Talking the walk in Walkeshwar

After over two years, I got to go to an in-person Khaki Tours walk again. This one, "Sacred Banganga", was in the Walkeshwar area, near Malabar Hill. 

We convened at Walkeshwar bus depot, and Ninad the guide gave a brief history of that area of Mumbai. The area was named "Malabar" simply as an extension of the west coast - and those who looted British ships called Malabar pirates. When the Governor shifted his residence from Parel to Malabar hill, his rich associates moved as well, and even today the area is noted for Raj Bhavan and other generally affluent residents. (Apparently Raj Bhavan is open for tours, including an underground bunker - future post sorted!) The area used to be a hunting ground.

Raj Bhavan is on the left. The planned Shivaji statue is to be built in the sea, roughly the centre of the image.

Then it was time to see the temples. The first was a shrine of Khandoba, a form of Siva. This deity is an example of syncretic beliefs - he has five wives, all from different communities, including a Muslim, so the worship and festivals would involve everyone. A large Khandoba temple exists in Jejuri, in Pune district, incorporating elements of Islamic architecture (some say it was to look like a mosque from afar to avoid being razed by invaders).

We then turned into the narrow streets leading to Banganga tank. There is an office of Mangaldas Nathubai trust - the same Mangal of Mangal Market. In some of the building complexes are samadhis of saints.

The Jabreshwar temple is in one of these narrow, sloping streets. The name is linked to the word zabardasti - the street was taken by force and the temple built by Ramdas Nathubai. 

Notice the winged angels! 

 

We then descended on Banganga tank itself. By the tank were many towers with grooves for lamps. The story goes that Lord Rama, while on his exile, met Rishi Gautama here. When the Rishi was thirsty, Rama shot his arrow at the ground and drew water — hence, ban-ganga. The water is considered as holy as Ganga water. (Fellow walk attendees' reaction: polite smiles and nods.)

The guide later informed us that the band Coldplay had visited this area to shoot a music video, and so had Prince William and Kate Middleton. (Fellow walk attendees' reaction: wows and gasps!)

It was time to peek into just a handful of the many, many shrines around the perimeter of the tank. The first was a Parashuram shrine. This was built in the 60s. Next door is the residence of the Bhansali family (of Sanjay Leela).

The Rameshwar and Walkeshwar temple spires as seen through the Parashuram temple.

 

Also in the area is a Punjabi Dharamsala, site of Bollywood's famous Holi parties. 

The tallest spire is of the Rameshwar temple. This and the Ganapati temple just opposite were built by Pathare Prabhu families. Adjacent is the Lakshmi Narayan temple which has elements of Gujarati architecture.

 

Old and new?

The Walkeshwar temple, which gives the area its name, is actually vAlukA (sand) + ISvar — the lingam was fashioned out of sand by Rama. (The Marathi word for sand is also vALU / वाळू.) The current temple structure was built by Rama Kamti in the 18th century.

There is a Vitthala temple, but with the idol in the form of Srinathji from Rajasthan. There is a Kashi Math (below) managed by a Gauda Saraswata Brahman trust. There is a Hanuman shrine where he is holding a dagger. It would take hours to see everything in all its detail. 

This (below) was the house of Pandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, who is responsible for the Bhatkhande lipi in Hindustani music and the thaat classification of ragas. In another world, this would be a museum.

Also by the tank are other interesting sites: a Hindu burial ground, for certain communities and cases where the dead are to be buried and not cremated. There is a dhobi ghat with a freshwater well, even though we are right by the sea. 

Descending the steps into the tank, one can see hero-stones. Tucked behind another structure is a stone from the original Walkeshwar temple. Geese and cats abound. The source is shaped like the source of the Ganga river, Gomukh. 

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Guide Ninad with again, old and new.

Another shrine (below) is that of Santoshi Maa. This relatively minor goddess was propelled to stardom of sorts by the Hindi film of the same name. 

One temple we got to go inside was the Balaji temple (or Vyankatesh, as He is known here!). It is built in the Peshwai style, with space above the entrance for musicians. Above the idol is a dome, like in the Bengali style. There is a sculpture of Hanuman, this time with a bow!

