions the rights of local people, the Maharashtrians, often with violence and intimidation. Sena offshoot the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), run by Thackeray’s nephew Raj Thackeray, has also taken up the “Maharashtra for Maharashtrians” cause.

Sachin Tendulkar had said, “I am a Maharashtrian and I am extremely proud of that. But I am an Indian first. And Mumbai belongs to all Indians.”

Now, in an open letter addressed to the cricketer in the Sena mouthpiece Saamna, Thackeray has slammed Tendulkar for “hurting Marathi sentiments.”

The Indian Express has the full text of Thackeray’s ‘open letter’ translated from Marathi:

Dear Sachin,

You have played like a king on the playground. You have got international fame, lots of money. You have not only become a lakhpati or crorepati but also an abjopati (billionaire). But nobody is complaining about it. Instead, we are proud (of you)! On the playground you are shining with a new glow. But before the Marathi mind could come to terms with your straight drive, you made a statement — “Though I am proud of being a Marathi and a Maharashtrian, I am a Hindustani first” — at a press conference, leaving cricket and venturing into politics. You have said something more: “Mumbai is not the monopoly of anyone. All people of Hindustan have an equal right over Mumbai.”

Sachin, the Marathi mind was shattered after hearing this. Was it necessary to say this when everyone is poised to grab Mumbai? Why did you take this ‘cheeky-single’ while talking about your Marathi pride? Here you are ‘run out’ on the pitch of Marathi Manoos. We don’t understand why only the Marathi Manoos get such epileptic fits? (You don’t know) how Marathi Manoos secured Mumbai, as you were not even born then. Maneater Murderji Morarji Desai had gone on a rampage. This rampage resulted in Marathi Manoos bleeding on the streets. Hundred-and-five Marathi people sacrificed their lives for Mumbai. This Mumbai can’t belong to the father of any parprantiya (people belonging to another region). More:

A year after Mumbai’s 9/11: Rebuilding the Taj Hotel

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on November 16, 2009

in India, Terrorism and Travel

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The Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai

From The Economic Times:

When the 34-member restoration team led by Indian Hotels V-P Sumit Guha set about its task, the obstacles came in many sizes and shapes, even in the form of dry fruits.

In what is left of Wasabi, the once-iconic sushi joint, workers found a bag full of bullets and almonds. The area had to be vacated and NSG was called in. It was the last elusive bag that the terrorists, who devastated India’s commercial capital on November 26, 2008, had left behind.

Guha says the total workforce involved in executing this dream is 1,000. The quest to achieve and even surpass the past glory of the 3,00,000 sq ft area hasn’t lacked either intensity or eye for detail, with the vice-chairman of Indian Hotels, Krishna Kumar, personally going through every little detail, from fabric to fittings.

The focus was threefold, themed suites to bring the hotel’s ballroom back in a classic avatar and make food and beverage the central hubs of the hotel. This made the hotel management sweep through the world’s best hotels with similar positioning, from Hong Kong’s Peninsula Hotel to Singapore’s Raffles, among scores of others to get an understanding of what the focus areas are. More:

[Image: The Taj Mahal Hotel website]

A year after Mumbai’s 9/11: And then they came for the Jews

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on November 1, 2009

in India and Terrorism

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Last November, more than 150 people were killed by terrorists in Mumbai. One target was a centre run by this young Jewish couple, who were murdered and perhaps tortured; miraculously, their toddler son escaped. Alastair Gee went back to Mumbai to find out what really happened that night. From the Sunday Times:

Commandos landing on Nariman House, Mumbai

It is a sticky monsoon day in Mumbai, and Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz walks through the shell of Nariman House. Today, the ruined five-storey structure is testament to the ferocity of the terrorists’ incursion and their battle with Indian commandos. It seems impossible that anyone could have come out alive. All its window frames are empty. The lift is slumped at the bottom of its shaft, and giant, jagged chunks of the internal stairway and handrail are missing. At one point, a section of wall many metres high is gone, and the stairs would be open to the sky if not for a plastic draping. Some rooms appear almost untouched; in others, the walls are pulverised, the splatter-marks of gunfire everywhere.

