A tall tale

Yesterday I went for this 'Tall Tales' event in South Mumbai (SoBo). The concept seemed pretty cool, and there were no movies (that I was interested in watching) releasing this week. Thus the long pilgrimage to SoBo.

The idea of Tall Tales is that people who have an anecdote interesting enough to recount gather there to do so in the full 24 gun salute fashion - gripping language, humorous description, voice and story inflection, accent, modulation. It is not impromptu, but said stories and storytellers are screened, auditioned, trained and then put up on the small informal stage.

It was an idea radical enough to drag us out of our Bandra-bubble and into the arms of the famed SoBo bustling with charming old Victorian architecture and reverse snobbery. What be reverse snobbery, you ask? Okay, let me attempt a colorful description. We reached the venue, and looked around for a building that looked like it could host a literary gathering. But couldn't find anything to fit the mental image. A couple of phone calls established that we were indeed standing right in front of the hallowed portals beyond which floated our tales, waiting for us in anticipation. This unlikely looking building was rickety, its staircase long, winding and wooden with a general air that whispered to you in perfect English at every breath you took (breath which was shortening by the second due to the long ascent) - We be SoBo. We no have new buildings, working lifts, air-conditioners or any of them gaudy and low-class trappings of the nouveau-riche. You wanna watch play? You wanna hang with us, poor burb-ites? You gotta earn it.

We wanted to play with them. So we climbed, albeit a little cautiously lest the staircase collapse. And we let the tales begin.

To be honest, while the concept was interesting, not all of the tales turned out to be so. But the majority of them were amusing, told impeccably, in a rich descriptive humorous manner, keeping us in moderate splits.

The whole thing led me to wonder if ever I would be interested in putting out one of my tales and if so, which one of them would meet the criteria of being interesting and insightful enough. While there can be many and with some embellishment a few of them can be made into screenplays for KJo's next, there is this one episode which seems the most worthy of being recounted. KJo won't touch it with a ten feet barge pole, and I also fear the poor thing will be rejected by the Tall Tales team for being too edgy and not nearly amusing enough, but let me put it down here as bits & bytes, for public consumption.

It was a few years ago - four to five at the most. I was living in Bandra and enjoying every bit of it - the cafes, eateries, the sea, crowds when you needed them and serenity when you knew where to find it, freedom, most of all the freedom to do and be as you pleased, without fearing anybody would care, judge, persecute or pester. But I soon realized the horizon was not all that wrinkle-free and that morons sometimes get a free pass into heaven.

So one dark evening, I was heading home leisurely, back from a walk. I lived then in an apartment housed in a building on Union park road, which is the street perpendicular to Carter road. If you have been there you would immediately be able to conjure a mental picture when I tell you that the building I lived in was beyond that part of Union park road which has half the restaurants and hole-in-wall eateries of Bandra and where half of Mumbai congregates on a weekend. That part where I lived can get quite deserted.

Well, I was strolling along peacefully, with not a care in the world when I noticed this boy walking alongside me. He was a boy, probably not more than 18 or 19 years, with a back-pack, looking like he was heading home from tuition classes or college or something. I didn't pay much attention and continued on my way. But then he said something and I looked at him, my first thought being that he was asking me for directions. He repeated what he had said, and what he said is not something I can or want to repeat here. Suffice it to say it was a most vulgar thing to say. I was shocked. The boy didn't look the type - the very fact that he was coming from someplace where an effort had been made to educate him - seemed to suggest that he should have been above this kind of behavior. He took encouragement from my momentary stupefaction and dialed up his perv-quotient. He started saying more similar stuff and even adding obscene visuals to this degenerate speech.

Now I wasn't exactly a spring chicken. As a young school girl in Mumbai, I had had more than my fair share of molestation. But I wasn't a school girl anymore and more so, Bandra was my turf. This green-under-the-thumb boy here had decided to mess with a fully grown adult, with a head full of feminist ideas and a job description that read as 'Area Sales Manager' entailing regular interactions with wily old businessmen and other tough nuts. I wasn't about to take this shit.

