Bakra Eid And Kota Goat

No sooner the bespectacled Muslim man, accompanied by two others, took his place on the platform with a large goat by the luggage compartment he quickly drew a small Sunday crowd of fellow passengers waiting for the same local train toward V.T.

With Bakra Eid (Eid al-Adha) around the corner it’s common to see goats appear on the streets of Mumbai and adjoining suburbs, munching on feed in front of shops and neighbourhoods before being led to slaughter on Bakra Eid, the Muslim festival of sacrifice. Needless to say the goats have little say in it.

As more people gathered around the goat, the Muslim man betrayed signs of nervousness, repeatedly looking in the direction of the train. There was no sign of it. Gradually he warmed up.

A little boy and a youth accompanied him. Clad in white salvar kurta and skull caps the three stood out in the sea of people crowding the railway platform without the large goat to accentuate their identity further.

“This goat is from Kota,” he said looking at me. “See its ears, they are long.”

He pulled the ears as the goat looked up at him, almost in affection, barely wincing as he pulled its ears at full stretch. They were indeed longer than any you see of local goats. The goat’s ears hung flat and long.

The Kota goat was a mix of black and white, easily over three feet tall standing on its long legs and at ease in the crowd surrounding it. It was majestic in its demeanour, stately in its bearing and cut an admirable figure in the crowd, little aware of the gruesome fate awaiting it at the hands of butchers on the day the Muslim world celebrated the sacrifice of animals as a festival.

“How much did it cost you,” I asked him.

“38,000 rupees,” he replied before adding 2,000 rupees more to the total to account for transportation form Kota in Rajasthan. “Total the Kota goat cost me 40,000 rupees,” he said.

The goats from Kota are raised for dairy and meat. Known as Karoli breed which I believe this goat belonged to, Kota sees large populations of goats on sale for slaughter as Bakra Eid approaches.   

A large goat, a costly goat is a symbol of wealth, a differentiator and a mark of prestige. Nothing less will do for those who can afford them and show them off on Bakra Eid.

Later in the day I came across another goat tied to water pipes on Modi Street in Fort. There was no crowd except for three people who kept a watch over it. The goat faced the wall. It only had a little more than a day to live.

Sidewalk Scribbler

Crawford Market Building (on the right)

We emerged from the subway on D. N. Road and walked past the majestic Times of India building toward Crawford Market.

Victoria Terminus (renamed CST)

If it weren’t for the crowds on the footpath, I’d look for reasons to take this route on leisurely walks about town at every opportunity, for, the old Raj era buildings that rise roadside impose their majesty on the seeming chaos presented by scurrying humanity largely centred around V.T. (Victoria Terminus), disappearing into and emerging from it with the same alacrity as headless chickens except the masses align with a method in the madness of Mumbai, or maybe not.

But the crowds preclude any such thought, most times that is.

The Gothic stone buildings resonate of a city that arose on the back of the vision its builders and planners, primarily the British and the Parsis, and to a lesser extent the others, gave it – one of architectural grandeur and splendour befitting its potential as a great port city, a harbour as much for ships as for the commerce they generate on trade routes Mumbai (Bombay) sits on.

BMC

From old photographs of the city it’s still possible to sense the interplay of Bombay’s Raj era architecture with its then sparsely populated streets, their relative emptiness a perfect foil to the architecture, allowing the majesties in stone impose their royalty onto broad streets, never letting up.

With little or no distractions around, I imagine people at the turn of the last century went about their lives aware of their place in the grandeur around, almost taking it for granted, each making space for the other at the same time each lent the other meaning with their presence.

But things have changed. The peace of the Mumbai of the old has been punctured by the pace of migrant influx largely from the North that’s accelerated over the last decade to the extent that the only peace to be had is if you can fashion a bubble around yourself in the midst of swirling crowds and keep your head down.

Enter the smartphone! A device you can lose yourself in even while all around you are seemingly losing their minds.

Even better, immerse in a book. Many still do on their commute to work though not as much outside of the commute as one might expect, say, in gardens and benches around the city except Mumbai has barely any benches streetside where one can rest awhile and open a book if only to flip pages.

Mumbai is a largely ‘Standing Only’ city to those seeking some respite out on the road.

Sir J. J. School Of Art

And if you cannot afford a smartphone, or books, or a home then the options are even more limited in seeking a bubble to cocoon in except in the one instance I came upon close to three years ago when we walked down the footpath past J.J. School Of Art and Architecture toward Crawford market.

An old Muslim woman sat hunched over a book and a notebook on the pavement, writing in the notebook verses from the other book she balanced on her outstretched leg, oblivious to people walking past her, oblivious to honking cars roadside, oblivious to life itself.

