Mumbai Lens: The painted tree

Posted on June 28, 2014 by sudhagee

Roadside shrines are a common sight all over India. They can be anything from a tree, to a stone with eyes painted on it, to small stone idols placed under a tree, to a framed picture of a god or a holy man/woman, a cross, a grave of a pir… In my experience, the concentration of such shrines is the highest in cities, and Mumbai is no exception. I am no longer surprised when I come across them in the most unexpected of places; I do, however, get surprised only when I don’t see any.

But today morning, I came across a shrine that surprised me, stopped me in my tracks, made me have a good look, and then come home and write about it. Do let me tell you more about it.

I have been having some work in the Gandhi Market area, near King’s Circle in Mumbai this entire week. Once my work is done, I walk to King’s Circle to take a bus home. It is a short walk and I pass three well-maintained roadside shrines to reach my bus stop. The sharp contrast between the well-maintained and clean shrines and the squalid dwellings of the pavement dwellers who look after the shrines is what I have been noticing day after day.

Today, I noticed something else as well at one of the shrines – I saw that the tree trunk of one of the shrines was painted. And how !

Roadside shrine, Mumbai, Matunga, Ganesha — The painted tree

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My “now” song: Ab ke baras bhej

Posted on June 23, 2014April 25, 2015 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. That particular piece of music becomes my “now’” song, and the “nowness” (pardon my English here) could be for any length of time.

My “now” song is Ab ke baras bhejo bhaiya ko baabul from the film Bandini and sung by Asha Bhosle to music by S.D. Burman and lyrics by Shailendra.

In Ab ke baras… the singer yearns for the return of her childhood days and the song remains one of the most haunting Hindi film melodies to be composed. I have always loved this song, but right now I love it for a different reason — the emotions in the song capture my yearning for the monsoons to arrive in Mumbai.

It’s end June and the monsoons have been delayed for almost a month now. Yes, Mumbai’s had a few showers, but not of the monsoon variety. These showers have only increased the humidity and the heat, while cooling, drenching, traffic clogging, train stopping monsoons are nowhere in sight. I monitor the skies all the time, alert to change in wind pattern. But to no avail. The wisps of clouds floating in the sky mock me as does the bright sunshine.

Though the song makes a passing reference to the rains, and the context is very different, no other music captures my mood right now. And I have been humming it for a while now and also have it playing on a loop when I’m working.

Rain gods, weather gods, gods of climate change: are you listening?

PS: This post is a first of sorts. I typed, edited, corrected, linked, added media, published this post and then shared it on various social media platforms using a Dell Venue Tablet that has been sent to me as part of the “Dell Blogger Review Programme”. I’m not sure, if I can do my usual long posts from a tablet, but this short one has been surprisingly easy.

Knowledge Whiteboard Library

Posted on June 17, 2014 by sudhagee

Ever so often I come across an initiative, an organisation, a person or a group of people, a book, a film, an article, a piece of music… that leaves me feeling enthused. Since it also leaves me wondering why I haven’t heard of it before, I set off on an eager and happy quest to find out more about it. When such an initiative is that of a friend, it leaves me a little shocked. Pleasantly and happily shocked, I must hasten to clarify, as it happened when I heard of the Knowledge Whiteboard Library. Let me elaborate.

It all began with a telephone conversation a couple of months back with Rajshri Mahtani, founder of Knowledge Whiteboard (KW), and also a friend and a former colleague. Somewhere during our conversation Rajshri casually mentioned something about a library at the KW and the growing collection of books. I was intrigued and was left thinking… library? What library? How come I don’t know anything about it?

I decided to visit the KW office, which is located Santacruz in Mumbai and find out more about the library for myself. Sometime last month that is just what I did and sure enough, there was an interesting story waiting for me. 🙂

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Book Review: Sirens Spell Danger

Posted on June 10, 2014June 11, 2014 by sudhagee

Self-published books are not my choice of reading material. In fact, I would prefer not to read them at all as my experience of reading such books has not been a very happy one. I know it sounds like a sweeping statement, not to mention prejudiced, but…

Now consider this scenario. A fellow blogger and a friend, Suresh Chandrasekaran, whose writing I admire and like very much, comes out with a self-published book. This leads to a dilemma or what can even be called a “situation”: I really want to read the book, but the self-published tag is a big deterrent of sorts. While I am mulling over this, Suresh (who I think is aware of my views on self-published books) requests for my feedback on the book. I agree, buy the book, read it and one afternoon over a long FB chat give him feedback on the book. This happened about 6 months back.