I started talking back to him - How dare you talk like this, you moron - kind of stuff. He seemed taken aback. I raised my voice, faded memories from similar long past incidents (where flight rather than fight had seemed like the prudent option) suddenly coming alive filling me with an incandescent rage. I realized that there was a smattering of people around - shopkeepers, lone walkers like me, some cars etc and as my decibel rose, some of these started looking my way. I don't know what led me to attempt enlisting their attention, but I did. I found myself screaming at the top of my voice, telling everyone around that this here boy had been trying to act fresh with me.

By that time the boy had smelled trouble and started walking away quickly. Perhaps he sensed that the atmosphere was getting uncomfortably charged, that people around were suitably mobilized and so they were. In a matter of seconds the situation escalated such that the boy broke into a run, with several people at his heels. I saw shopkeepers come out of their shops, drivers out of their cars, people walking on the street turn direction, even a car turn around, all to chase after him.

I was still screaming, I don't remember exactly what, but something to the effect of dragging him to the police station, when I realized that he had got away. Normalcy returned with frightening speed and soon I was walking back to my building, looking as if nothing untoward had happened in the last five minutes.

But I was terrified inside. And for a very different reason. Yes, I was surprised that one as young as this boy and seemingly from a family of some means and desire to get their children educated, could have behaved in such a perverse manner. But in general this sort of an encounter isn't new, we regularly encounter men who have a twisted idea of what it means to be a man and how a woman should be treated, looking to get cheap thrills from such escapades. It continues to be abhorrent, but is nothing new. What was truly terrifying to me was the behavior of the crowd turned mob. That mob meant murder and had the boy been caught, he would have been in all likelihood ground to pulp that day.

Was it the anger of a crowd wanting to teach that disrespectful moron a lesson or was it something else? Today, is our frustration bubbling and boiling over so, that it channelizes itself through such dangerous acts of good samaritanism? Where does proportionate redress stop and barbarianism begin? 

Passport to somewhere

Lots of things happened today.

I went to get my passport renewed. Some place in Andheri, a bunch of documents, a million proofs of address, some attested by self and some by slightly more authoritative entities like banks and such. What's not to love, right?

Right. The first thing that happened was that I was told to come back with a printout of my application form. Hmm..like when the Ambanis would have arrived designer bag and baggage at the long-awaited door-steps of Antilia, only to be told that its Vaastu wasn't right. Like that. What are you laughing at. Exactly like that.

Little could that vaastu-haastu know, while pronouncing his judgement, what Mukesh A must have felt. It isn't easy, hiring a team of consultants and paying them top dollar to do an incisive analysis of the richest men on the planet (past, present and future), to find out where they lived and how expensive their homes were (NPV and inflation accounted for); combining that intelligence with knowledge gained from coffee-table-book immersion into the art & architecture of eras gone by; and combining these two streams of thought into a buzzing whirring cesspool alive with mongrel-like images of what Antilia should look like.

And then he hired the architects. And then the builders. The plumbers, the carpenters. The gardeners. The ants came uninvited.

His one unforgivable error was to forget to call in a vaastunomist while the blue-print was still in baby-neuron form inside the architect's inflamed head.

Yes that very same thing happened to me today. I too entered the passport seva kendra with elan, dust in my hair, tan on my face, but pride in my step. And just like that, I was refused entry. Having made the rare effort to dig, procure, scan and staple in an uncharacteristic burst of documentality, in that moment I couldn't help but concede defeat to the God of No-matter-how-hard-I-try-just-don't-get-the-paperwork-right.

Okay I am done being funny. From now on this is a sensitive tale of meaning found in the mundaneness of life.