Hair oiled and neatly tied into a pony tail, dressed in an old and worn salvar kameez, she peered through her glasses while copying into her ruled notebook what I can only imagine to be Urdu text possibly from the Koran.

I cannot imagine what else it could be if not the Koran.

Her possessions were stacked by her side on the footpath, carrots strewn to one corner, a water bottle re-purposed to hold some cooking oil, cheap steel plates and cooking utensils.

Her footwear was placed neatly behind her; a rose graced an ankle strap on one. It’s likely she was working on her writing bare-feet out of respect for the Holy Book in her lap.

Everything about her was orderly and dignified. Everything single thing.

This was as unlikely a sight as any I’ve come across among the homeless population I see on my commutes and travels across the city, and for this reason alone I could not help but wonder of the circumstances that conspired to push an obviously educated Muslim woman, likely sans her immediate family, to a lonely, homeless existence on the street at the mercy of the Municipality, and without any obvious way to support her as far as I could tell.

What fate had intervened in her life to turn her onto the streets of Mumbai?

Was the book she was copying from lent to her and so she was making a copy of it for her own use? Or was it the case that she owned the book but was copying it down to practice her writing or maybe to better commit to her memory the content of the book? Or was it a way to keep herself busy and retain her familiarity with the written word?

I had no way of knowing.

As we walked past her and put some distance between us, I turned around for a glance.

She was still bent over her notebook scribbling into it, nary a glance to the bustle around her, a forlorn figure dwarfed by commuters, alone and destitute. She was lost in her bubble however temporary a moment in the likely permanence of her own state.

Around her the British era buildings lent the Mumbai skyline a majesty matched only by the homeless woman bent over a book in quiet concentration, at once contrasting with the teeming multitude of sounds hiding moments of contemplation for passers-by in the moment they noticed her.

Prakash – Light, And Enlightenment

If there’s a definition for a hole-in-the-wall business then you need look no further than Mumbai footpaths. 

While it’s not exactly a hole in the wall where a hand reaches out through an opening in the wall fronting a room at the back, Prakash Light House comes pretty close to it, in more ways than one.

Prakash Light House functions from a footpath some way off Mohammed Ali Road in Mumbai. A small cupboard space knocked back into the building's facade holds drawers and open shelves stacked with boxes of armatures for electrical motors, electrician tools, meters and plug points affixed to cupboard doors that open out onto the street and close behind it.

The armatures stacked in the shelf were a veritable advertisement for various armature brands – DCA, DCK, Electro Power, HID, Topline, Hongyu, Dewalt, and Hitachi among others. If you need any further evidence of the extent of Chinese penetration into Indian manufacturing space, you'll find them on this shelf.    

A short platform, not more than four feet long and barely a foot and half wide, enough to work on electrical motors sent in for repairs, juts out on the footpath. The owner sits facing the shelves, his back to the street, while he works on straightening out electrical appliances.

To a corner of this platform or work-bench, facing the street, sat a seemingly contented cat, keeping the busy owner company. It was an unlikely pair from the looks of it.

If I were to hazard a guess, I’d imagine the cat having driven a fair bargain with the owner to provide him company, rather eyes on the street while he has his back turned to it, in return for a ledge off the crowded footpath. In time I’m sure it came to share his meals as well.

Everything about this small setup seemed perfect, right down to the name of the shop – Prakash Light House.

“Prakash” is Sanskrit for “Light” and is a given name in India to males. Used metaphorically, “Prakash” (Light) is used to indicate ‘enlightenment’, rather ‘source’ of enlightenment.

If ever the shop needed additional emphasis as to the nature of business conducted within, Prakash Light House more than sufficed.

It’s not uncommon to name shops after the owner. If the shop owner sitting at his work bench was Prakash himself then whoever named him after ‘Light’ was prescient to know what awaited the child in the future.

Curious, I asked after the cat’s name and a man sitting on the other end of the workbench, likely the owner of the adjacent footpath-shop, replied, “Kaloo”.

“Kaloo,” I repeated to ensure I’d heard it right because the cat was not black to be called “Kaloo”.

“Actually, its name is Kalidas,” he clarified, implying it’s easier to short-name it to ‘Kaloo’.

“Kalidas as in named after ‘Kalidas’ the famous poet?" I responded.

Both smiled.

“Yes” came the answer, “named after the poet Kalidas.”

I smiled at the thought of Kalidasa, the legendary Sanskrit poet and dramatist from 4^th-5^th Cent. B.C., living on in the soul of a seemingly bored Mumbai cat who couldn't be bothered to fish for food if it could inveigle lodging and boarding from the owner, passing contented purring as poetry.

But who knows. Facts are sometimes stranger than fiction.

And so the last piece fell into place.

‘Prakash’ as ‘Light’ (read shop), and ‘Prakash’ as ‘Enlightenment’ (read ‘The Poet Cat’) covered both bases, and it took a cat to do it.

