Tiger Tourism In Corbett Tiger Reserve, Uttarakhand

Tiger Sighting in Dhikala, Corbett Tiger Reserve (C.T.R.)

Jim Corbett, a legendary hunter of man-eating tigers before turning conservationist and bestselling author, was born today, 137 years ago.

And today, newspapers reported front page, and analysed in inside pages, the order the Supreme Court passed yesterday imposing a complete ban on tourism activities in the core areas of India’s Tiger Reserves. The order was in response to Ajay Dubey’s petition seeking a court ruling directing States to notify buffer and peripheral areas in Tiger Reserves under the Wildlife (Protection) Act to prevent tourism in the core areas.

I cannot say for sure what Jim Corbett would’ve made of the Supreme Court ruling on the eve of his birth anniversary but I’ve little doubt that he would applauded the Bench of Justices Swatanter Kumar and Ibrahim Kalifullah for passing the judgement if he believed it would give tigers the much needed space from humans increasingly breathing down its neck.

Personally I feel it’s the perfect birthday gift to Jim Corbett even if the timing of the Supreme Court order was a coincidence, for it was in the Corbett Tiger Reserve (C.T.R) on a recent visit that I truly understood firsthand the pressure Tiger Tourism is subjecting its most famous and celebrated mascot to.

~

In the time it took Mahesh to drive us from the Dhangarhi Gate to Dhikala along the northern boundary of the Corbett National Park, a distance of over 18 kms., much of it rambling along the Ramganga river that flows through the Patli Dun valley while flanked by dense forests of Sal, Khair, and Shisum, Mahesh had little doubt in his mind that we, Philip and I, were not his typical ‘Tiger Tourists’.

“Because both of you are equally interested in all wildlife forms and not just in tigers, you will be blessed with its sighting more than the other tourists,” he announced.

“I’m sure you’ll see tigers because you’re not chasing it,” he said more than once before continuing, “Most of them (visitors to Corbett National Park) are least interested in anything but tigers. They care for little else. It’s always Tiger, Tiger, Tiger. Tiger dhikao. Tiger dhikao. Tiger kahan hai?”

Mahesh had made little attempt to hide his contempt for his ‘typical tiger tourists’. It was a strange situation for, as a driver working for a safari tour operator based out of Ramnagar, he earned his living from conducting tiger safaris for tourists, most of who apparently cared for little else other than tiger sightings while pressing safari drivers like him into chasing the tiger through jungle trails.

Invariably, a failure to see a tiger meant the visit translated into a trip gone down the drain for the ‘Tiger Tourist’, with the blame for not 'showing' them a tiger laid at the feet of the driver.   

Mahesh was no doubt helped with his perception of the both of us by the length of time it had taken us to cover the distance of over 18 kms., easily double of the time the rest of the visitors took that summer day on their way to Dhikala for a night halt at the Forest Rest Houses.

We had meandered along, pausing each time Philip saw a bird or heard a movement in the undergrowth or when I happened upon flowers, trees, or the many Sots, seasonal streams emptying into the Ramganga, along the way. It mattered little that the Sots had run dry, exposing boulders that glinted in the Sun while contrasting starkly with the blue skies overhead. It was a sight to behold.

We were no doubt helped in our plodding along at snail’s pace by the presence of a Forest Guide whom we had met at the Dhangari Gate when I entered the small office to present our permit issued for our stay at Dhikala, a possession worth its weight in gold and probably sought as fiercely as the holy grail.

After checking if our permit was in order, the official asked me if we could accommodate a Forest Guide and his colleague, a cook at the canteen the Govt. ran at its Dhikala camp and where we would dine later that night, on our ride to Dhikala.

“They need to report for duty at Dhikala,” he said. The duo had been waiting at the entrance gate for a ride. We could not refuse though for a moment I squirmed at the idea of a crowded jeep not affording the views we hoped to take in on our roll through the jungle. Earlier we had passed up an opportunity to join up with a group just so we could pace our own journey through the jungle, unencumbered by another's priorities and interests.

Corbett National Park is not a destination those from the west of India visit everyday, nor every year. This was my first visit to the Corbett Tiger Reserve. Philip had visited once before, 12 years ago.  

Skies threatened overhead. A light drizzle was beginning to turn into a steady downpour by the time the duo joined us. Mahesh got off to draw the tarpaulin cover back, affording us some protection from the rain. But it blocked our view. The five of us now stuck to our respective corners as we bumped along. 

Mahesh had a difficult time rolling up the tarpaulin top the moment rains receded only to draw it back once the rains returned. Eventually the rains went away and to everyone's relief we had the sky for a roof. I thrilled in the jungle air that brought fragrances floating by.

Along the way, the more the guide answered questions we put to him, the more we fell behind on the afternoon tiger safari scheduled from the Dhikala base camp.

While the Dhangarhi gate, the entry to Dhikala zone, is open to permit holders through the day, certain core areas in each of Corbett National Park’s five Zones (Dhikala, Bijrani, Jhirna, and Northern Zone) officially open at 3:00 pm in the afternoon and typically close between 6:00 and 7:00 pm in the evening. In the morning, they open at 5:45 am and close at 11:00 am. (However visitor timings can vary at each of the zones.)

The rest of the permit holders had sped past us to make the 3:00 pm opening count, and were probably on their way about Dhikala after unloading their luggage in their rooms while we, more Philip than I, debated the finer points of Greyheaded Woodpeckers and Starlings among other avian species along the way, including the Grey-headed Fish Eagle we sought in the skies from the spotting platform constructed at High Bank on the southern bank of the Ramganga shortly after we had passed Jamun Sot.