Right. So I turned tail and went to get this bloody printout. Rumor had it, there was a Sun hotel in the vicinity, serving as landmark to a cyber-cafe. A dubious looking short-cut, with many a crest and trough, was pointed out to me and onward I went. Mission got accomplished and back with said document I attempted entry again, this time steely glint in eye accompanying aforementioned pride in step. As I was walking in, I saw a guy saunter out. He had been standing at the end of the line in my pre-printout phase and I was partly alarmed (at the thought that people in my 'time-slot' were already done with) and partly curious as to the reason behind his hasty retreat. So I asked him and he told me that he didn't have a printout of the application form! Gasp! Like Jesus beginning to hand out loaves and fish to the first starving man (yes exactly like that) I told him about this miraculous cafe next to the Sun, in a galaxy not so far far away, but he seemed unimpressed and chose to come back another day.

Hmm.

Inside I went, and the powers that be seemed surprised to see me; turns out there was another fellow writhing and whining to be let inside without having in his possession...guess what...a printout of the application form! And apparently he had been at the whining since some time too. They told him, 'Itne time mein tum bhi le aate printout.' Our hero answered, 'Arre duur hai.' So they said, 'Agar ladies jaa ke le aayi, toh tum ko kyaa tha?'

I felt some confusion. Why does being a lady (hardly) mean that I am not expected to apply myself? On the other hand, I got it. People are the sum of their experiences and if you have never been called upon or encouraged to find your own way out of sticky situations, you won't suddenly start doing it unless something big really comes and shakes you up. Lots of girls in this country don't get opportunities and frankly are not brought up with the mindset of 'yes you can' and I get it. I did feel some renewed respect for my own self though #Fighterlady. Now if only the damn passport would deign to get renewed as well!

Well, inside the hallowed portals of Passport seva kendra I rode. And fell off my galloping steed just a few minutes later, when the woman at the counter asked for proof of my marriage. A scuffle ensued, an argument at the very least, me at my wit's end, not understanding why I needed my spouse's name on the passport, and she, rightly so, telling me that it was mandatory.

In all that mela and jhamela, I found myself asking her if this was as mandatory for any male applicants. No sooner was this ferocious line of questioning out of my mouth than I had an out-of-body experience - with my saner self detaching itself to watch the tamasha. Fortunately the lady confirmed it was mandatory for the males too; it was fortunate 'cause even I don't know what I would have done otherwise - a misplaced dharna, or a speech at the very least, on feminism, female emancipation and the role of the husband in a modern marriage.

Didn't come to that and she, being conscientious, informed and surprisingly patient, instead of flicking me and my objections away, offered to put me on Tatkaal. She sent me inside to meet the APO to get her sign-off as well. While giving me the file which I was to take to this APO person, she said, a little mischievously and very wisely, 'APO madam is the highest ranking officer here, so ask her a little nicely.'

I did. Madam APO agreed. And in spite of me not having had all my docs today and exhibiting a severe lack of grace in accepting that, I am now a token number, in the Tatkaal way, only required to go in tomorrow and submit said certificate.

So many things.

What a brilliant girl she was, she stood her ground but also stayed true to the motto of the 'seva kendra'. What patience, what wisdom. Inspiration strikes anywhere and that is what she was to me today.

Besides I realized that because I am so used to thinking that any government office exists only to make life difficult, my strategy has always been to bully. It is unthinkable that there are people in admin/government jobs who truly want to help you. It shifts the paradigm drastically. You realize how you've been hammering away at what you thought was stone, when a hot-knife-through-butter-maneuver would have accomplished the job.

I saw a woman around my age whose husband had accompanied her there and they were applying for a passport for her, and besides the fact that her husband had to come in with her, there was also that her id documents were all from college. It spoke about the chasm between her life and mine - I have come a long way since college, every document in my kitty today is evidence of a step forward. Should I be proud at what I have made of myself (a person with multiple and varied documentation to prove existence and residence, haha) or sink to my knees and thank providence for giving me all those opportunities.

A bit of both maybe.

On the other hand, I still have a lot to learn. And on that note - life is like a slab of hardened butter. Sometimes what even the sharpest knives can't cut through, a hot one can.