Coloured Worlds at Cymroza Art Gallery

Bus number 63 operates between Chunabhatti in Kurla and J.M. Mehta Road near Churchgate. The Breach Candy Hospital lies enroute. We could have boarded the bus outside Byculla (West) railway station but chose to hire a taxi instead for Bhulabhai Desai Road, a little under five kilometers from Byculla (W) station. Located in Hormuz Mansion, the Cymroza Art Gallery is across the road from the Breach Candy Hospital bus stop on Bhulabhai Desai road, an up-market address in South Bombay.

We passed Mahalakshmi on the way. Past Heera Panna at Haji Ali circle we turned right. Tirupati Apartments rose to our left at the turn. I kept my eyes peeled out for the seemingly nondescript art gallery tucked away above corner shops on Bhulabhai Desai road, next door to Breach Candy Club and Miami Building on one side, and Battery House and Skyscraper Building on the other. A blue board announces the gallery in white letters. A tree partially obscures the view at an angle. It is easy to miss the gallery if you’re not paying attention or are unaware of the landmarks along the road. Established in 1971, Cymroza Art Gallery is among the city's older galleries.

A short stretch of bustling market largely characterized by residents flocking in the evenings for spicy Chaat and a delectable array of Donuts at the Right Place and Mad Over Donuts respectively lay opposite the gallery.


I remembered this much from an earlier visit to Cymroza when it hosted Mario Miranda’s works. The road is named after Bhulabhai Desai, an erstwhile freedom fighter and an accomplished lawyer active in India’s struggle for independence from British rule.



Designer showrooms, art galleries, exclusive boutiques, and fruit vendors among others line the street. To many their first trip to Bhulabhai Desai road is occasioned by an appointment at the U.S. Consulate General for an American visa. Affluence rests easy on the street and so does style and the stylish in certain pockets. Residents on the street will likely identify more with Bombay than Mumbai.


We were headed to Cymroza Art Gallery for Coloured Worlds, A Photographical exchange between India and Germany, comprising works of photographers Sudharak Olwe and Helena Schatzle.



Helena Schatzle studied visual communication at the University of Kassel for five years, finding her way through India, South-East Asia, Australia and Eastern Europe, her camera keeping her company. Since 2003 her photography has found acceptance with Brand Eins, Spiegal-online, Stern.de, Taz, Sudkurier and Medio.

Sudharak Olwe is the Chief Photographer with the Bombay Times, his works drawing from his travels through India, Bangladesh, Sweden, Portugal Holland, the U.S., and Japan. He has authored Spirited Souls: Winning Women of Mumbai and was honoured by National Geographic with the All Roads Photographers Award for his work on conservancy workers of Mumbai.

I was unsure of what to expect at the exhibition. With photography exhibitions it is usually a hit and miss affair, more likely a miss than a hit. Each time I hope to be rewarded with images on the Indian street that go beyond the predictable. If it has to be predictable then it might at least be a fresh perspective.

Sometimes, to successfully photograph India on the street you’ve to step off it, into the shade for, it is in the shade that Indian streets make sense in the Sun outside. If you’ve seen Raghu Rai’s works you’ll know what I mean. Steve McCurry did it with some success. The American photographer Betsy Karel tried it with her Bombay Jadoo series, scratching the surface, sometimes barely, other times delightfully, seemingly ‘getting it’ before ‘losing it’ in the next frame and so on. She missed out on the shade and that told in her work. Most miss out on the shade in the street, and they’re legion, Indians and foreigners alike.

India’s pulse throbs as much in the street as off it so I was curious to see how Helena Schatzle, a German photographer from Kassel, approached India through her lens. As for Sudharak Olwe, the Bombay-based photographer trawling the streets of Germany with his lens, prying open the German street to a curious eye would present a difficult challenge, probably having less to do with skill and more with the society’s acceptance of candid photography on the street. At least that is a factor.

Aside of events where purpose infuses a picture with dynamics there’s very little I’ve seen of European or American streets in the works of photographers that can pause a breathing moment into taking in an everyday moment, a moment that would interest a native as much as it would an outsider. It’s anybody’s guess if the Western street, with its notions of privacy and the laws governing it, is conducive to candid street photography anymore.