Berkowitz is an American charged with recreating the Mumbai outpost of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, a Hasidic outreach and educational organisation that sends emissaries around the world. “We are in deep shock,” says Berkowitz, 33. “They have left a gaping hole in our community.” The questions the Lubavitch movement faces are being asked of thousands of other people in the city: what to take from tragedy, how to heal, how to go forward. But even as the organisation looks to the future, uncertainty lingers over what took place during those 48 hours last November. During the siege, six foreigners were murdered inside Nariman House and three Indians were killed on the surrounding streets. Four people from inside the house survived. The building was run by Lubavitch, and was part of a larger attack on hotels and public buildings across Mumbai that resulted in the deaths of at least 166 people. But for the terrorists themselves, Nariman House was different. It was the only Jewish target, and the terrorists would be told by their handlers in Pakistan that the lives of Jews were worth 50 times those of non-Jews. The organisers had sought it out with care. Most Mumbaikars knew of the Taj Mahal hotel. Few were aware of the small Jewish centre tucked away on a backstreet.Strangely, considering Nariman House’s central place in the attacks, the events of the siege are a mystery. The full story of what happened, of how the siege began, of the hostages who escaped, and of the baby who was rescued, has never been told. More:

Raj Thackeray: The nephew also rises

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on October 23, 2009

in India, Indian elections 2009, Leaders and Politics

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In Mint, Niranjan Rajadhyaksha profiles Raj Thackeray, whose fledgeling party Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), a breakaway faction of his uncle’s right wing Shiv Sena, won a dozen seats in the state election.

Mumbai: There are two political events in Mumbai where crowds do not have to be hired and trucked in to create a false show of strength: the death anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar on 6 December and the annual Dusshera rally addressed by Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. These are the two days when loyalists come on their own in packed trains, alight at Dadar railway station and then walk another 15 minutes to reach the Shivaji Park area where the city’s big political rallies are traditionally held.

So old timers in Maharashtrian-dominated area took notice of the fact that this was happening all over again when Raj Thackeray held a political rally. It was an advance warning to other political parties that the leader of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) had struck a chord with his growing band of supporters, even as his divisive political acts threatened Mumbai’s famed cosmopolitan culture and made him the man many love to hate. More:

Eating fish in Mumbai

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on October 5, 2009

in Food, India and Travel

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From the New York Times:

Surmai fry at HIghway Gomantak, Mumbai

Any true Mumbaiker knows not to eat seafood during monsoon season, from June to September. The choppy, churning waters stir up mud and grime, making it hard to find a fresh catch. And the government enforces a seasonal ban to keep the fish population sustainable.

Now that the rains have receded, the city is breaking its collective seafood fast. There are the no-brainer choices you’re likely to find in guidebooks, like the king crab at Trishna or the Goan fish curry at Mahesh Lunch Home. But if you are looking for something off the tourist-beaten path, better to head for a few lesser-known places that serve authentic coastal seafood.

A good spot to start is Highway Gomantak (44/2179, Gandhi Nagar, Bandra East; 91-22-2640-9692; www.highwaygomantak.com), a Goan specialist that’s been around for two decades. There are no napkins, air-conditioning or English spoken, but there is a focus on food. (As at all the other places below, pointing is a perfectly reasonable strategy: most of your fellow diners will be locals, and they’ll know the drill.) More:

Unshakable faith

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on August 23, 2009

in Faith and Terrorism

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The Mumbai terrorist attacks killed two pilgrims from Virginia, but not their companions’ belief that everything, and everyone, is connected. April Witt in the Washington Post:

Naomi bent over the exotic, blood-red flower blossoms that flourished in the ashram garden and breathed in. It was a delicious moment of perfect peace: Naomi Scherr, just 13 years old, her shoulder-length strawberry-hued hair damp from the Indian heat, her face full of wonder at the beauty of a world she was just discovering. It was the afternoon of Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008.