As we headed back to the jeep from the spotting platform, Mahesh said again, “You’ll surely see tigers now.” He was convinced. And I hoped he was right.

It was as if each bird or sound we stopped to explore was a further vindication in his eyes of our status as "true" wildlife enthusiasts, and in his mind it was only fair that the tiger blesses us with its august presence. I could see he was willing it to happen and would likely take it personally were the tiger to give us a slip under his watch. This, after Philip had let slip that while we'd absolutely love to make a tiger sighting, we wouldn't have returned empty handed from the jungle if we didn't get lucky with the striped cat. There's so much else to see in the Corbett National Park.   

Faced with an abundance of birdlife, the tiger, more so in Philip’s case than mine, had gradually receded to the periphery of our anticipation since the moment we had driven through the Dhangari gate at half past two in the afternoon, eventually reaching the Dhikala Tourist Complex around 5:00 pm. We were the last to report in.

But it was not until the next morning that I truly understood the sentiment behind Mahesh’s perception of Tiger Tourism and ‘Tiger Tourists’, and the intensity behind his repeating it.

It took a tiger sighting to reveal the circus that bedded down. A circus to beat all other.

The tiger sighting itself was a matter of chance just as most tiger sightings are.

Starting early at three quarters past five in the morning, after exploring much of the waking hour along several jungle trails, we had eventually driven through Dhikala Chaur, a stirring expanse of man-made grassland in the backdrop of the ethereal Kanda ridge to the north.

Deer abounded every which way we turned our head. In the gathering Sun the last of the elephants were retreating to the shade of trees ringing the open grassland to the south as we turned back from the waters of the Ramganga backed up from the Kalagarh dam downstream.

After reluctantly tearing away from the trail that had revealed successive herds of elephants the evening before, Mahesh turned off the ignition as we neared our forest campsite on our way past it before leaping off the open-top Maruti jeep and sprinting in the direction of the camp entrance to relieve his upset stomach.

If it wasn’t for his upset stomach we would’ve missed seeing the tiger as it made its way inland from the Ramganga river, padding through shoulder high grass in the measured, deliberate way that cats walk.

Watching the tiger approach I hoped it would not deviate for, if it kept its line I was certain that it would, in less than five minutes, appear on the motor trail less than 100 metres ahead of where Mahesh had decided he could no longer hold his stomach back. Fortunately, in his urgency he had forgotten to take the key along.

In the event of the tiger charging, unlikely as it was, it helps to have a key in the ignition and someone to steer it quickly away.

In Mahesh’s absence, Pappu, the guide who was accompanying us, gunned the engine to life and prepared to fly down the track, oblivious to Philip roaring over the revving engine, “What’re you doing, what’re you doing, don’t go close, don’t.” Philip was beyond angry at the thought that in racing to meet the tiger, the overenthusiastic guide would scare it away. Worse still he might interfere with the tiger’s morning duties whatever they might be. We would soon find out.

Just then I saw Mahesh returning through an opening in the solar fencing ringing the campsite. He wasn’t done with adjusting his pants and was drawing the zip up when I frantically motioned him to hurry up just as Pappu set the jeep in motion.

Mahesh instinctively knew what was up. He broke into a sprint still clutching his pants and just when I thought he would not make it to the jeep, for Pappu had picked up speed, Mahesh managed to fling himself halfway in, his legs trailing behind before we dragged him in, all this to the sound of Philip increasingly frustrated with Pappu for attempting to speed up to meet the tiger.

“Don’t. Don’t. What’re you doing, man,” Philip entreated before bellowing harshly, “Don’t go close.” Meanwhile, Pappu, his instincts honed over time by Tiger Tourists goading him to get ever closer to a tiger, struggled to act against the grain, eventually brought the jeep to a halt, likely alarmed by Philip's vehemence that we get no closer to the tiger than we already had. The distance would be bridged by binoculars. I had lost my field glasses by then though I wouldn't learn of it until it was time to leave Dhikala later that morning, thinking I had left it behind at our quarters.

“We could’ve gotten a little more closer,” Pappu said, more perplexed at being made to keep distance from the tiger than unhappy.

Just then the tiger appeared from the grass and momentarily hit the trail ahead of us before crossing to the other side, slipping into more shoulder high grass. It was on a hunt. Of that I was sure.

There was no one on the trail besides another jeep load who were making for the trail from the grassland. They had seen the tiger make the diagonal and were speeding to where we had come to a stop. 

Our guide was quickly on his phone, dialling a fellow guide with directions to our location. 

"We just spotted the tiger near the tree in which a leopard was seen with its prey recently while a tiger waited under the tree for the leopard and its kill. Remember the spot? Come soon," Pappu said in his cell phone. 

In all probability he was returning a favour for, tiger safaris count on tiger sightings to please their clients, each safari driver quickly notifying the others of a tiger sighting.

I could see that Mahesh was not happy with Pappu giving away our location. I soon saw why.

Within minutes, safari jeeps with ‘Tiger Tourists’ were converging on us from all directions, clouds of dust trailing in their wake as they sped up the trail. All it takes is one phone call to one tiger safari driver for all safari drivers to learn of the sighting. 

On any given day, each zone in the Corbett National Park sees upward of 25 jeep safaris in each of the two sessions - morning and afternoon. 