From Sudharak’s images of Germany it quickly became evident that he didn’t even manage to get to the surface let alone scratch it. If these pictures were not hanging in an art gallery they might’ve been mistaken for works of someone who happened to find himself accidentally offloaded on a German street and eager to get off it. I haven’t seen Sudharak’s earlier works so there’s nothing I can compare with.


Helena Schatzle had no such barrier. The Indian street in most parts is welcoming, and vibrant. Where individual space derives from shared space the ownership of a moment is often that which is snapped up in a candid take by a roving eye looking through a viewfinder.


Helena’s India series was only marginally better. In her case she had the opportunities but rarely the eye except maybe for the life her image from Dhobhighat breathed into the quiet hall. It was a riveting moment. The turbaned washerman gazed fixedly while a mound of clothes beckoned his effort at the washing platform while the colour of his turban lit up the grey of his washing block, contrasting strongly with the rigour of his profession. It helped that I once spent a morning with the dhobhis at Dhobhighat.

Her take on fisherwomen on the beach was close behind. And so was the quiet on the river where a boat stilled the waters while a monkey lorded over the moment in a tree on the banks. Beneath the tree an elderly woman was seemingly finding her steps. This was an India moment. The technical quality of this particular picture left a lot to be desired but the essence more than made up for it.

The rest of her works made little impression. An opportunity missed.

Her choice of a featureless market littered to high heaven with rubbish was inexplicable. And so was a garbage dump. There was no coloured world I could possibly relate to in those two and in a few others as well.

Interest the country to the native and you’re through.


Note: Coloured Worlds: A Photographical exchange between India and Germany is organized by Goethe-Institut, Mumbai and is exhibiting at the Cymroza Art Gallery, 4th-17th September, 2009.


Related Links

1. Coloured Worlds: A Photographical Exchange between India and Germany
2. Goethe-Institut, Mumbai
3. Helena Schatzle’s Work

The Doctor is Out

Except on Sundays Dr. K. S. Porwal opens his clinic opposite Digvijay Textile Mills in Lalbaug at ten each morning, leaving for lunch at 1 p.m. before returning to reopen it at six in the evening, continuing until nine in the night before retiring home. Thursday evenings are an exception. He does not return to the clinic. On Sundays it remains closed all day.


His clinic is on the ground floor of an old building in the formerly bustling mill ‘town’ of Lalbaug where Digvijay Textile Mills once employed thousands. In time the mill died, robbing Lalbaug of vitality and most importantly, hope. But once every year Lalbaug comes alive during Ganesh Chaturthi as hundreds of thousands of devotees descend on it over eleven days to offer prayers to Lalbaug cha Raja (The King of Lalbaug), the largest Ganpati around town, actually the largest anywhere. This year the Ganesh Chaturthi festivities in the city kicked off on August 23.

For over seventy years the tradition has survived in Lalbaug. It will survive Lalbaug too now that former mill lands are making way for residential high rises. Lalbaug merits a story of its own, many stories of its own actually. Maybe I’ll return to Lalbaug another time when there’s no music in the air and dancing in the streets.

The queue of devotees come to pay obeisance to Lalbaug cha Raja ran around the corner, past the New Sardar restaurant and Eastern Metal Works, all the way to Byculla station.

We stayed out of the queue. There was much happening on the streets of Lalbaug and I was not about to let my camera rest easy in the confines of the queue for hours on end while it inched along, past the entrance to Digvijay Textile Mills. It was day seven of the Ganesh Chaturthi festival when thousands of households pour into the streets to parade the genial lord on their way to immersing him to the cries of Ganapati Bappa Moraya.

The street was full of people. Trucks stood on standby awaiting families carrying Ganapatis for immersion at Girgaum Chowpatty.



“It is crowded off Dadar so most of us head to the sea at Girgaum,” a man told me in Marathi while the Ganpati he had arrived with was gently hoisted aboard the truck to join other Ganpatis brought by other families heading for immersion. There was much merriment around and much sadness too. In the days that Ganpati graces homes he becomes a part of the family. Imminent separation as per tradition leaves behind many a choking voice.