Just by the tank is the Siddheshwar temple (below), built by Raghunath Rao, who was the son of Peshwa Baji Rao but never became Peshwa himself. He came to Bombay after being exiled for conspiring against his own family.

Our final stop was one more shrine on a street leading away from the tank: a Jagannath temple (below). Inside the main shrine are tiles with paintings by Raja Ravi Varma.

The temples were islands of quiet, even though outside was business as usual with people milling around and children playing. (This is probably not the case during pitru-paksha time when large crowds descend upon the tank to perform offerings to their ancestors.) The area is well worth another, longer visit!

The rough route, starting at Khandoba (can't go anticlockwise after all :))

Dipping a toe into Marathi

After two years here, I will grudgingly admit my Hindi is quite up to par. I remember the exact moment I realised this - when I told a friend "tumhari marzi" - probably not a thing a tentative newbie would say. Apologies to anyone hoping to see me in a "Hindi theriyaadhu poda" t-shirt.

Luckily, the blog URL also works in Marathi. So that is my new project!

As someone already interested in languages, this is turning out to be a fun endeavour. It is handy to be able to peg new words/concepts to already known ones in other languages, while also being an intellectual exercise. In some respects it is more like Tamil (having an inclusive and exclusive "we"!) but in most, it is similar to Hindi and Sanskrit (most vocabulary words and unfortunately, gendered inanimate objects.) 

Learning Sanskrit has drawn my attention to things which native speakers probably don't even do consciously - for instance, systematically listing noun and pronoun cases (vibhaktis), and adjectives agreeing with the noun they are describing in gender and number. 

Knowing Hindi/Sanskrit should not give one a sense of complacency, however - there are differences just in the script. There is of course the delightful ळ which is new. There is also an "overloading" of च and झ - apart from the usual sounds they also sometimes denote tsa and zha (not to be confused with the Tamil ழ, a completely different sound) and it is not immediately clear which to use. (Sometimes it's different pronunciations in different forms of the same word, eg आमचा/आमची are aamtsa/aamchi!) These contribute to the quite distinct sound of Marathi, which I really enjoy.

Currently I am learning from an old-worldly little book to learn Marathi through English, and from YouTube videos - mainly Bharatiya Digital Party and its sister channels (helpfully subtitled). This is still mostly consumption, not creation - which is well suited to the intellectual exercise and my fear of making mistakes. However I will soon have to let go of that and just speak, and also learn to accept why some things are the way they are without a "good" reason. There may not always be a straight line from Proto-Indo-European to Sanskrit to Marathi. Languages are living entities with their idiosyncrasies and that is precisely the charm.

If any of you have learnt a language as an adult, and have tips to share, please do so!

Mumbai on Screen #3 - Bombay (1995, Tamil)

Well, I had to do this one eventually. This self-styled definitive Bombay movie was on every recommendations list sent to me! It is the story of a Hindu man and a Muslim woman, who elope from their hostile families to Bombay, only to be caught in the crossfire of communal riots.

I don't know why I expected the romance half of the movie to be less problematic than it was. Sekar, Arvind Swamy's character, pursues a visibly uncomfortable Shaila Banu (Manisha Koirala), even dressing up as a burqa-clad woman to get close to her (in a weird inversion of offensive men-dressing-as-women tropes, this time he is the good guy doing it for love). Slightly later in the film he slices her arm with a blade to prove a point. Ultimately they do fall in love, though, and decide to get married. 

Sekar approaches Shaila's father, a very 0-to-100 man who reaches for his sword immediately. Only afterwards does Sekar even tell his own parents. Both fathers have it out in a vicious verbal argument that threatened to no longer remain verbal (Sekar's father is unarmed; but Shaila's father, as we know, carries a sword). The irony is very clear - the fathers are in a way on the same side: neither wants the couple to marry, and yet their anger is equally directed at each other as at their errant children.

The couple elope, in a bit of a staggered fashion, and get married in Bombay. There are the obligatory VT and Marine Drive shots. The city at this point represents freedom and a liberal attitude, the opposite of what they had fled - this wouldn't last long. Don't worry about how they both subsist on a proofreader's salary (minus Sekar's ongoing journalism degree fees). More uncomfortable non-consensual PDA later, they have a set of twin boys. Personally with Sekar's overbearing nature and Shaila's lack of personality and overall zero chemistry, I was mainly rooting for the little kids in the strife-ridden second half of the movie.