The word about 'Ol Stripey soon got around as forest guides worked their cell phones informing their colleagues, on duty in other jeeps ferrying tourists around the forest reserve, and no sooner I turned my head after trailing the tiger in the grass to my left, a succession of jeeps had roared to a stop behind our own.

"They should disable mobile connectivity in tiger reserves," Mahesh volunteered as the safari circus came to town.

"Before, it used to be good, no mobile connectivity in this area," Mahesh continued. "There was no way to communicate a tiger sighting unless you crossed someone on your way after a sighting. Those who made the tiger sighting could enjoy the experience in peace. There was no jockeying for positions like this," he said, pointing to the safari jeeps arrayed in every which direction, attempting to get as close as was humanly possible without straying off the trail, a strict no-no. But it didn't stop one impatient safari driver from leaving the trail to make a U-turn. He was set upon by the others - "You'll create trouble for the rest of us."

In front of me, an equally long line of jeeps that had come roaring down the path in clouds of dust crowded the jungle trail and effectively cut off the tiger's path in the event it were necessary to use the trail as it stalked its prey, deer, in shoulder high grass.

Crouching, it went still in the grass, gazing steadily ahead in the direction of a break along a treeline to the south where several deer stood alert. If not for the fact we had sighted the tiger and were trailing it through binoculars, it could just as easily have been lost in the grass to passing tourists. 

Soon elephant safaris, the mahouts too carry mobile phones, crashed through the jungle, literally on the back of the tiger while 'Tiger Tourists' atop swayed in their mounts. I counted two elephants hot on the trail of the tiger. I was told more elephants would join them. And sure enough they did.

"Those mahouts will not give up, they'll chase the tiger through the jungle now," Mahesh commented. The mahouts would no doubt be egged on by the 'Tiger Tourists' atop their elephants. 

Watching the scene unfold an empty feeling settled about me. I had read of similar experiences but no reading will ever communicate the gravity of Tiger Tourism to quite the same extent and intensity as experiencing it firsthand will.

Knowing something as a fact is very different from knowing it from experience.

While the racket did not seem to bother the tiger much, at least on the face of it though I cannot be certain, the commotion however made the prey it was stalking, extremely fidgety. The elephants, and the jeeps had cut off its access. The lot of us had managed to blow the tiger's cover and effectively ruined its hunt. I've no doubt about it. None at all.

However, the tourists, including Philip and I, did not miss their breakfast. It was waiting for us as we trooped back to the Forest Rest House for a wash before filing into the canteen for a steaming menu of South Indian and North Indian choices served with generous toppings of excited chatter of the morning's tiger sighting.

Of New Delhi, Public Garden, Drinking Water, And Gapodi Aunty

Out on the road, after a time, it’s not so much your own experiences that shape your journeys, as those of others you meet. Every once in a while I intend to take a backseat and let fellow travellers, those I know personally and those I don’t, paint their encounters here.

If you were to meet Delhites returning to New Delhi after a sojourn in Mumbai, like I do on the occasions I board the Rajdhani or August Kranti from Mumbai Central for New Delhi, it’s inevitable that you’ll be treated to more than a robust comparison between the two Metros, with New Delhi ‘trumping’ Bombay in all aspects, real and imagined.

It’s unlikely they’ll address you directly for that would be rude even for a ‘normal’ Delhite of the mooh phat variety, instead they’ll make certain their conversation is not lost on you, turning to throw a sideways glance every now and then to ascertain that you are indeed tuned in to their litany of woes about your city. And god forbid if they were to detect you squirming; rest assured they’ll raise the intensity by a notch. Given a chance they’d rub oil into a stone. If you can place Meetii Churi in a comparable context, you’ll probably understand what I’m driving at.

But I must admit that I quite relish the thread they play out. If anything it shortens the journey even if not the distance.

High up in their list, and mind you the list is long, as long as the faces Delhites will pull to get their point across, is the grouse that Mumbai lacks public parks. I’m more than prepared to concede this point. While Mumbai does boast of public parks or gardens as many would refer them, it lacks them in the numbers Delhi totes up.

But that’s not the point I’m trying to make. Even if Mumbai were to match New Delhi in the size and number of public parks, I’ve no reason to believe it can ever match New Delhi for the sheer colour of characters one is likely to encounter in the capital city’s green spaces, characters colourful enough to find a place in the park’s flower beds, blooming through lean seasons.

And it were two such characters that Sweetie encountered in the course of burning calories in a small neighbourhood park in South Delhi that makes walking in Delhi’s green spaces simultaneously a chore and a delight even if only briefly – one was invisible in the sense his presence was revealed by his association with the garden, and the other, a not inconsiderable Punjabi aunty whose witty repartees lightened Sweetie’s strides weary from pounding the walking paths.

While I haven’t seen the neighbourhood park myself, the narration (in italics) and the pictures Sweetie mailed me left me with little doubt that this small patch of green is a labour of love sustained over the years.

In poring over the pictures, it soon became evident that while the patch of land probably belonged to the Government, there was little else to indicate it had suffered silently in the shade of indifference, and lacking in inspiration, as is wont to be with public amenities managed by Government agencies. This was probably the work of an individual driven to express himself in the service of his community.

While turning over public parks to neighbourhood societies is not new, it’s nevertheless a revelation to step into a public park and be greeted by an Albert Einstein quote on a water cooler set up for the public:

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

Translated into Hindi so his thought reaches park visitors of all stations in life, the quote sounded even better,

Kewal Vah Jeevan Kaam Ka Hai, Jisey Doosroh Ke Liye
 Jiya Jaey.