It began to drizzle. We stepped off the street to shelter on the narrow platform fronting Dr. Porwal’s clinic in an old building. Steps cut into the platform led to the clinic. On either side there was space enough to settle down and watch the world go by. The door was bolted. A well used Navtal lock contrasted starkly against the white of the door. Devotees continued to stream past us. A loudspeaker announced over the festive din, exhorting devotees queuing up for darshan of Lalbaug cha Raja to be beware of pickpockets. Guns holstered, the Police watched over devotees. Every once in a while their wireless sets crackled to life.


A woman passing by stopped in front of the clinic, reached for a piece of paper lodged in the bolt, read it and deposited it back before going her way.

A few minutes later another woman, leading her little daughter, stopped in front of the clinic, reached for the same paper, read it and deposited it back after writing something on the back. We learnt from her that the doctor was probably away at home that day preparing for visarjan (immersion) of Ganpati installed in his house.

After she left, curious, I had a look at the piece of paper that was actually a railway ticket. On the back were scribbled five names of patients who had come looking for the doctor that day.


Later a girl in a colourful orange salwar kameez did likewise, reaching for the paper before leaning over and using the door for support she wrote her name down on the back of the ticket and folding it she wedged it in the space between the lock and the door.

I wondered as to its purpose. Was it to tell the doctor on his return that so many patients had come looking for him? If so why not phone him? Maybe he was not available on the phone. The other possibility was to ensure a queue was in place when the clinic opened the next day. For that to happen all the patients who had written down their names on the back of the railway ticket had to present themselves at the same time when the clinic opened the next day else the list would serve little purpose. Moreover what were the chances of that happening?

Or could it be that if the doctor happened to get to know of the list of patients who came looking for him he might decide to open up earlier assuming someone informed him.

It was apparent that Dr. Porwal’s clinic in Lalbaug was a long time resident on the street, long enough to get to know families well, long enough for families to leave their names on a piece of paper tucked behind the lock.

Sunshine, and Good Times

At a little over ten in the morning two elderly gentlemen dismount their bicycles outside Sunshine Bar in an old locality in Panaji. It is Friday morning. In the warmth of October sunshine they’ve cycled through a narrow road flanked on either side by Portuguese era homes to keep their rendezvous with the King Of Good Times.

Premier Padmini, The Workhorse

Murad Panjwani shifted in his seat and leaned over for a peek at the preview screen in the seconds after I had leaned out of his brand new Japanese model taxi and clicked the overloaded Fiat to our left. I had asked Murad to slow his taxi down as it drew parallel to the black and yellow Fiat cab leaving the Dadar vegetable market on Senapati Bapat Marg with more load than it was ever designed to carry.

However the older taxi drivers who’ve been plying the streets of the city for a decade or two will tell you that if ever there was a taxi made for Mumbai roads then it had to be the Fiat, locally known as the Padmini Premier. Premier Automobiles Limited or PAL as it is better known was owned by the Walchand Hirachand Group, assembling the Fiat’s Fiat 1100 series of cars beginning 1950s after starting out in 1944 with license from Dodge and Plymouth. PAL now no longer manufactures Fiats, their Kurla plant ceasing production in the late 1990s.

“Striking worker unions hastened the end for the PAL’s Kurla plant,” a cab driver once told me.

The 40 hp, 1089 cc engine packed the Premier Padmini with sufficient power on Indian roads, and it came to survive the demands Indian consumers placed on it, least of all ferrying vegetables from wholesale vegetable markets to retailers elsewhere.


While it has all but disappeared from view in private hands elsewhere, excepting for an occasional sighting like the one above, Bombay taxi drivers still prefer the Fiat 1100D over the newer non-Fiat models: Maruti 800, Maruti Omni, Santro, TATA Indica and the like. A new rule promulgated by the Maharashtra Government seeks to get black and yellow cabs over 25 years old off the road. As a result several thousands landed up as scrap in city compounds a few months ago. And more of them are now counting their days. When the last of the black and yellow Fiat 1100D cab is off the road an iconic symbol of Bombay will have passed into history.