A Double Act At The Airport

Sometime back I travelled to the Santacruz Airport before A caught his flight out of Mumbai for home after landing the US Visa for his upcoming US trip at the time.

He spoke of the travails of getting the visa and was enthusiastic about his role supporting his team on the US expedition.

We didn’t have much time to catch up before his boarding call. It was good to see him after long.

The snacking area outside Arrivals was crowded with people either awaiting arrivals or accompanying those departing.

Come to think of it, there isn’t much of a conversation to be made when you’re counting down the clock. More often than not, if you’re not compulsively eating then you’re compulsively checking your feeds on smartphones when you're not conversing.

That day however a kitten decided it’d relieve the ‘waiting stress’ by going after the dog’s tail as it made its rounds to tables looking for scraps of food.

The tail acquired life, and life acquired the kitten and those sitting at tables and elsewhere in the vicinity. The dog couldn’t care less. This pair was a team if ever there was one, beguiling snackers with their adorable act. Hustlers no less but eminently welcome.

If there was anyone stressed by the thought of flying that day, it’d be safe to say this double act will've calmed their nerves.

You Came, (Am) Happy

The first contact with a rickshaw on a crowded and noisy Mumbai road, from the time you hail it as it rolls along the road and you get a look at the rickshaw driver trying to catch his eye as he slows down to acknowledge you, sometimes barely appearing to do so as he sizes up your fare worth, lasts little more than a second or two.

But to a commuter seasoned from travelling in and around Mumbai, that second or two spent taking in the face of the rickshaw driver, and his general demeanour will often reveal in surprising clarity the likely result of their attempt to hail it.

Faces say a lot, most times that is.

A couple of years ago when I saw Suresh Pawar’s face I knew he wouldn’t turn me down. And he didn’t. Soon I was to find out why.

~

“The main thing is the customer should feel comfortable,” Suresh Hemji Pawar replied in Marathi, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.

After getting into his rickshaw at Mulund Check Naka I was pleasantly surprised at finding a designer carpet cover the passenger side of the three-wheeler’s floor, a rare sight, my first in over a decade of travelling in auto-rickshaws here in Mumbai and anywhere.

Most rickshaw floors are bare metal except during monsoons when many rickshaw drivers will cover the floor with rubber mat to protect the metal from rains blowing in and from passengers’ stepping into the back of the rickshaw in wet footwear and umbrellas dripping rainwater.

Mumbai’s monsoons and humidity levels can quickly rust metal. In other seasons there’s nothing to cushion your feet from the rumbling metal.

So it was a surprise to see the designer carpet in Suresh Pawar’s rickshaw, the kind you rarely see in homes now, more because they need maintenance and people now are not only more casual in their tastes in general but hard-pressed mentally to expend effort in maintaining anything, likely driven by their soul turning consumerist, celebrating change rather than getting into the mach-mach culture of retain, repair, and reuse.

One indication of lesser demand for such carpets is now I see fewer carpet sellers making rounds of neighbourhoods where I live, used to live, and where I travel to on my jaunts elsewhere.

The design is common to Kashmiri carpets and used to be a rage in the years gone by when households sought to communicate a “rich” ambience about their drawing rooms centred on showcases, with pride of place reserved for the colour TV that beamed two channels if you were lucky.

In homes with windows brightly lighting up living rooms, the heavy carpets came off well, their greys, browns or reds contrasting positively with the light unlike in poorly lighted rooms where they would add to the gloom and dreary, and misery if the owners matched the mood.  

I’d find it hard to sit long in those living rooms. That was then when I was still cheery and bright and lively.  

~

I shifted my feet to take in the designs at the first traffic signal at Teen Haath Naka. The carpet was aged, holes dotted it. But it didn’t matter. What did matter was it sought to lend a living room feel to the tiny back of the rickshaw in the middle of rousing traffic bumping along potholed roads, cushioned by the bolster serving as a shoulder-rest on the side of the rickshaw. Small pleasures.  

While its absence wouldn’t have made travel any less physically difficult than it was, its presence, as with trappings generally, lent the mood a positive spin, maybe comforting even, as Suresh Pawar had intended. Pawar is a surname common to Marathas and Dalits.

Suresh Pawar’s rickshaw bounced gently compared to most rickshaws I’ve been in that rattle until your skeleton reminds you of every bone that makes it whole or one that is missing. The treatment is thorough.

I wasn’t surprised in the least bit that Suresh had ensured the shock absorbers worked well. He looked the upright, no nonsense, methodical sort who had his principles and lived by them, a not uncommon trait I’ve come across in some Marathi-speaking, Maharashtrian rickshaw drivers, a socialist demeanour so to speak.