Whoever put up the quote was either inspired by it and volunteered their service to others with the park, or discovered it after being converted to the cause of service to the people. I do not know which of the two was true with Mr. N. P. Thareja when he set up a charitable trust – Human Care Charitable Trust – with like minded people and set out to transform the public park into one the community would pivot around.

I was told that Mr. Thareja, a Punjabi, retired as Assistant General Manager with State Bank Of India, is also a practitioner of Palmistry and Astrology, both practices associated more with Brahmins than with enterprising Punjabis who one would expect to say: Believe in the ability of your hands than in the lines that mark them, before setting out to make time count its weight in the money it earns them. Nevertheless there must be something powerfully redeeming in a vocation that seeks to read destinies etched in palms to orient one in the direction of service to fellow humans. And it might not be difficult to fathom why. But that’s a story I’ll leave for another time.

In Delhi, and probably in much of India, more so in the north of India, do-gooders come in various forms. There’re those who’ll anoint themselves your subhchintak and offer you their opinion, nee advice, on everything ranging from how to deal with neighbours’ pesky dogs to neighbours who’re dogs, from how to put your daughter-in-law’s mother in her place to why your son-in-law needs to wear better shirts to stop looking like a unwashed rag.

Then there’re those subhchintaks, the kind Delhi must necessarily pride in for, these do-gooders will put their money (and sometimes muscle) to use in playing the good Samaritan to their neighbourhood, either as the President of the Resident Welfare Society, a post that’s rarely earned on a platter, or like the elderly Mr. Thareja, who formed a trust and took over the maintenance of the garden in this story, turning it into a place of recreation and inspiration, starting with Albert Einstein’s quote prominently displayed over a water dispenser to quench Delhi’s thirst.

All manner of people, mostly the poor and those who cannot afford cold drinking water, step into the garden and drink from the water dispenser. Many fill their water bottles with chilled water and carry them back to their homes. It’s a luxury that’s difficult to come by in Delhi’s summers when the Sun burns hot and taps run dry.

They (those who run the park – Human Care Charitable Trust founded by N.P. Thareja) do not compromise on the quality of water just because most of those who use it are the poor. The water is treated by two Aquaguard water purifiers, and together with the water cooler cost the Trust two lakhs to set up.

This year, Delhi has been short of water in the summer. Like Ramlila, water shortage visits New Delhi each year, on the dot. And each year, Delhites’ nightmares are relived as they scramble for motorised water tankers. It’s a time the enterprising water carriers will push hand driven water carts into neighbourhood colonies selling water at a rupee per litre, the business lasting so long as the tap runs dry.

Everyone is affected by the water shortage, some struggle to meet their own needs for water while some struggle to meet others’ needs. And along Delhi’s streets it’s not uncommon to find rows of earthen water pots and tumblers arranged by charitable souls for passers-by to drink from.   

Water. The most elemental of the elements. A force of reason, a force for reason.

In the moment one drinks water, quietude settles about one, lending the moment open for contemplation and aimless gazing as one gulps down the soothing liquid. It’s a moment no one hurries with if they can help it. It’s a moment receptive to philosophy, to matters beyond the immediate.

It’s likely that N.P. Thareja sensed it to be the moment to reinforce the spiritual element lurking, even if in varying degrees, within each human being for, adjoining Albert Einstein’s quote, two Indian sayings in Devanagari script graced the second of the four sides of the towering water cooler.

Dard Dil Ke Wastey Paida Kiya Insaan Ko

Warna Ta-aat Ke Liye Kuch Kum Na Thay Karu Bayan.

And,

Maang Le Jo Mangna Ho, Parwardigar Se Akbar

Yeh Waha Dhar Hai Jahan Jhukney Se Aabru Nahi Jati.

~

Sweetie added: Mostly elderly Punjabi women come to the park to exercise, atleast that’s the intention but I suspect they’re here more for the company of others their age. No sooner they step into the park in trim walking shoes they look out for familiar faces, and before they break a hint of sweat on their foreheads, the open space fronting Chintan Sthal turns into an impromptu adda with the women settled in plastic chairs arranged in a circle, exchanging news and gossip while sharing prasad from their morning visits to Hindu Temples and Sikh Gurudwaras as appropriate to their beliefs.

Motee, motee auntiyan chahey walk karey ya na karey par joothey unkey sab jadataar Adidas ya Reebok ya Nike se kam nahi hothey. Tumharey Bambai ke tarah nahi, jahan auratein Paragon hawai chappal pahankey walk kartee hai.

I dodge the barb and duck but smile away.

Robust laughter accompanying spirited banter among the women gathered by the Chintan Sthal belies the profound nature of its name, Chintan Sthal – a place for quiet contemplation. On the face of it there’s nothing quiet, and little contemplation if any. However it makes up with much camaraderie.

The Chintan Sthal is used by the same Trust that runs the garden to provide basic medical care free of cost to the needy, a service also availed by elderly people from the neighbourhood who step into the park with aches and pains common to their age. I’m told a Physiotherapist is available two days a week to treat just these pains.

While companionship beckons, the jamun tree in the park, more so in the Delhi summer when it fruits and colours the park’s walking path, indigo, is too tempting a sight for walkers to turn their backs on. Regular walkers slow down as they approach the jamun tree and pick up stray jamuns lying on the ground while others walk into the park for the fruit.