However with Fiats aged 25 years and above now off the roads it has helped make spare parts from cannibalized taxis available to those still on the roads. “Engine blocks were hard to come by before and as a result costlier. It is easier to source them now that parts from scrapped Fiats have made their way to city garages. It is the same with these doors,” a taxi driver from Kurla once told me, tapping the sturdy door. “Who makes these now anyway? It’s all over.”



Another taxi driver I hailed outside Dadar said, “Many of us held on to our Fiats waiting to see which way our appeal to the courts for relief from the 25-year rule would go, asking for exemption from the rule those taxis that met traffic safety standards which many, many of them did, and that was our undoing. The courts held fast and when they struck down our appeal thousands of taxis flooded the scrap yard, the prices plummeting. Only a month earlier they fetched more than double at over Rs. 25,000. Now you’ll be lucky if your Fiat fetches Rs. 12,000.”



“These new taxis that we are now forced to buy will not last beyond 2-3 years on Indian roads.” Then he went to say that while the latest models were very comfortable as compared to the Fiats, they are not strong enough to last the 12-14 hour shifts that taxi drivers typically demand of their cabs, come rain, come sunshine.

To a Bombay cabbie his cab is a provider, sometimes a home as well. It is not uncommon to find dashboards decked with garlanded deities, a signature sight in Fiat taxis plying Mumbai roads. If you're lucky the steering will be no less colourful either.



An elderly Sikh cab driver I once rode with to Nana Chowk tapped the door and said, “Look at this metal, it is sturdy. The new ones are all plastic. There’s nothing on the road like the Fiat.”

His taxi had only three months to go on the roads. “Only three months more,” he sighed. And suddenly the traffic signal at Tardeo assumed a new meaning. The Sikh taxi driver was not alone in his emotions.

When Ahmed, an elderly Muslim taxi driver originally from Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh, leaned across the seat of his new Maruti Van, attempting to open the door for me he struggled against the seatbelt holding him back. Irritated he spat, “This is like a noose that I’ve to wear else I’ll have to shell out Rs. 100/- to the traffic cops. This is a curse.”

After a few moments he concedes that his old Fiat was better even if it did not afford him the luxury of space that the Maruti Van does or the comfort that new shock absorbers provide on bumpy city roads in the monsoons.

“The Fiat taxi is a 4-Cylinder car unlike some of these on the roads,” he commented.

Ahmed was none too pleased to give up his Fiat for the Maruti Van that he purchased with a loan of Rs. 200,000 after a down-payment of Rs. 40,000. He was bitter of the Rs. 4,600 bribe he has to pay each year to an official of SIDBI for the duration of the loan in lieu of the official approving his loan application.

SIDBI (Small Industries Development Bank of India) states its mission thus: To empower the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector with a view to contributing to the process of economic growth, employment generation and balanced regional development.

“That’s how it works here,” he said before continuing, “Many of the officials recruited in the Govt. now have no culture or integrity, or shame. They’ve no culture you know, it is not in their blood. They consider their posting an opportunity to skim off public money. What are we to earn after paying off bribes, and loans?”

I remained silent, eyes fixed on the maelstrom of honking vehicles on the road ahead.

I offered him a platitude: The rich will buy their way out of the system while the poor will bear their way out into further misery.

Ahmed nodded. I sneaked a quick glance at him. He was thin and cut a dignified figure in his sparkling white Kurta Pyjamas. Wrinkles creased his face. Cropped short his grey hair lent his years an ‘elderly respect’. He sat erect at the wheel, leaning forward. His oversized watch slipped down his wiry wrists each time he worked the gears.

Now retired his children manage his retail shop “in the neighbourhood” while he plies his Maruti taxi for a few hours each morning. He said, “It keeps me alert and fit. It is important not to slacken too much once you’re through your working years. Slacken, and you’ll find your body quickly giving away.”

It is strange how commiserations shared can make acquaintances out of strangers.

And on the road I find that reflecting on the obvious often helps one cope with the noise outside, sometimes with the noise inside as well.