Lingering in a sacred garden on the outskirts of the busy Indian port city of Mumbai was just one more blissful interlude on the 10th day of what had been a joyous spiritual journey for Naomi, her father, Alan Scherr, 58, and 23 fellow pilgrims with an international meditation group based in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Inside the ashram, young monks chanted hauntingly beautiful prayers in Sanskrit for the spiritual tour group from the Synchronicity Foundation. “It was heaven,” recalled Helen Connolly, a yoga teacher from Toronto who was Naomi’s roommate on the trip. Afterward, as their giant tour bus threaded past the tiny motorcycle taxis called tuk-tuks that clog Mumbai’s streets, Helen had the dreamy sense of being inside an orca as it swam through schools of minnows.

Later that evening, in a rented hall in downtown Mumbai, the pilgrims sat meditating with the America guru who had led them to India: Master Charles Cannon. Indian locals wandered in to join them and greet the visiting guru, a trim, quietly charismatic 63-year-old mystic with a down-to-earth manner. Master Charles teaches a holistic view of the universe in which everyone and everything — sunlight and shadow — are one unified consciousness; and in which the events of this world, whatever they may be, are somehow meant to be. As Master Charles brought this night’s session to a close, pilgrims and locals spilled onto the dark streets, still relishing the blissed-out, almost opiated state that some longtime meditation practitioners achieve. Master Charles, however, sensed shadow. As the guru and his followers made their own way back to their five-star hotel, the Oberoi, Master Charles had the incongruous sense that something was about to happen. Be alert, he thought: Ah, it’s very close.

Four days earlier, on the morning of Saturday, Nov. 22, a small boat launched from the Pakistani coastal city of Karachi. Its passengers were 10 young men who had spent months training for this moment. Each carried a large rucksack stocked with Kalashnikov ammunition, two 9mm pistols, hand grenades, an Improvised Explosive Device and a cellphone. The young men, terrorists recruited from across Pakistan, journeyed into the Arabian Sea. They were headed more than 500 nautical miles south — to Mumbai. More:

Zoroastrians launch ‘Facebook for Parsees’

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on August 22, 2009

in Faith, India and Religion

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Rhys Blakely from Mumbai in the Times:

During their brief history, social networking websites have united millions of long-lost school friends and diverted millions of office workers from, well, working.

But can one save a 3,500-year-old religion on the brink of extinction?

Zoroastrianism, whose fire-worshipping followers subscribe to the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster, is possibly the world’s wealthiest and most influential faith, but it faces a crisis. Its bachelors tend to marry late, if at all, while women who marry outside the community are excommunicated. As a result, there are only 120,000 Zoroastrians left, a third of whom are over 60. A dwindling birthrate has raised fears that adherents – known as Parsees in India, the religion’s main stronghold – are dying out.

They hope that the key to survival is a website designed to create a database of its young that will encourage them to intermarry. It is being billed as a kind of “Facebook for Parsees” that will place a heavy emphasis on matrimonial matters. More:

The luxury of solitude

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on August 15, 2009

in India and Travel

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In a Mumbai greenmarket, David Farley hunts for the Indian city’s most precious commodity. From World Hum:

As soon as I closed the door of the cab and told the driver where I wanted to go, an uninvited visitor leaned in my window. “Opium? Weed? Charlie?” he asked. “You like the Charlie?” Before I could open my mouth, my driver barked a few terse sentiments and put his foot on the gas pedal, launching us into the miasma of concrete, steel and perpetual honking that is the Mumbai road system.

“That man,” said my driver. “He’s bad. Don’t buy nothing from him.”

I felt a slight sense of relief. This cab driver and I had known each other for less than a minute, but it seemed he had my back, shielding me from the cacophony of unsolicited sales pitches that I’ve had to endure since arriving in the city.

“First time in India?” he queried, the question I’d already been asked about 17 times in the 36 hours since my plane touched down in this city. Yes, it was my first time. And before he could ask me the predictable sequel, I answered: “I’m not sure what I think of India yet. It’s just so … chaotic.” More:

The audacity of pop

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on June 27, 2009

in Music

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Irena Akbar in the Indian Express:

Michael Jackson was the Barack Obama of pop music. Or perhaps it should be put the other way round, since Michael came long before Obama did on the public scene. On Thursday, as the king of pop passed away, here’s what makes Obama and Michael so similar in more ways than just the fact that they are the world’s most recognisable Black faces.

