Month: April 2014

Bandra’s street art: The writing on the wall

Posted on by sudhagee

Bandra has suddenly become the place to go to for me. Thanks to a combination of work and a friend moving to this area, I have made more trips to Bandra in the last month than in all the 21 years I have lived in Mumbai ! The visits to Bandra have also been more relaxed and I’ve had a great time walking and discovering interesting facets of this beautiful and charming suburb.

Take Bandra’s graffiti or street art for instance. I’ve been aware of them, read about them in newspapers, seen a few in passing, but never really stopped to have a look at them. So, a couple of weeks back, when I came across a series of them painted on the compound wall of St. Peter’s Church on Hill Road, I stopped. I looked. I read. I photographed. And now I’m sharing the best of them with you.

Laadli Girl Child Campaign, Bandra, Street Art, Hill Road, MumbaiAll the images I saw were on the theme of falling sex ratio and gender selection in India and part of a campaign initiated by Population First on the girl child called “Laadli”. According to information given on the campaign’s website, this is “a means of creating mass awareness and raising public conscience against the reprehensible practice of sex selection.” One might wonder, why such a campaign is being run in posh Bandra, in Mumbai even. Till you read what the campaign website has this to say:

The commercial capital of the country – Mumbai, has a sex ratio of 898.

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My “now” song: Kuchh toh log kahenge

Posted on by sudhagee

Do you ever have a song, an idea, a storyline, or an image stuck in your head? And it just refuses to go away? For some time at least? I have this with music — it could be a song, an instrumental piece, a jingle, etc. This becomes my “now’” song, and the “nowness”  (pardon my English here) could be for any length of time.

Last week, I received a call from an old friend. She was quite upset with a common acquaintance of ours for having made some disparaging comments about her on a social media platform. I had seen those comments and also the insecurity that had brought forth such petty comments.

I mentioned as much to my friend and told her to just ignore the comments. She said that she was trying to, but was finding it difficult as she was worried about what others who had read those comments would think. Her exact words were in Hindi: “Log kya kahenge?”

And my reply to her was this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bfQJ6YU5_4

“Kuchh toh log kahenge, logon ka kaam hai kahna
chhodo bekar ki baaton mein, Kahin beet na jaaye raine…”

I haven’t stopped singing this song since then. Not surprisingly, this beautiful song from the film Amar Prem, sung by Kishore Kumar to music composed by R.D. Burman with lyrics by Anand Bakshi has become my “now” song. I find this song very self-affirmative, especially in a world that is so impatient and with people who are so quick to jump to conclusions and judge you.

My friend has put the incident behind her and is feeling better, much better. To be honest, I’m feeling better too. I didn’t know I needed this song as well. 🙂

PS: What is your current “now” song?

Mumbai Lens: Bomonjee’s steps

Posted on by sudhagee

It was the golden hour before sunset a couple of weeks back and I was on a walk with my friend Rama on Mount Mary Road. We were generally chatting about that and this and as we approached the steps that leads one down to Hill Road, I noticed a half-buried stone plaque/marker on one side of the steps. A closer look revealed this:

Bomanjee's Steps, Bandra, Hill Road, Mount Mary Road
The half-buried stone plaque/marker which reads: “Presented by H. Bomonjee Jeejeebhoy to Bandora Municipality ~ 1879”

Wow ! A 135-year old marker? And Bandra as Bandora? I was immediately intrigued and once I reached home turned to my good friend Google for helping me find out more about this slice of history.

And here is what I discovered 🙂

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