Related Posts

1. Black, Yellow, and Shades of White

Talacauvery, Stairway to the Heavens

No one told me there was a stairway in the Brahmagiri hills that led up to the heavens, to the gods, well almost.

The most I had imagined of Talacauvery when we left Bhagamandala for the hills was a pilgrim centre not very different from the many dotting the countryside, drawing urgent pilgrim feet into traveling long distances to pay obeisance as much to the deity as to the faith of their forefathers. At Talacauvery the river Cauvery emerges as a perennial spring before strengthening into one of India’s mightiest rivers revered as one of the Sapta Sindhu or seven holy rivers and is considered to be the Ganges of the South.

In the time it took the bus to inch up the winding road in the hills to the birthplace of the Cauvery eight kilometers away, alternating between blind turns cut in the side of the hill and steep drops that descended rapidly to the plains below, my picture of Talacauvery was complete. I had imagined it. Now I only had to retrace my memory map once we arrived at Talacauvery to recognize the familiar contours I had never once seen before except in the urgency of my anticipation of the sojourn in the hills.

The Talacauvery I had imagined while I sat alongside the driver in his cabin, looking out the windshield at the narrow ribbon of a road stretching ahead, lay hidden from easy view in the forests of the Brahmagiri hills. The steep climb up the hill would have ensured not merely her sanctity but the integrity of her surroundings as well, beyond the easy reach of anyone but the most faithful of her devotees, certainly spared of those stopping by to dip their feet in the sacred water while on their way elsewhere. The elsewhere at Talacauvery ended in a steep drop of several hundred metres.


After all the Cauvery had chosen to break surface in the heart of the Western Ghats mountain ranges and it was only fitting that she surfaced to the silence of the jungle, punctuated by calls of birds flitting from branch to branch in the shade of trees where time moves to the whims of the divine and to the necessity of nothing.

However the reality as I was to soon find out on reaching Talacauvery was very different from what I had imagined. Shorn of any green cover we came up against an ostentatious looking arch under construction, presumably a praveshdwar (gateway) the kind I would imagine gracing erstwhile kingdoms with the architecture to carry it off, not the source of a river.


A viewing platform built on the edge of the hill swept over tiled homes below. A road passed houses as it wound its way through the trees. There was no one on the road. In the distance folds upon folds of mountains receded, nudged back by a fair way until the farthest mountains became faint outlines of blue, merging with the sky. Physical perspectives merge into one in the distance, the same cannot be said for those of the mind. I let the nip in the breeze pull my imagination free and sweep it away, toward the mountains.

Joy’s call cut my flight of thoughts short. It was time to pull away from the panorama and turn to the gateway and beyond. Matters of religion and faith beckoned and there was little time to spare.


Beyond the gateway a large open platform stretched all the way to the tank where the Cauvery emerges as a spring. There was little or no shade along the way. Buses ferrying pilgrims were parked at the entrance from where they walked barefoot over the tiled platform warmed by the noon Sun, hardly the bare earth and dense canopies I had imagined. And there were pilgrims everywhere, substituting the birdlife of my imagination. I might as well have stepped into an urban temple let alone one in the hills home to one of India’s major rivers.


A black cow regarded a small coffee shop, completing the picture. Few Indian temples can afford to have cows indifferent to pilgrims and wayside shops serving them. There was much awaiting us.

I looked at my watch. It was past noon as the Sun beat down on us.

“How much longer?” I asked the driver.

“We should be in Talacauvery in fifteen minutes,” he replied without taking his eyes off the road.

I swayed as the driver leaned on the steering, throwing his body behind the wheel as the bus rounded yet another sharp turn up the hill. To my left the hill fell away through dense outgrowth punctuated by a profusion of flowers, some evidently wild, others planted. December is a good time to meander in Coorg. It is pleasant and flowers bloom in abundance, and birdlife is rife with melodies issuing forth from trees in carefree abandon.