Like Obama, Michael, an African-American youngster, had White audiences under his spell. His 1982 album Thriller, with 50 million copies sold worldwide, is history’s best-selling album ever. His concerts had Whites attempting to “moon-walk” like him. MTV, which was criticised for playing videos by only white performers, started regularly airing the title video of Thriller.

Soon enough, Michael had cast his magical spell all over the world, just like Obama’s victory was celebrated from New York to New Delhi. As an Indian child growing up in conservative Saudi Arabia in the 1980s -- I still remember Michael’s legendary numbers like Billy Jean and Beat It beaming out of racing sedans on the streets of Jeddah. Blasphemous it may sound, such was my craze for Jackson -as was that of any other kid in the 1980s -- I would play the number in our car when we would drive back to Jeddah after our pilgrimage in Mecca. Not to forget, we would play a videogame whose theme was based on his song, Smooth Criminal. And oh yes, who can forget the Bad poster that adorned many a wall of my friends there. More:

Below, another tribute:

And in Outlook, AR Rahman on Michael Jackson:

I met him personally after the Oscars in Los Angeles and we vibed very well. He said that he loved India and the Indian people. He said he heard good things about me and he was praising the chord progression of Jai Ho’s chorus.

He was bursting with energy and told me that every dance move he did, came from his soul and did a five second stunning example. It was like a lightning strike

He was concerned about developmental issues such as Global Warming and about wars and its damages to the human community.

He asked me to compose a unity anthem on the likes of “We are the World ” for him. I nodded in awe …! More:

Terror at Taj Hotel could have ended first night itself

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on June 4, 2009

in India and Terrorism

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An Indian Express investigation:

The Taj Hotel in Mumbai, November 27, 2008.

Within the first hour of the firing at Café Leopold on 26/11, a small group of armed policemen who pursued the four attackers inside the Taj Mahal Palace and Towers Hotel were presented with 12 golden minutes to restrict, if not eliminate, them as they were holed up inside a room for that duration. Another, much bigger, opportunity came after midnight when the four terrorists took refuge in a second room for nearly two hours and the Mumbai Police had about 120 armed men to take them on.

CCTV footage accessed by The Indian Express shows that on both occasions, the police squandered the chance waiting for commandos to arrive from New Delhi and launch a counter-offensive – a full 12 hours after the attacks began. More:

Raj Thackeray on his politics and policies

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on May 1, 2009

in India, Indian elections 2009 and Politics

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Financial Times interviews the founder of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) or Maharashtra Renaissance Army:

FT: Do you believe there has been too much immigration into Mumbai?

Raj Thackeray: Every city or state has a limited capacity with regards to its ability to provide adequate facilities. The taxpayer is entitled to some essential things. Families should be able to provide their children with playgrounds and find places for them in schools. There should be enough hospitals. Water should be provided to all. Surplus electricity should be available. The taxpayer should be comfortable. Today there is such an influx [of people] that 40,000 live in slums next to the pipeline that provides water to the city of Mumbai. Then there is the issue of terrorism. We do not know who is a terrorist and who is a migrant worker…

FT: You’ve stated that the city lacks the capacity to house an influx of non-Maharastrian people. Should these people be stopped from coming.

Raj Thackeray: You have to stop these people from coming in because we have reached the maximum capacity of the city of Mumbai. We do not have places [for them] to stay. And then these people coming from outside and encroach upon municipal and government lands and set up slums. In today’s Mumbai, can you take your children out safely? Is there a place? Is there an open garden where parents can safely take their children out in the evenings? And then we have this daily influx of families. How will we discover who is a terrorist and who is a normal person? More:

A change won’t come

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on March 27, 2009

in Conflict and India

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Four months after the terror attacks on Mumbai, Naresh Fernandes takes a walk around the city to discover what lessons – if any – have been learnt since 26/11. From The National:

On the wall outside Nariman House, the Jewish centre in the crowded Colaba Market area in southern Mumbai in which a rabbi and his wife were among the hostages killed, the shrapnel indentations have been incorporated into a simple mural. Red circles have been painted around the dozens of bullet pockmarks. Under it a sign in Hindi and English says, “We condemn the 26-11-08 terror attacks.” Next to it is a large Pepsi logo. The building is still empty but on one recent evening children darted down the lane playing catch, scurrying past prams heading to the bakery at the corner.

