Demands – Wanna be alive!

Election campaigns do the round through the city. They call it as my privilege to vote. They term it’s my right. Every common man I meet, has only one question to ask. What is the point? Who will turn out to be different?

Every single day Bangalore newspapers are filled with murders, rapes, robbery and harassment. No..you got me wrong if you imagined it is the old fashioned way – when there happens one murder somewhere and for a week you read about it as a TV serial. Now each day dawns with a fresh crime and by the next day this particular one is gone and forgotten. And murders are no longer out in the dark. Most are stabbed right in the middle of the road in daylight or in their own houses.

I might question the police here. I heard that there aren’t enough police force considering the population of the city, but I see them swarming in like bees when people with the tag VIP make the rounds. But before I put the blame on them there is this great law enforcement or do I term it loose law enforcement by our honorable President I want to talk about.

With crime rates soaring in the city, we now have to welcome a new law. Unless and until a person’s crime deserves 7 years of imprisonment as per law, he cannot be arrested. In short, a major holiday for all law enforcement forces out there has been granted. Let people steal, harass, rape or do whatever they want, till the imprisonment is for a term of 7 years.  Either ways our law was hilarious! as far as I could remember the misconduct of a drunken person in public deserves only “24 hours in prison and a fee of 10 rs!!”.  Thanks to the new law now crime would be a waltz for people out there. With all the murders waiting to be solved there was this blogger arrested for having created a community against a party who came to fame through their atrocities alone. So again freedom of press has become a crime more grave than stabbing. Oh I forget I guess we can zero it down as the importance is not anymore is who does what..it all depends on ‘whom’ it is done to.

Will I be arrested if I very respectfully ask our dear President, what with this new law, how is she expecting the common middle class to survive? All I ask for is her to walk the roads of this city with us for one day and tell us how this new law would help anyone but criminals.

Mail forwards flood my inbox with the ‘crime history’ of almost all in the parliament. Not that I believed it then but with the entry of some who have traded the country’s emotion now standing for elections I guess I should start believing them.  (Why aren’t we demanding people with spotless records to serve us?)And considering this, I should not be alarmed that no one is bothered with the new law that might change the face of crime.

Happy women’s day to all you women outside this city. As for within this city, girls – be busy with pepper sprays, kick boxing and self defense techniques, there isn’t much time for you to celebrate womanhood and all. Be glad to be alive and to have been spared today and be aware tomorrow can be your turn.

It is my privilege, they say to go and vote for people who have criminal records to boast of, to help people get into crime.  Many of us would be familiar with the old movie concept of public demands of water, roads, facilities to those who stand for election. The endless bed of roses they promise. Recently in paper there was one board a girl was holding..just one question to those whom we painfully elect and allow to rule us – “Will I be ALIVE till the next election?”

 

Love with Levity

 

Levity is one word I’m in love with. I cling on to it as much as I can like a victim from a crashing plane to a parachute. As much as I’m in love with this word, I guess I irk people around me!

 

You’ve forgotten the keys! – Oh its ok – I can spend another hour outside reading my ‘fiction’ with the help of the streetlight (err was it Tolstoy who did it before?..not sure!!). You’ve taken all the keys with you! – Borrow the neighbor’s lock for once! Keep some money with you – Oh I have the bus fare. You haven’t combed your hair, your bindi is not there, you look like a disaster!– You say the same when im ‘best dressed’ with all possible feats to beautify myself! Anyways I’ll carry a comb and ask my colleague for a Bindi! Oh I love hop the wall, pop the corn life I was floating through.

 

It isn’t all that easy everyday I guess. Especially when I get into a Volvo to escape the ‘poking crowd’ and sit next to the ‘well dressed gentleman’ ahem no I’m completely conscious of the probability of the readers in here and I swear I didn’t notice any further. Anyways It wasn’t easy to sit there and search a bag that is ditto to a school bag and churn out coins from among all the other trashes (my endeavor to save the roads from litter.. you see) and count it right there with a stranger staring at you as though you have landed right from another planet all for the heck of forgetting your purse! I almost thought I might have to ask for a rupee or 2 when fortunately one of the innermost pockets of the bag gifted me a long forgotten coin!