Aside from regular walkers, it’s common to see among others, security guards, the gardener, and stray passers-by who include, maids, drivers and cleaners servicing nearby residential neighbourhoods, take a detour through the park for the jamuns in the summer.   

They carry back handfuls of jamuns, much of which to savour on their way back home or elsewhere.

It’s easy to spot the jamun tree. Just watch out for people hunched over, scouring the ground. They’re looking for jamuns. It was here Sweetie met the woman who left her smiling. 

The elderly aunty I met in the park was carrying a walking stick to support her after undergoing a knee surgery. She was a sprightly woman with twinkling eyes that said from a distance: Gapodi aunty – embrace or steer clear of depending upon how much time you’ve on your hands.

Bending over to pick jamuns was out of question, but it wasn’t enough to deter her from wanting to sample them.

She stopped a passer-by and requested him pick jamuns shed by the tree. The man acquiesced and began to pick the jamuns off the ground.

I paused to click pictures of the unfolding scene, and the kindly man spread his palm filled with jamuns he had picked up for the elderly woman so I could photograph them.

As I was about to continue past them, the woman, not content with the jamuns handed over to her which she washed with water from a small plastic bottle she said she carries for this very purpose, stopped me with a twinkle in her eye and said:        

“Meri bhi jamun khatey huey photo khich ley.”

I was more than happy to make her day.

After I photographed her, she was curious to see the picture. On seeing her picture, a smile spread on her face and she couldn’t resist quipping:

“Arrey beta, kya lal surak lag rahee hun,

Mere aagey toh solaah saal ki ladki bhi fail hai.

Kal Agarwalji ke yahan raat ke khaney pe gayi thi,

Toh merey hee photo sab khich rahey thay.”

I couldn’t help smiling through the remainder of my walk.

The next day I kept a lookout for the aunty each time I passed the jamun tree, only passing her briefly enough to catch her shouting out advice to another woman:

“Arrey, uski bahu ko bol ki apni jethaani se yeh jagda salatwaley.”

I couldn’t stop chuckling on my way out.

It helps to have unbending knees, for I believe it can sometimes make for an unbending spirit, for life, and maybe beyond.

While trees and plants constitute a garden, it takes spirited souls to breathe life into them.

And I can sense the unsaid coming fast at me: “It’s here that Delhi scores over Mumbai.”

Amen.

Glossary

Mooh Phat: Blunt-speak, often designed to pinch the other person by way of a taunt.

Meetii Churi: Term used to denote a person who’ll sweet talk you while hiding a dagger.

Subhchintak: Do-gooder, someone who purports to have your best interests at heart.

Gapodi: Talkative.
Meri bhi jamun khatey huey photo khich ley: Photograph me eating jamuns too.
Arrey, uski bahu ko bol ki apni jethaani se yeh jagda salatwaley: Hey, tell her daughter-in-law to resolve her conflict with her elder sister-in-law. 

Arrey beta, kya lal surak lag rahee hun,

Mere aagey toh solaa saal ki ladki bhi fail hai.

Kal Agarwalji ke yahan raat ke khaney pe gayi thi,

Toh merey hee photo sab khich rahey thay.

Oh girl, how rosy my cheeks are,

Even a sixteen year old girl will fade in comparison.

Yesterday, I was at Agarwalji’s place for dinner,

And everyone was photographing only me.

(Implying she was the centre of attraction there for her looks.)

     

Bonding Roadside In Kolkata

Kolkata’s Madan Street is a busy street, located at an angle from Chittaranjan Avenue and sheltered by old buildings. On this street I saw more shops dealing in Transistor Radios, repairs and sale of new and old radios, than all the radio shops put together in my time on the streets elsewhere. I did not hear any radio playing though, unless I lost it in the sound of the bustling street.

In the shade of Subid Ali Mansion, shops, roadside hawkers, rickshaw pullers, and daily wage labourers throng the street in a maelstrom of activity, in time developing an easy familiarity from seeing one another day after day, year after year.

While contesting common space for survival on the street is a reality, occasionally spilling over into scarcely disguised hostility, it’s not uncommon for bonds to develop among those working the same street in similar or different capacities. Bonds that make them look out for each other.

Through the working day, in brief respites from hauling loads or other exertions, these bonds are renewed in brief encounters roadside where a shared beedi or jovial banter reinforces their sense of belonging to what is in essence an extended family, the ties occasioned for no better reason than that they live and work together on the same street.

On A String And A Prayer

Kites have a mind of their own, and it takes much convincing to make them do your bidding. But that did not stop this young boy from trying to coax his kite into latching onto the breeze on Uttarayan.

It appeared all of Ahmedabad had taken to terraces in their neighbourhoods to find out if the sky was truly the limit. In their thousands, kites of every colour imaginable floated away into the blue expanse on the cusp of the twilight hour, deft hands either egging them on to ride the breeze or manoeuvring to keep them afloat once they latched on to invisible gusts.

The Lightness Of Being

An elderly couple soaks in the bustle on the ghats off the Ganges, keeping the three lamps company on a quiet evening in Varanasi. Soon the sun will dip behind the shrines amid ringing of temple bells and they'll return home while the river will nudge the lamps gently away before steering them along on its long journey through time.

In ancient India, divinity rode on rivers, dispersing light and lightness of being.

And, There Was Light

Sabarmati, Gujarat.

Here, Kasturba Gandhi lived.

A Swan In The Hills

Sattal, Uttarakhand. 