Recently, I participated in an excellent discussion on “Self-Published Books” (do click on the link to read more about the discussion) at The Sunday Book Club (TSBC). It was an enlightening discussion and one that spurred me to to convert the feedback I gave Suresh on the book, Sirens Spell Danger, into a full-fledged book review.

Sirens Spell Danger (2013, Amazon eBook) is a collection of three longish short stories edited by Suresh. As the title suggests, all the stories in the book have women or “sirens’ as the pivot.

The sirens are not necessarily the protagonists of the stories; instead, they are characters without whom there would have been no story in the first place.

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A blog anniversary, giveaways and YOU

Posted on June 5, 2014June 20, 2014 by sudhagee

Wow ! I sure didn’t expect so many people to participate in the giveaways. I had thought that I would be doing an “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe” to select a winner. Instead, I put all the eligible participants’ names on a slips of paper and had my mother draw the names of the winners of the Giveaways. And they are: 🙂

Giveaway 1: Sapna (@dreamysap)

Giveaway 2: Poonam (@poonamc)

CONGRATULATIONS, Sapna and Poonam ! Since both of you are on Twitter, please DM your contact details to me 🙂

Earlier this week, this blog of mine celebrated its 4th anniversary. To commemorate the occasion, I decided to have a special and exciting event on the blog, something that has never been attempted before here.

And that something, dear reader, is the First. Ever. Giveaway. on My Favourite Things. Did I say Giveaway? Correction. It should be Giveaways as there are two of them. Details with regard to what they are, how you can participate and win them, and the Terms & Conditions are given below.

GIVEAWAY 1

Giveaway 1 is a bundle of 4 books: The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz; Land of Seven Rivers; A Brief History of India’s Geography by Sanjeev Sanyal; Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair; and Renaissance Art: A Very Short Introduction by Geraldine A. Johnson (see photograph below). The books are not new, but are in excellent condition.

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4 years, 346 posts, 2,65,417 words…

Posted on June 2, 2014February 5, 2021 by sudhagee

…later, a milestone has been crossed. Yes 4th Blogversary , dear reader, the blog celebrates its 4th anniversary today. 🙂

Its time to write that anniversary post, which will be a reflection of the journey undertaken so far and hopes and plans for the future. But first, let me share with you some of the highlights of my 4th year of blogging.

It was a year of travel — Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Aurangabad. While I have finished writing about my visits to the first two states, I still have to write about the latter two.
This was also the year of exploring my city, Mumbai, and writing about it as well. Its art scene, its neighbourhoods, its rich and varied heritage, its public transport, its forts… all found their way into the blog. I think my blog url of “thatandthisinmumbai” has finally lived up to its name. 😀
I started getting invites for blogger events. The first was a FAM trip to Suryagarh, near Jaisalmer; the second to a Google+ event to celebrate World Photography Day; and the third (and most special one) was an invitation to be part of an art trail in Mumbai.
Two new series were introduced on the blog — Photostory and “Neighbourhoods of Mumbai” — and I’m really excited about them. Right now there aren’t many posts in the series yet, but by next year (fingers crossed!) there will be.
One of my earliest posts, Meenakshi’s Lamp, got featured (with slight modifications), in The Deccan Chronicle and The Key Bunch. Similarly, part of my post on Pallankuzhi, a traditional board game, was included in the DKS Learning Centre’s blog.
I finally started a Facebook Page for the blog. If you haven’t ‘liked’ me yet on FB, this is where I humbly fold my hands and request you to do so. I promise I will never spam your TL with inane or too many posts. 🙂

After reading the above highlights, would you believe that I began my 4th year seriously contemplating whether I should continue with or stop blogging altogether.