Then come some of this country's worst moments - Babri Masjid is demolished and violence breaks out in Bombay. The boys (named Kamal Basheer and Kabir Narayanan) are nearly killed when they are unable to answer a mob about what their religion is. The couple's parents come to stay with them, out of concern, ending a long gap in communication. The fathers initially argue but eventually thaw after Shaila's father saves the other from a gang. Eventually the violence manages to separate the family. The grandparents are killed in an explosion, and the children are lost and found after an agonising search. The film culminates in Sekar and others successfully appealing for peace, and everyone holding hands.

The philosophical core of this movie is a sort of both-sides-ism, condemning all forms of extremism, which was certainly a welcome message for its time. Years later, when we have had more riots and many years of a majoritarian government, it bears some rethinking. Within the film itself, when the arguments of Hindus and Muslims are compared, it doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. The extremist Hindus want to assert themselves by constructing the Ayodhya temple, showing Muslims that they're second-class citizens and eventually driving them out. The Muslims, barring those who retaliated for the demolition by starting violence in Mumbai, just want to exist. Their very existence is seen as political, because the film doesn't examine its own associations of Islam with violence. (Indeed, think back to Shaila's sword-toting father.) When Sekar's two friends fight, the Muslim is outraged at his community's houses and shops being destroyed, and the Hindu says something about minority "privileges" and appeasement. Are these two equivalent?

(Even the insults the fathers hurl at each other are laughably imbalanced if you think about them for more than a moment. The Muslim calls the Hindus weak vegetarians, and the Hindu says his blood is pure unlike the Muslim's.)

One thing the movie does nail is powerful forces stoking this violence for their own gain. The Hindu extremist leader fans the flames with his speeches and then drives though the devastated areas, silently observing. (The Muslim leader meets the affected families and sheds tears.) The police are also shown to participate in the violence and disproportionately kill Muslims. The film also rightly emphasises the horror of children and innocent people being hurt and killed in this clash. 

"What is a Hindu and what is a Muslim?" asks one of the boys, to a transgender woman sheltering him. 

"Hinduism and Islam are both ways to reach God." 

"Then why are they fighting?" 

While the socio-political realities are very important to keep in mind when looking for a solution, perhaps the spirit we should embrace is the childlike view. We are all mere mortals, following different guidelines in our spiritual quests, and we shouldn't resort to violence to solve what isn't even a problem - the fact that we are diverse. Maybe the Kamal Basheers and Kabir Narayanans will save this country.

Socially Distanced SciComm

One important (and honestly fun) duty of the science community is to keep the general public in the loop about what they are up to. It fosters scientific literacy among adults, in a time when anti-intellectual spirit abounds. And it gets kids interested in the reality of what we do, which is often nothing like the science or maths they are taught in school! After all, this field, like any other, has to sustain itself and bring in new people.

Some large organisations like NASA have excellent PR/outreach teams, putting out enough content to satisfy thousands of space nerds worldwide. (Did anyone else watch Perseverance landing on Mars?) Universities and teams of researchers carry out their own outreach programs - TIFR, for its part, has two open days a year apart from the fortnightly Chai and Why? talks.

One of these, National Science Day, was last Sunday! Last year's NSD seems like a geological age ago, but I do remember some of it - a college student asked for a selfie with me, and later when I visited a different department's exhibit, I was asked which class I was in.

This year it was fully online, and as a result could reach viewers who could not normally visit TIFR. That of course brought a fresh set of logistical challenges. There was a last-minute change of venue owing to a power shutdown. The anchor, demonstrators and speakers were all in different places. Someone had to repeatedly appeal to viewers not to spam the chat with larger and larger numbers, discussions of the time taken to cook rice, teachers taking attendance, or worst of all, people cursing at the first half being in Marathi and not Hindi.

Most viewers were probably watching on their phone screens, so we had to be super-clear and also mildly theatrical in order to hold their attention. Those demonstrating experiments with colourful acids, liquid nitrogen and superconductors had no problem keeping it visually engaging; we theorists had to work a little harder! Luckily people responded to our questions for the audience and seemed to overall enjoy our presentation.