Project Cinema City At NGMA, Mumbai

  

Bombay has grime, grit, spit, shit, and runs to the writ of the Marathi Manoos brigade. And at one time the city had the Brit lording over. The Brit is gone, but chose not to take the grime, grit, spit, and shit along to some museum in the isle to display alongside what many say are loot gathered in the time it took to ensure the Sun never sets on the British Empire.

But it’s another matter, a story for another time that someone, and it’s said it was a Sri Lankan, responded with, “That's because God does not trust the British in the dark.”

But on the Saturday before last there was light, there was dark even if in unequal measure, and a museum to display them both, a museum I rarely tire of visiting irrespective of whether the art on display enthuses me or not. 

In these two shades that’re central to the cinema Bombay produced, until now that is, artists, people I no longer know how to distinguish outside of their ‘work’ expect from their stereotypes, came together to create Project Cinema City in the National Gallery Of Modern Art, or NGMA, the acronym it’s better known by.

Bombay as Cinema City is a cliché even though it being a cliché does not constrain or limit the artist determined to find a ‘new’ way to express the city’s association with cinema, Indian cinema.

Bombay is about Hindi Cinema. Hindi is Indian Cinema if visibility is the factor to consider. So Bombay is Indian Cinema. I can sense a few faces cringe at my attempt to equate A with C just because A = B, and B = C. It’s too simplistic.

But then, at its best Hindi Cinema has been about A = C in its plots where the protagonist is rarely the cause and reason for the ending, instead the city, i.e. Bombay, its character, its characterisation as a metaphor for life’s struggles, it’s own genesis drawn as a parallel for rags to riches stories, holding up its capacity to level playing fields as backdrop to create drama and play it out in a mix of sentimentality, morality, viciousness, sacrifice is often the catalyst for moral and ethical dilemmas the script confronts the characters with before turning into a plot deconstructed in steps by twists and turns.

If you were looking to see the twists and turns articulated in the air conditioned environs of the NGMA, expecting each floor you ascended to reveal the next level of drama as opposed to a mere turn, before turning into a full fledged climax, you would be in for a disappointment.

Instead what the artists put together at the NGMA on the saturday before last, and it should not come as a surprise because among NGMA’s stated aims is to function as “a repository of the cultural ethos of the country and showcase the changing art forms through the passage of the last hundred and fifty years starting from about 1857 in the field of Visual and Plastic arts.”

And Project Cinema City: Research Art & Documentary Practices, a Majilis initiative with KRVIA in collaboration with NGMA and the Ministry Of Culture, Govt. Of India, is described as a set of enquiries into the labour, imagination, desire, access, spaces, locations, iconisation, materiality, languages, migrant peoples, viewing conventions, and hidden processes that create the cinemas the city makes, and also the cities its cinema produces. The enquiries are then processed into productions of text, film, art, cartography. The multi-disciplinary research work, produced output and all the residuals together form a cinema city archive that is transient and open-ended – to facilitate further readings, more works.

Elaborating further in the context of the city, Bombay/Mumbai, it reads

This show, a part of Project Cinema City, focuses on the cinema of the city of Bombay/Mumbai: its production processes and ancillary cultures; its stations of reception and recognition that run through a complex set of networks; the bazaars and streets of the city that hawk the footprints of cinema; and the city-zens’ memory of the contemporary that revolves around cinema.

The problem I find with creative descriptions is it engenders a certain sensory expectation from the viewer compatible with their own take on cinema that derives its metaphors and more from the city (Bombay) they negotiate on a daily basis; in order to survive, continually adapting to its very vicissitudes the city’s cinema includes as elements in its telling of stories.

A city resident, in part, lives the portrayal of the city in its cinema.

Juxtaposed with their own impressions of cinema through the years, the reading of the description Project Cinema City put out will have constructed a very different expectation of presentation to the one they eventually got to see at the NGMA yesterday. Not that any of it was entirely off the mark, far from it it forced the viewer to make associations with their own residual remembrances of city’s character that’s changed from the one the city’s cinema painted over the years.

And 100 years of Indian Cinema as this project seeks to commemorate is too wide a timeline to capture metaphorically. To compound it, the use of visual imagery as a driver to cement portrayals of the city of Mumbai and the cinema it engendered meant there’s gaps to fill where the city’s landscape has changed, where its excesses have changed direction, where its ethos has shown a marked change with the going of its original keepers.

It’s in these gaps in remembrances the viewer, at least those like yours truly, expected Project Cinema City to step in and fill it for them.

They tried but more as a construction of elements abstracted at sensory levels the viewer steps around and off the street on their way about Mumbai. The installations were not the metaphors they could be but were instead representations in another form. It was here the viewer was challenged, irrespective of whether it was a good thing in this context, into relating to the exhibits. It was an interesting way to represent to say the least. Creative, certainly.

This was evident on the third floor, Phantasmagoria aka Chamatkar, where Anant Joshi’s settlement of moving wooden objects, painted with industrial paint and radium stickers sought to replicate the imagination of the city of dizzying speed and escalating desire in an installation of moving wooden objects that are shaped in the form of firecrackers and painted/printed in the idiom of matchbox labels.

The objects also resemble threaded spindles, the base for production in the textile industry – the erstwhile nerve centre of the city. The high speed of movement makes the objects ephemeral and yet desirable, much like matinee idols who are often referred to as patakas – firecrackers.    

The objects spun at high speeds drawing passing attention though not quite communicating their intent, at least not in the way Bombayites see their spinning city. They could identify with the speed even if not with the spindle.