Down the road at the popular tourist hangout Cafe Leopold, the bullet marks no longer elicit attention. Until it was pointed out to her, a tourist from Argentina who gave her name only as Estephania didn’t even notice that her table was right next to a mirror punctured neatly by a bullet. Farhang Jehani, one of the owners, said that the proprietors had decided against repairing the damage as a reminder of the evening when 10 people, including two members of his staff, fell to a spray of automatic weapon fire. He reopened for business approximately 90 hours later. He didn’t believe that he was being especially brave when he rolled up his shutters. “Life,” he said, “must go on.”

[Photo of Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus by bettadesign; under Creative Commons license]

Banker offers to be Mumbai’s CEO

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on March 26, 2009

in India, Indian elections 2009 and Politics

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From The Indian Express:

Meera H Sanyal, chairperson and country executive, ABN Amro, is on leave till May 15. The reason behind the leave application: she will be “contesting for the most important job” – that of running the country. This Malabar Hill resident will soon be filing nomination papers as an Independent candidate from the Mumbai South Lok Sabha constituency.

After 25 successful years in banking, Sanyal’s move can’t be seen as a mere itch for a career switch. Instead, it’s an alert and bright citizen’s response to the call of making a difference. “Politics was not considered to be a dirty world when India got Independence. The best and brightest minds were in this field,” says the daughter of a Naval officer. “For long, Mumbai has wanted a CEO to take care of its affairs, here is one for them,” she says.

Dido has a slumdog moment too

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on January 28, 2009

in Movies and Music

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Cutting chai, crazy traffic, BEST buses and a woman taxi driver in Mumbai are all part of the video for Dido’s new song, Let’s do the things we normally do from her album Safe Trip Home. The video is directed by Siddharth Sikand, the man behind the Get Gorgeous promos on Channel [V]. Sikand’s brief was simple: he had to interpret home. So, he picked on a woman cab driver (Shahana Goswami) and all life’s drama that she watches unfolding in the back seat of her cab.

The slumdog story

Published

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on January 24, 2009

in Culture, Entertainment and Movies

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How ‘Danny uncle’ and his ‘moral compass’ created the biggest ‘Indian’ blockbuster–and why you should watch it. Sanjukta Sharma in Mint Lounge:

Freida Pinto

Every morning, Jamal spends a few special minutes with himself in the loo. Squatting, chin resting in his palms, he dreams. Sometimes, the seven- or eight-year-old slum boy looks at the dog-eared photograph of Amitabh Bachchan that’s neatly folded and tucked in his pant pocket. The loo is makeshift-precariously perched on a wooden platform, which stands on swampland. His neighbourhood is the Juhu slum-the one we see every time our flight is about to touch down in Mumbai. The slum begins where one side of the runway ends.

At other times, Jamal plays gilli-danda or invites the ire of cops, making them chase him through grimy, narrow lanes to his matchbox tenement home.

And later, after his mother dies in a communal riot, Jamal’s life is endlessly and dangerously charged with adrenalin. He begs at traffic jams, palms pressed flat against car windows. He steals food through the windows of running trains.

Steel amid adversity: Tata after Mumbai

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on December 22, 2008

in Business, Conflict, Economy, India and Terrorism

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Joe Leahy reports from Mumbai in Financial Times:

Ratan Tata was at home in south Mumbai late on November 26 when the call came. On the line was a frantic R.K. Krishna Kumar, head of the Tata group unit that owns the city’s luxury Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel.

The unthinkable had happened, Mr Kumar told the Tata chairman. Terrorists had taken over the Taj, the 105-year-old wedding cake-like structure on Mumbai’s waterfront that was built by Mr Tata’s great-grandfather and is the pride of India’s largest private sector group. Scores had been killed. The building was on fire.