 

So I entirely understood the plight of another ‘well-dressed’ person with an ID card and US accent climbed up to the first floor of the building and knocked at our door for 70Rs! He even offered to keep his gold plated watch with us. Since Eby was there to deal with the whole situation I conveniently sat there behind the curtain in the comfortable sofa enjoying my ‘chocolate ice cream’ only to be shocked to hear my husband deny that man.

 

??!! He ought to be in utter disaster if he had all the patience in the world to learn US accent (quite perfectly I would say), and then go around for 70Rs! But Eby had for a change become a Sherlock Holmes! How was he drunk this early? He said he met with an accident, Y dint he have any dust or dirt in his clothes, why did he climb up till the first floor when there were actually more people downstairs and other houses nearby? Why did he fumble when I said there weren’t any bachelors in the house he claimed to be his friend’s house? Why didn’t he approach occupants of the same building who would have at least known his friend? Why couldn’t he call up a person he knew? Why didn’t he take an auto to someone he knew and then pay the Rick fellow? What if I kept his watch here and he later claimed that I robbed him of all his belongings and the watch was a proof! What with the happenings here for the past few weeks, how can I trust anyone! (Did I hear appreciations for living with a detective? J thank you!)

 

So the next time I forget my lock inside and ask for another lock I’d better be safe that the neighbor doesn’t think me a crook forging keys! Next time I dream of borrowing a rupee or two I better not risk being mistaken for a planned deceptive ‘watever’! I can’t blame Eby for being reluctant to part with an odd figure of 70 bucks to a drunk ‘well dressed’ stranger. Nor can I come to think that a person who looked like that would intend to do anything! But the fact is, his branded clothes, shoes or a gold plated watch & accent did not save him from the humiliation of being turned down for 70rs thanks to the happenings around us in Bangalore. For here, with the horrendous surging of murders & robbery, people sure seem to go to hell in a handbasket! No one seem to have any clue whom to trust and whom not to.       

 

There was a time when the world and our thinking were not like this. A time when the good old village of mine, never heard of conning. There was a time when you step out of your house with a bruise and you have your whole village asking about it. Don’t know about other cities but thanks to the cops in Bangalore (who seem to be in an indefinite slumber) and the crime rates soaring up faster than skyrockets – we are left on our own. Get hit, Get lost, Get strangled no one would help or rather no one would dare to!! That extra money, extra pair of keys and extra caution L seems inevitable! Alvida dear levity!

 

 

 

Mumbai katzenjammer

I despised mumbai the moment i stepped in the city. I should mention here that the station i landed on was Kalyan. The pollution in conjunction with the population had scared me. The next abode in mumbai was near Andheri, again the culture had scared me. Before I could watch and judge i was absorbed into the rush of life that is there. I found myself criticizing the people who dangled from the local trains and jump on one myself hanging to just one pole for reaching office in time. I hated the unhygienic way the ‘pavs‘ were carried around, but grabbed bites of vada pav unthinkingly, the way the panipuri wala with his pan stained hands dipped the puri in the pani had irked me but oft did i stop by him myself to have a plate! Mumbai gave me no time to think but just got me addicted. Today i walked a few lanes in search of those tastes, and phew long did it take me to find a vada pav in Bangalore. They gave me the vada wrapped in the bakery prepared clean fat bread! but my heart wouldn’t yield to anything lesser to those pavs carried in bicycles through the dusty polluted roads of Mumbai. I have volvos here for local transport..but i yearn to watch the yellow colored hold-ons (what do u call them??) in the local trains dance to their on rhythm. There are plenty of gardens still I wish I could go back to that dusty Andheri sports complex for my morning walk.
How do i describe the feeling? Not that ive left too much of friends in the city..the city doesn’t give space for friendship beyond a level. There friends are like butterflies extremely pleasing when they are around, long forgotten when gone! Not that I have blasted my life out there! The city got me addicted and I still cant believe I left it behind. I still cant believe that walking past the infinity mall and lokhandwala market is so distant a dream now! I can’t believe I’m thinking so much of a place which just dint give me the time & space to think of anything in life!