Desire, when spun, turns into a blur. Its shades merge, shedding nuances, and acquiring invisibility. In this city of Mumbai, invisibility is a state of being.

If you’re about Mumbai and wish to see life twirling madly before being whisked away, you only need to step into the nearest suburban railway station at rush hour.

It’s on those platforms that the spinning objects of Anant Joshi’s creation would find their closest context, a realistic scenario, one that’s easily identifiable, and more importantly, relatable.

While the artists at the NGMA sought to gather Mumbai suburban railway stations into the ambit of their vision for Cinema City, they did it differently.

Instead of associating with the installation of painted spinning objects on third floor that simultaneously sought to project a city of dizzying speed and threaded spindles of erstwhile city mills, its workers travelling to and fro from shifts by suburban train lines, the paintings of Fourteen Stations by Atul Dodiya, rendered in oil, acrylic with marble dust and crackle medium on canvas and displayed on the second floor of the NGMA gallery, depicted suburban railway station signboards painted with portraits of popular Bollywood villains!

I struggled to make the connection in light of the connection that could’ve been made.

By itself, Atul Dodiya’s depiction juxtaposing a Bollywood villain with station signboards on the Central Line was an association too tenuous to make sense in the context of the expectation Project Cinema City generated with respect to the city’s lifeline (suburban rail network) integrated into many a memorable Bollywood plot.

Mumbai’s railway stations have figured in high drama ranging from chases, escapes, romances, and runaways to captures, and happy endings, all in the thronging milieu of the spinning objects.

It was time to move on to other exhibits. The Calendar Project on the ground floor and continued on the first floor.      

Even before K and I stepped into the NGMA on its opening night of Project Cinema City, it was the Calendar Project I was looking forward to. Space reserved in the spacious ground floor setting, intriguingly designated Gallery Temporal, hosted portions of the Calendar Project alongside Table Of Miscellany and Bioscope.  

It doesn’t take much persuasion to become a fan of bollywood posters of yore and no show on Indian Cinema is deemed complete without those posters that’ve gone on to acquire iconic status though it must be said while I expected Bollywood to figure in the calendars on display, reminiscent of old Bollywood posters, the displays turned out to be different.

I had expected a re-run of the below imagery from Bacchan's time, old hindi film posters that etched the grit, the grime, the intensity in strokes of colour driven by an unseen hand, the artist a mere intermediary unleashing the complex reality the script sought to project.

No one who saw those posters outside cinema halls in the years gone by could realistically resist queuing up at the ticket counters. In those posters is an era gone by that compulsively draws people into wanting to experience it yet again, one more time.

I was no different. Except the calendars on display, retro all the same, displayed iconography (as is the fancy categorisation given by those who only make sense of things if slotted in mechanical contexts) and had little or no relation to the posters I thought I’d be seeing displayed.

Calendars displayed on the walls drew attention of a disproportionate number of visitors. Everyone grew up with them back then. Now, almost no one does. The pamphlet note The Calendar Project thus:

A collaborative project to re-negotiate the process of iconization of contemporary images in the public domain through the 20^th century. The works are mostly based on found images or on earlier works of the artists themselves, which are then hybridized with contemporary readings and speculations on the public and the popular.

The inconspicuous-looking individual works gain temporality and attain a special kind of exuberance when collated and placed together.

Then there was the Bioscope.

Created by Kausik Mukhopadhay with Amruta Sakalkar, the Bioscope was projected as A game of Cinema – City – Modernity Timeline, and described as below:

Snippets of information, gossip, lore and tales swivel around the cityscape and images of urban icons. The game is to create a tangible narrative by arranging appropriate series of data through an interactive device.

I stepped up to each of its six view ports and partook of the city in its imagery.

Adjacent to the Bioscope, on the Table Of Miscellany, a Collaborative compilation of photographs, texts, maps installed by Shikha Pandey and Paroma Sadhana, vied for attention of visitors drawn moth-like to the calendars displayed on the wall across the floor.

But those who did stop by the Table of Miscellany attempted to absorb the assertion of the artists thus: Books that are not written, magazines that are fossilized, maps that are constantly being altered, texts that are fluid, photos that capture the ephemeral – all collated within a structure that is a library-cum-laboratory look-alike. The monochromatic formality of the structure and the fleeting characteristics of the objects represent the inherent frictions in the proclamation of archiving the contemporary.

Men, and women in frocks and skirts sat at the Table of Miscellany, elbows resting on the table-top, sifting through the miscellany.

Of the First Floor exhibits, collectively titled with the intriguing WWW@FF, the series Return of the Phantom Lady or Sinful City, a Photo-Romance by the artist Pushpamala narrated the second adventure of the Phantom Lady or Kismet (1996-98), a black-and-white thriller shot in the film noir style.

This time the Phantom Lady gets caught in a dark web of murder, intrigue and foul play in contemporary Mumbai. While rescuing an orphaned schoolgirl, she encounters the land mafia and their land-grab operations that unfold through the sites.

While there were no known faces to fit into frames on display, each frame capturing a key moment in a Bollywood plot, it was the setting and the farce encountered in the exaggerated imagery that drove home the recurring theme in Bollywood dramas, among the ones set in the Cinema City – Mumbai.

The context of a land-grab in the Phantom Lady sequence was eminently relatable by many struggling to hold on to their piece of land (in the sky or otherwise) in Mumbai.     