Unable to leave his apartment that evening because of the chaos on the streets, Mr Tata made it to the group’s stately south Mumbai headquarters, Bombay House, the following day. As the country’s politicians engaged in a blame game, Mr Tata was one of the few public figures who seemed to strike the right tone on the attacks. He bluntly criticised the state’s lack of preparedness while expressing grief for those killed.

“This is a very, very unfortunate situation which none of us are going to forget. My message really is that the government and state authorities should also not forget,” he told journalists on the steps of Bombay House.

Mumbai – The things you don’t forget

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on December 22, 2008

in India

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Andrew Buncombe in the Independent:

IT starts when you unpack your bag. You throw your clothes into the laundry basket, unzip your lap-tap, push your shoes under the bed. And then you wonder what else you’ve brought back.

For me, it was a single image that I encountered in the rear of a crematorium, five days after the militants stormed ashore and began their killing spree in Mumbai. Somehow, three weeks later I’ve not been able to shake it.

The occasion was the funeral service for the family of Karambir Singh Kang. Mr Kang had been a general manager at the Taj Mahal hotel, the historic hotel on the seafront which four gunmen had seized. His wife, Niti, and two sons had died from the flames that swept the building, barricaded inside their room on the 6th floor. All the while Mr Kang had worked without sleep to rescue other guests trapped inside the building – even when he learned of them death of his family.

From Mumbai, the story of a stray dog hit by a terrorist’s bullet

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on December 21, 2008

in India

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Emily Wax in the Washington Post:

On a leafy hospital campus in this still-scarred city, one of the victims of last month’s terrorist attacks is making a recovery. He’s a chubby, cream-colored pooch whom workers have named Sheru — the Hindi word meaning Lion Heart.

Sheru was a stray dog hit by an errant bullet when two gunmen opened fire in a crowded railway station during the first night of the assault. The survival of the aging Sheru, despite a gunshot wound to his left shoulder, has become an uplifting and soothing symbol of Mumbai’s recovery to many of the city’s anxious and angry citizens. In a three-day siege beginning Nov. 26, 10 gunmen killed more than 170 people and wounded at least 230. They attacked two luxury hotels, a restaurant, a train station, a Jewish outreach center and other sites.

The beating heart of Mumbai

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on December 21, 2008

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It is the biggest slum in Asia, home to more than a million people. It’s also the setting of Danny Boyle’s vibrant new film. But what’s it really like in Dharavi? Eight boys talk about life as slumdog millionaires. Gethin Chamberlain in the Observor:

dharavi

Amid a narrow warren of side streets close to the mosque that dominates the skyline on the edge of the mega-slum of Dharavi, in the heart of Mumbai, a young boy tilts his head back and stares up at the narrow strip of blue which is all that can be seen of the sky. Rickety warehouses crowd in from all sides, their high sheet-metal walls and overhanging asbestos roofs blocking out the sun, plunging the dirt streets below into a gloomy half-light, though it is nearly midday.

Far, far above, the vapour trail of a plane is breaking up, fraying at the edges and drifting away. Ten-year-old Anwar Khan watches it for a while, thinking about the question he has been asked. Eventually he gives his answer: ‘A pilot,’ he says. ‘I’d like to be a pilot. I’d love to know what it feels like to be in the air. I’ve never been in the air. I want to be closer to the sky.’

Like most of the 1m people who live in Dharavi – Asia’s biggest, and probably its most vibrant, slum – Anwar has never been in a plane; but like many of those crammed into the 535-acre former fishing village, he doesn’t waste time wallowing in self-pity. Anwar is a boy with a plan.

Boozy and raucous, a cafe in Mumbai defies terror

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on December 15, 2008

in Conflict and India

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Mumbai’s Leopold Cafe has become a sort of shrine of defiance against terrorism. Thomas Fuller in the New York Times:

The bullet holes at Leopold Cafe.

Some day, Farhang Jehani might patch up the bullet holes and cover the shrapnel pockmarks. But for now they are the Leopold Cafe’s new décor.