I gathered courage and rested my back against the backrest, comforted in knowledge that I’d be insulated from the worst jerks on the road. I felt welcomed.

It’s instructive about the state of affairs how a rarity becomes luxury when in fact it should be given.

After all, the first thing you see upon getting into his rickshaw is – आपण आलत आनंद आहे (You came, (am) happy).  आपण (You / yourself) आलत (came) आनंद  (happy/joyous) आहे.

At first I had blindsided आ, the letter common to each of the four words, and tried to make sense of पण लत नंद हे before realising my mistake.

 

 Suresh Pawar had laughed it off, saying, “even when read separately (without आ ) they’ve meaning.”

He had a point. Though our journey came to an end before he could elaborate on the meaning the words had separate from आ, it was apparent if you could see the obvious.

पण “but” लत “addiction” नंद “joyous” (is) – read consecutively reads as “but addiction is joyous” even with a bit of a stretch with 'लत' 

Addiction to what is missing unless it’s to the hospitality as Suresh Pawar made evident with his “The main thing is the customer should feel comfortable.”

While  ननद (Nanad) is more commonly used to reference the husband’s sister, a term restricted for use by the wife, it is also substituted by नंद (Nand) in some regions of India.

I got off to Suresh waving at me as he kicked his rickshaw into gear, with an ‘Anand ‘ look about me the brief encounter had facilitated on a hectic day.

~

Other – 

नंद वंश (Nand Vansh) was a large kingdom in ancient India, dating 5^th – 4^th century BC with Pataliputra as the capital before being overthrown by Chandragupta Maurya. The Nand dynasty came to be known for their military prowess and immense wealth.  

नन्द बाबा (Nand Baba) was the head of a tribe of cowherds (Yadav caste) known as Gopas, and came to be known as the foster-father of Lord Krishna after Krishna’s father Vasudeva took the child Krishna to his brother, Nand, to raise him. 

Hamara Bajaj In Bora Bazaar

Of late it no longer feels like a long walk from Kala Ghoda to V.T since the time we took to winding our way through Bora Bazaar, dodging people and vehicles without taking our eyes off the myriad stationery and other shops and happenings along and on the narrow road that runs straight before exiting a short way off the iconic railway station.

We both revel in the old world charm of the place, from the shops, the people and the wafting conversations. It’s a place that calls to the organic nature of its character, a bazaar that’s more like a neighbourhood than a place of sterile commerce.

It helps if you’re in no hurry to get someplace, a luxury we were fortunate to have early this week, and a relief after the interminable wait for our turn with the token at the bank round the corner.

The little ‘nothings’ along the way make long walks a breeze. This time around it was the unlikely appearance of an old Bajaj scooter with an empty sidecar.

The scooter with the sidecar seemed to appear out of the blue before slowing down to find a way through the busy Bora Bazaar street. 

An old Bajaj scooter with a sidecar is not a common sight anymore though I’ve seen a few of late, so when one made an appearance with an elderly couple in crisp white that set off their presence against the alternating greys of the bazaar, the character of the street reverted ever so slightly to the good old days as I’d imagine the bazaar to be.

The gent astride the scooter kept his eyes on the jumble of the traffic ahead while the lady took in the view about her. The scooter seemed to be family, a comforting presence by the virtue of having served them for a long time, beginning with middle class aspirations for mobility, upward as well as transportation.

It was a Hamara Bajaj moment no less, even if far removed from its origins, and era.

It didn’t take long for the iconic tune to well up in my head as they floated ahead, their demeanour set firmly in the middle-class and family values from an era long gone, when a newly energised middle-class tuned in to Hamara Bajaj on their telly in the eighties.

I tried to imagine their youthful faces from three decades ago, of the moment they were handed over the scooter, their first ride together, the space they made for the third person in the sidecar. I must have smiled at the thought for I caught a worker looking at me with a bemused look on his face unless I imagined the reason behind his seeming bemusement.

We paused to let the scooter pass before catching up with it as it waited to pass a tempo carrier, blocking access to pedestrians seeking to squeeze past them. I didn’t mind in the least.  

Every once in a while, hurdles by way of vehicles jamming the considerable foot traffic are more an opportunity to pause and take in the sights jammed cheek by jowl on either side of the street than an irritant.

This is all the more true if one does not have to catch a train from V.T. which  however most people do as they stream in a single minded march, head high, eyes fixed in the direction of the exit the moment clocks strike six and offices across Fort begin to empty of workers from all over the city and beyond.

Some things haven’t changed even if the Hamara Bajaj era did!

~

I’m writing this to the tune of Aa Chal Ke Tujhe Main LeKe Chalu wafting from the kitchen. “My dad used to sing this,” K tells me as I let the song wash over the Hamara Bajaj one, reaching further back in time to an India of a time long before me.