Visitors flocked in the open spaces fronting exhibits, talking, catching up. Soon NGMA galleries from ground up, through its floors – first, second, third, and the Dome, turned into an occasion for a quick tête-à-tête.

Dressed for the evening, attire ranging from the casual ‘take-it-or-leave-it-this-is-me’ to formals, it was time to renew associations, catch up from where some had left off the evening before at another place at another occasion, the crowd, prominently South Mumbai or so it seemed had responded in sufficient numbers to the call of the Cinema City.

Staircases hummed to life, in contrast to the quiet from earlier shows at the NGMA I’ve made my way to over the years. It was a welcome change. And this is how Mumbai should respond to its artists I thought. But no two occasions engender their representation in art equally, and no two artists are equally endowed with creativity people can relate to.   

Among faces that floated around from exhibit to exhibit, many seemed familiar.  Had I seen them on Page 3 supplements? I wasn’t sure. Had I seen them on T.V.? Maybe. Had I seen them in T.V. Serials? Probably.

Of Sushmita Mukherjee, the loquacious Kitty of the 1980s T.V. show Karamchand, I was certain of. I passed her on my way down from the Dome.

Clad in a saree and clutching a purse she waited on the landing for visitors to file down before taking the stairs up to the Dome where Museum Shop of Fetish Objects (drawings and sculptures by Shreyas Karle), The Western Suburb (Video installation on Sweatshops of Cinema with 13 monitors and a projection on acrylic sheets), Of Panorama: A Riding Exercise (Video animation and interactive installation), and Cinema City Lived (Map  of the city made of a network of PVC pipes with graphics, models, objects and moving images.

The 360 degree view of the Dome is among my favourite galleries in the NGMA. It’s impossible for any art displayed in the Dome to slip up.

Under the aegis of How Films Are Prepared: Remembering Phalke, the Dome, among other exhibits, had on display The Museum Shop of Fetish Objects - A speculative museum of cinema at the time of post-cinema.       

On display were various fetishes foregrounded by Bollywood – the human anatomy, garments, props, home décor, spoken words – are made into sculptural objects cast in brass, copper and aluminium. These objects, along with sketches, scribbles, diaries and found images are displayed in a museum-like setting.

And who can forget the bandook of Bollywood, two-fingered or single-fingered, the iconic symbol that dispatches karma to do its dharma in Bollywood plots is best remembered by Hands’ Up.

You are Under Arrest is peripheral given that few arrests if any take place until the climax is well and truly done if not underway. That’s the reality a cine goer will tell you, adding for your benefit, “Even in real life, as opposed to reel life, cops arrive on the scene after all is over.”

The label read: This simple movement of both the palms establishes a deep relation between Mumbai’s goons and Cinema. The object underlines the power of mundane actions establishing their universality as a constant ‘k’. The k, or the constant here is the city’s viewer who has been witness to the on screen and off screen/drama. Made in brass the object carries an external natural shine, which glorifies the two occupations mentioned above.

And the Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isahi needs no further enumeration, certainly not in the context of Bollwood themes.

I wonder if Amar, Akbar, Anthony will be remade into Amar, Akbar, Arvinder, Anthony. Anything is possible in these days of script drought in Bollywood. Moreover it might not be a bad idea after all.

Across from the ‘museum’ exhibits was Cinema City Lived (Map of the city made from a network of PVC pipes with graphics, models, objects and moving images).

Conceptualised by Rohan Shivkumar and Apurva Parikh, with structure and objects constructed by Apurva Talpade, Elizabeth Mathew and Shivani Shedde, with Waterfront Image provided by Apoorva Iyengar and Chetan Kulkarni, the description of the installation (in darkness) read:

A compilation of the marks of cinema on the body of the city. The pipeline network is conceived as the stitching pattern that holds the map of the cinema city together – tracing production units, shooting studios, exhibition theatres, locations of desires and utility and their interfaces.

At regular intervals, the viewing ports carved in the PVC pipes glowed, drawing curious visitors into stepping gingerly among pipes laid out for a dekho.

If the artists actually managed to locate the viewing ports (and the exhibits viewed through them) at their exact locations on the map of Mumbai city as represented by the network of PVC pipes then I’ve no qualms in clapping my approval for their creative representation.

My only concern was if visitors, after having negotiated successive floors of exhibits, would’ve tired of the theme to retain their enthusiasm until the moment they ascended the stairs to emerge as if from a trap door on the best stage of all, the Dome.

I hoped they could for, if as I said earlier, the network of PVC pipes with its view ports glowing with elements central, and integral, to producing a Bollywood film in Mumbai, were accurately represented by location of the PVC map, the installation deserved applause.

Curious visitors stepped gingerly among the glowing pipes the same colour as the setting, dark, before bending down or stretching up as the requirement be to peer into the viewing port for a glimpse of the marks of cinema on the body of the city, the same ‘body’ each visitor to the Project Cinema City at the NGMA negotiated to visit the exhibition, the same ‘body’ they continue to negotiate on a daily basis to survive the city, their circumstances, sometimes ending up in darkened theatres to escape all of it for the three hours or thereabouts.   

The refreshments hosted on the small terrace was crowded out by visitors stepping through the exit for a quick bite before sauntering back to continue with their exertions from floor to floor. Among other offerings I was surprised to find Appam figuring in the menu.

The night outside the NGMA Gallery hummed to life while the distinctive building itself glowed ethereally.

Note: Project Cinema City was in commemoration of 100 years of Indian Cinema.

Related Links

1. Project Cinema City (Mumbai)