“We are going to let it be,” Mr. Jehani said over the din of his crowded restaurant, where eight people were killed in the Mumbai terrorist attacks last month. “It’s part of history.”

In the two weeks since the attacks, this Mumbai neighborhood of narrow streets shared by street urchins and the well-to-do has staggered back onto its feet. But at the Leopold, it is often standing room only.

The restaurant has become a sort of shrine of defiance against terrorism. That, at least, is how Mr. Jehani portrays it. “I want it to go on the same way, as if nothing has happened,” he said.

The sea and the city

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on December 14, 2008

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They came by the sea. It helplessly allowed the stealth. But its wide expanse is still Mumbai’s quiet corner, where Mumbaikars find friends and lovers and the solace of waves in times of distrust. Shivani Naik in the Sunday Express:

It now seems a bewilderingly large chunk of time and emotion spent on figuring out something very trivial-men. But two years ago, three women sat on Marine Drive staring at the deep sea-waters, contemplating the virtues of shallowness. The sort of depthless behavior, that the trio thought, helped men lead jolly, uncomplicated lives. Not once looking at the other, they spoke at intervals defined by the approaching and receding waves.

So the sea listened, as the girls spoke of their respective brothers, who continued their juvenile fights. Of male-colleagues who became beer-buddies with some of the nastiest creatures they had just met. Of boyfriends, who made them look silly since they never seemed to know why a “Thank you” or “Sorry” was being said the next day (Boys, of course, never said it themselves). Of that best friend, who alternated – without warning – between brooding and chatty, depending upon Liverpool FC’s fortunes in distant EPL, but had moved on to a gossip tidbit about some actress by the time you’d framed a rational sympathetic response to Liverpool’s latest tragedy.

Our friends in Bombay

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on December 9, 2008

in Conflict and India

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Christopher Hitchens on Slate:

It’s in human nature to mention any personal connection when offering solidarity, so I shall just briefly say that on my first visit to India, in 1980, I stayed at the Taj Mahal in Bombay, visited the “Gateway of India” and took a boat to Elephanta Island, toured the magnificent railway station, had my first diwali festival at Juhu beach, and paced the amazing corniche that was still known by some-after its dazzling string of lights-as “Queen Victoria’s necklace.” Wonderful though some of the 19th-century British architecture can be, Bombay is quintessentially an Indian achievement, and an achievement of all its peoples from the Portuguese-speaking Catholic Goans to the Zoroastrian Parsis. (The Jewish disciples of Rabbi Schneerson may be relatively recent arrivals, but there have been Baghdad Jews in Bombay since records were kept, and Jews in India since before Christ, and not until this week has a Jewish place in India been attacked for its own sake, so to speak.)

When Salman Rushdie wrote, in The Moor’s Last Sigh in 1995, that “those who hated India, those who sought to ruin it, would need to ruin Bombay,” he was alluding to the Hindu chauvinists who had tried to exert their own monopoly in the city and who had forcibly renamed it-after a Hindu goddess-Mumbai. We all now collude with this, in the same way that most newspapers and TV stations do the Burmese junta’s work for it by using the fake name Myanmar. (Bombay’s hospital and stock exchange, both targets of terrorists, are still called by their right name by most people, just as Bollywood retains its “B.”)

Google Earth accused of aiding terrorists

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on December 9, 2008

in India and Technology

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Following the terror attacks on Mumbai, an advocate has moved the city’s high court seeking a complete ban on Google Earth and similar sites like Wikimapia in the larger interest of national security. From the Times:

Google Earth image of the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai.

A petition entered at the Bombay High Court alleges that the Google Earth service, “aids terrorists in plotting attacks.” Advocate Amit Karkhanis has urged the court to direct Google to blur images of sensitive areas in the country until the case is decided.

There are indications that the gunmen who stormed Mumbai on November 26, and the people trained them, were technically literate. The group appears to have used complex GPS systems to navigate their way to Mumbai by sea. They communicated by satellite phone, used mobile phones with several different SIM cards, and may have monitored events as the siege unfolded via handheld Blackberry web browsers.

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