As we drove along, breaks in vegetation revealed sloping roofs of Mangalore tiles. Homes were strung out sparsely. Set back from the road and fronted by neat gardens with arched gates layered in colourful blooms it was easy to miss the houses in the vegetation. Where constructed on slopes the red tiled roofs dropped away from view to be replaced by others as if in a slideshow. Gates sported names uncommon to a visiting eye; some led to homes, others to coffee plantations. Coorg is home to the Robusta and Arabica strains of coffee. In the distance the Brahmagiri mountain ranges rose from the earth in mellow folds of blue, watercolours on canvas. For the ride alone the road connecting Madikeri to Talacauvery is an indulgence.


Located in the Brahmagiri hill, 1,356 metres above sea level, Talacauvery (Talakaveri) lies 8 kms. from Bhagamandala and 48 kms. from Madikeri, the capital of Kodagu (Coorg). Pilgrims travelling to Talacauvery usually stop at Bhagamandala for a dip in the sacred confluence of the Cauvery, Kannike, and the Sujyoti before continuing up the hill to Talacauvery where the Cauvery springs from the earth only to disappear underground before surfacing again at Nagatirtha near Bhagamandala, upstream of the Triveni Sangam where she meets with the Kannike and Sujyoti before gaining strength on her mighty run through Karnataka and Tamilnadu, eventually meeting the Bay of Bengal at Poompuhar, having traversed close to 800 kms. along her entire length.


On the first day of the Hindu month of Makara Masa, in the middle of October, devotees in their thousands throng Talacauvery for a glimpse of the annual surge in the spring as the Cauvery rises in the Brahmakundike (holy pond) at a pre-determined moment. The day is known as Tula Sankramana and is celebrated with much fanfare as the day the Cauvery first took birth on earth, seeing in the surge a visit by Goddess Cauvery herself. The Kodavas, native to Kodagu (Coorg), observe Tula Sankramana as the first day of the Kodava calendar year.


A board indicating the Brahmakundike (holy pond) to be the birthplace of the river Cauvery exhorts devotees with “Don’t touch the holy water”. However pilgrims can bathe in the tank adjacent to the holy pond. A family of three takes a merry dip in the temple tank while a man collects the sacred water in used plastic water bottles to carry home.



Nandi, the faithful bull looks over the tank at the small temple dedicated to Lord Agastheeswara across the tank. Pilgrims loll on the steps descending to the water, awaiting the queue on the other side of the tank to thin before making their way to the small temple, to offer their prayers at the Brahmakundike. Some wade in the tank for a quick dip. A few others pace the stone steps, taking in the scene, thinking of nothing in particular. They are in no hurry. Gods are rarely fathomed by hurrying feet.



The temple to Lord Agastheeswara faces the brahmakundike (holy pond) where the Cauvery springs from the earth in a small square cut in stone between the shrine and the tank beyond and is located on the platform enclosing the temple tank.


Flowers from rituals performed float in the holy pond, tiptoeing to reflections of clouds above, and those of the brahmin priest and pilgrims seated on either side of the brahmakundike, offering prayers to the sacred spring.



Lord Agastheeswara is considered to be the link between the renowned Sage Agasthya and the river Cauvery. There two Brahmin priests attend to devotees offering their prayers at the Ugama Sthana (birth place) of the Cauvery, handing the devotees prasadam after helping them through the rituals. The pilgrims seat in front of the brahmakundike while the priest chants mantras. I queue up to offer my prayers.


Behind me schoolgirls in uniforms crowd the temple tank, their bare feet shifting uneasily on the Sun baked stone platform as they gaze intently into the tank watching bathing pilgrims.



Behind us the Brahmagiri peak beckoned. The long flight of steps burning a pale shade of white in the noon sunshine seemingly ascended to the skies, ending abruptly as if a ladder were suspended from an invisible thread trailing from the blue heavens above. I could sense the sharp edge to the air refreshing my lungs as I took mouthfuls in. We ascended the steps to the peak where the seven great sages known as the Sapta Maharishis once performed a yagna to the gods, pausing only to admire the tenacious flowers that bloomed in breaks between the stone steps.