Ultimately the event passed successfully in a whirl of Zoom spotlights and co-host handovers. It was an exciting new medium. But I look forward to hearing teenagers' wild lateral thinking suggestions in person once again.

You can watch the full thing here on YouTube. Some rough timestamps:

1:40:00 - Experiments (Duration ~20 mins)

2:03:00 - Mj Mahan's talk on "Hyperbolic Geometry in Nature" (Duration ~35 mins)

2:41:00 - My department's presentation, featuring me as main speaker and an untrustworthy postmaster (Duration ~20 mins)

 

Post-posting posting

The nation is coming to terms with the internet maxim "If you aren't paying, you are the product" becoming true of WhatsApp, which will start sharing (more of) our metadata (explainer here) come February. People are migrating en masse to more secure apps. Personally though, I am becoming inclined towards a less secure, less reliable and paid network. Why? For the romance of it.

I am of course referring to good old snail mail. Is it convenient? Mumbai has postboxes generously and irregularly scattered around. Are they well used? Well, there is a tea-shop set up in front of the one next to Colaba Post Office, so draw your conclusions from that. All the more reason to support it.

Of course, it takes a while to reach, but I think for longer and more honest messages it's worth being free from the shackles of blue ticks and last seens. Little hand-drawn figures communicate a bit more than emojis, and I like taking a moment to decide which person will like which postcard best. And as someone who stresses out over how to word an email, take my word that this is somehow more natural! Stream-of-consciousness writing and signing off with "Love" are allowed and encouraged.

All this is to say if you want me to round the tea-shop and send you something, drop me your address! (I'm not sure if I'm even getting incoming post, so I'll let you know about that). Or just take a walk and buy some stamps of different denominations. It's a nice feeling.

Mumbai on Screen #2 - Wake Up Sid (2009, Hindi)

Siddharth is lazy and hedonistic. He lives off his father's successful business, but is not at all suited to the job of taking over after him. Enter Aisha, new to Mumbai, set on independence and her goal of becoming a writer. What can they learn from each other? 

Everything about the film is strikingly 2000s - of course the clothes and songs, but also the fact that the leads initially correspond over email and they never kiss. Plus, Sid is an Arsenal fan.

Sid's initial lifestyle is what happens when you are stationary in a city that's always on the move. His friends pass their final college exam, one even moves a little too fast in the romance business. But he stays put amidst piles of pizza boxes and unwashed clothes.

He meets Aisha at a party and the two quickly become friends. He helps her decorate her apartment (which is pretty decent-sized with a sea view, for an assistant's starting salary). She is very clear that he is childish and not her type. That said, I don't think she and Sid are opposites. Her character is, in one sense, an illustration of the difference between childish and childlike. She roams the city with wide-eyed wonder; he is familiar with it, but looks out with a photographer's eye. 

The rest of the story is not the twistiest in Bollywood history. Sid has a showdown with his parents; he moves in with Aisha; he slowly learns to cook and do chores and gets a job at the same magazine Aisha got a job at. (By the way, if anyone knows about English-language magazines about Mumbai like the one in the film, let me know!) Soon he is ready to move out, but Aisha isn't ready to let go. She writes about him as her first magazine piece, saying he was the city's gift to her, her first friend. They embrace on Marine Drive in the first shower of the monsoon, which he had told her was the best thing to see in Mumbai.

Aisha has a clear goal and takes steps in that direction. While I suppose this disqualifies her from being a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, she doesn't really have much of a story arc apart from embracing her preference for old Hindi songs and later her feelings for Sid. There's an interesting moment where her boss, a jazz lover, calls her music tastes childish - this time she is at the receiving end of this jibe. Getting your act together is one thing, but there will always be people you aren't "adult" enough for. That's okay, and you have to stay true to your passions. 

Mumbai works as a backdrop for this kind of story because of the wide variety of ways you can engage with such a vibrant place. There is partying every night, and then there is choosing to document the streets and people as your day job. (Even the parties can either just be getting mindlessly drunk, or they can be where you meet your new best friend or make up with an old one.) And sometimes, your inner child does need to run out in the first rain of the monsoon.