In anticipation of the views to be had from atop the Brahmagiri peak the 500-odd steps gave way quickly as we passed wildflowers spouting on the slopes. The flowers ran diagonal to our ascent as if running away from the pilgrims making up the steps. Ruffled by the sharp breeze sweeping down the slope they nudged us onwards, to the peak while themselves disappearing over the curve.

Emerging from the last step the heavens opened up before us in a panorama befitting the gods. The Brahmagiri range in the Western Ghats mountain ranges straddles the border between Kodagu in Karnataka to the north and Wayanad in Kerala to the south.



Visitors took in the views in silence. A child played in the mud while the father reached into his bag for his camera. This was a moment the child would cherish in the years to come. This was where nature roamed in spirit.


The peak rolled all the way down before it was picked up by the next hill only to descend again, then lifted up by the next peak it fell over gently until the next hill picked it up again before running with it to yet another peak further away. I stood in silence and watched this relay race until the wave disappeared into strengthening shades of blue in the far distance. The blue mountains. I wondered if the Nilgiris were far away. From atop the Brahmagiri I could sense them in the blue folds in the distance, bringing memories from another time flooding back, from a long time ago.

Water Woes

I opened the newspaper today to news that water supply to the city might be restricted to every alternate day unless the south-west monsoons drop their load on the streets soon. The Met department would like us to believe that it may not rain as much this time around. I cannot be sure though.

Last week saw one heavy burst that brought parts of the city to a standstill before weakening to interspersing showers in between, nothing to bring the city to a halt, a sign that is taken to mean that water woes could be at our doorsteps.

It prompted a north-Indian tea stall owner where I had sheltered from the rains to remark, “Ab tho sab ka dimag thanda hoga.” (Now – that rains have arrived – minds will be at ease). This was last week.

The newspapers announced the coming of the rains to Bombay in large bold letters, a far cry from the months leading up to the monsoons.

“Cannot understand what is happening with our climate,” the taxi driver had reflected as we drove past a water supply truck backing up on a turn on a summer day.


“These days it is difficult to predict anything at all with the world,” he said while we waited, watching as a man directed the truck driver in negotiating the bend.

As March rolls in and temperatures begin to nudge upwards, sightings of trucks supplying water to neighbourhoods across the city are a common sight, more so in the mornings. March and April are crucial months in the city as water sources supplying much needed succour to the city deplete.


In late-April parts of the city, more so the ‘blue collar’ neighbouhoods packed tightly in narrow lanes, see acute water shortages. Bombay is no more a classless city than say Islamic countries are multi-religious. It is common to see high rises separated from ordinary tenements by only a lane, both sitting comfortably and laying an equal claim to the lane.

Supplying water is big business. On the arrival of a water truck the cry goes out in the chawls and in no time men and women, often in their night dresses stream out of their homes and queue up at the truck. All manner of utensils and buckets are employed in collecting water as the din pierces the early morning calm. Office-goers step past the din, observant but oblivious to it.


Children thrill in the morning activity that sees residents from the tenements gather at the water supply truck and exchange small talk, swapping stories while they await their turn at the tap.

Over time the morning ritual becomes an inedible part of their lives, like it once did my own in the rural hinterlands of India I traveled to in my vacations from school.

The Painted Day

Kala Ghoda, Bombay. 2009.

When life throws a palette of colours your way
Step away from the wind.
For, if it is too strong as it will likely be,
The colours will quickly blur into one.
And where you could have painted your day brightly
It will now shiver in the bleakness of none!

The Palmist

Mumbai, 2009


The future you trace in the sands of time,
Will tempt the waves into washing over it.
Instead, let the ocean embrace you,
And I will show you how to ride the waves of life itself.

The Masjid-e-Ala in Srirangapatna

I could’ve passed by the open door oblivious to its significance if not for the two towering minarets that rose from behind the high walls along a path hewn from the earth not far from where the Bangalore Gate of Tipu Sultan’s fort in Srirangapatna lay.


From the street the door parted on young children in kurta pajamas, mostly white, and skull caps moving about the open courtyard fronting a covered veranda where low wooden reading platforms and copies of the Koran (Quran) lay in two neat rows on a worn mattress covering the stone floor. A game of cricket was underway in the open courtyard, the students taking a short break from studying the Koran. As the game progressed there was much merriment around, the enclosed space ringing urgently with anxious cries as the bowlers hurled the tennis ball at the batsmen with fielders alert to any catches coming their way .


,
Across the courtyard, opposite the covered veranda, small rooms made up the inside of the outer wall along its entire length, on all sides. I learnt later that the teaching staff stayed there and so did some of the students. Two water taps lay to one side, adjacent to several tombs discoloured by the elements over the years. Two young pupils were quenching their thirst at the tap while a third one looked on, patiently awaiting his turn at the tap.

Middle aged men with trimmed black beards and clad in the same attire as their students were engaged in a game of cricket with their young wards. I saw more smiling faces in the square there than in the time since we arrived in Mysore from Bangalore the previous day.


The Masjid-e-Ala is also known as the Jama Masjid. A tutor, breaking away from the game of cricket with his students, told me that Tipu Sultan used to pray here during his reign. On his ascension to the throne following the death of his father, Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan built the Masjid-e-Ala in 1784 and is said to have performed the first Imamath himself.


Topped by domes the double-storied, octagonal minarets look over the countryside and the river Cauvery nudging the ramparts a short distance away. The two minarets rise from a high platform and can be reached by a flight of steps said to number two hundred. Pigeon holes open into the sides of the minarets all the way to the top. The platform houses a large prayer hall to the west.

The Masjid-e-Ala was our last stop before heading to the bus-stand at Srirangapatna for the return journey to Mysore city.


I circled the high platform enclosed by verandas and staying quarters across the open passage that ran around the platform.



A large water tank with a row of over eight water taps at knee level and a low seating of cement and bricks fronting each tap lay to one side of the passage circling the main structure. There, nudged by excited cries of the young Muslim students delighting in the fall of the wicket of a fellow student, I paused for a moment to relate the joviality within the high walls to the tumultuous night of May 4, 1799 in the fourth Anglo-Mysore War when Tipu Sultan fell to the advancing British troops led by Captain David Baird, the man the Sultan had imprisoned for four years in Colonel Bailey’s dungeon after the battle of Pollilur in 1780 before releasing him in 1784.

Fate had other ideas for the Sultan as Captain David Baird’s men breached the fortress on the banks of the Cauvery and came marching in only to be met by the Sultan himself. A violent struggle followed before Tipu Sultan fell not far from where I now stood in the masjid’s courtyard watching an innocuous game of cricket.

On our way to the Masjid-e-Ala we had passed the spot where Tipu Sultan made his last stand on May 4, 1799, rather where his body was found once the skirmish was over.

We had started our day by first visiting the Gumbaz where Tipu Sultan is laid to rest alongside his parents, Hyder Ali and Fatima Begum, in an imposing structure well known for its ivory inlaid doors, pillars, and carved stone windows, before heading to the Daria Daulat Bagh that Tipu Sultan built in 1784 to serve as his summer palace and where a museum now showcases the reign of the Sultan in its many details. Murals, paintings, pencil sketches, coins, medals, and arms among other things bring alive the period in its actual setting.

As the Sun traced its path higher with each passing minute it beat down fiercer, helped in no small measure from the fever I was running, and soon enough as if on que a rickshaw materialized and we got into it for a tour of the remaining sites of historical interest within the fortifications of Srirangapatna, namely Colonel Bailey’s dungeon, the square where Tipu Sultan was killed, Tipu’s palace site, the Masjid-e-Ala, and the Ranganathaswamy Temple.


There was no one around as we emerged from the rickshaw, gravitating to the plaque that said simply, ‘The Body of Tipu Sultan Was Found Here’. Enclosed by low walls the plaque stands in the middle of a square, marking the spot where he fell. The square is empty except for the lone plaque as if in its isolation it seeks to remind one of the moment when isolated from the men he led into battle the Sultan fell alone.

To the north the square is lined by coconut palms along the banks of the Cauvery. It is easy to let the swaying fronds lull one into meandering aimlessly at the spot where India’s history took yet another decisive turn, strengthening the British further and paving the way for their conquest and colonisation of India.