For those of you from colder climes a Mumbai Winter day is no better than a warm day in Spring, but for us Mumbaikars, it is good enough to bring out our winter clothes.
Early in the morning you will find watchmen wrapped up in mufflers and wearing great coats, huddling by a fire or warming their hands on a steaming hot cup of chai.
This is the time when the Tibetan Sweater sellers descend on our streets and lay out their colourful woollens on the pavement.
By 10 in the morning at Nana’s Chowk, they do pretty brisk business with most people buying sweaters and scarves on their way to work from the Station.
I’m sure the Tibetans go back happier with most of their stuff being sold.
Welcome back!
Around thirty years ago I was attending the weddings of my friends and contemporaries. Nowadays, I am attending the weddings of their children. The torch seems to have passed on to another generation of young people who will spend the next twenty years nurturing families of their own!
All weddings these days are beautifully decorated with flowers and swags a hint of modernity and the occident mixed with the old. Gone are the days of marigolds and mogras instead we have orchids and lilies and sprays of flowers decorating the marriage halls. Gone too are the days when weddings were chaotic instead we have almost choreographed rituals with the guests sitting patiently through the ceremonies.
Sequins, borders and panels with designer blouses and detailed accessorization have brought the ancient saree into the modern world , Thai curries and pastas have transformed the traditional wedding repasts into new age feasts where counters of multi cuisine have replaced the sit down meals and most grooms come to the venue in a cavalcade of cars rather than astride a horse escorted by dancing relatives.
But somethings remain unchanged : the actual rituals of marriage.
7 steps to love and fulfillment.
How many people realise the significance of the deep underlying sanctity and romance of the circumambulation of the holy fire or the seven steps ?
The seven steps that are essential to a Hindu wedding are the cornerstone of the marriage. In this seemingly quaint and old fashioned ritual when the bride walks demurely behind her groom hand in hand with a shawl draped around their shoulders further binding their ties together, the couple promises each other:
Abundant food with the first step,
Physical strength with the second step,
Adequate material wealth with the third step,
Mutual happiness with the fourth step,
Commitment to raise ideal children with the fifth step,
Appreciation to face and enjoy the blessings of each season with the sixth step,
Inseparable friendship with the seventh step.
One of the problems of living in a congested city is the presence of rats. Our Municipality actually has a Department for Catching Rats. One of the criteria for being eligible for this job is to successfully run a 100 yards in 5 minutes. They also have a scheme every now and then ( when the rodent problem becomes acute) when every person who comes with a rat’s tail to the local Municipal Office is rewarded with a princely sum of Rs.5/- per tail.
How to catch a rat
One day, my poor friend Kay found a mouse scampering around her house. Before I could make a witty remark that if she had a computer in every room, she should expect a mouse inside her house, she explained that it was a genuine rodent who actually came out of his hole and watched her as she ate her grilled cheese sandwich.
For some time now, Kay has had a rodent problem, one which she tackled with a tasty bit of bhajia that she bought from a corner street stall. Her earlier attempts at luring the mouse inside the trap with a bit of stale cheese didn’t work because as the maid said, the cheese was too stale and besides Indian rats like Indian bhajias and not some rancid tid-bit of Westernised cheese. ( Maids somehow seem to have a solution to every problem). So, thereafter, Kay changed the cheese to bhajias and voila – the rat was in the trip!
After Kay caught the rat with the greasy Indian Bhajia, she thought she had rat catching down to a T.
Alas! that was not the only rat inside the house as she soon found out and she had to lay another trap. But this time round, the rat stubbornly resisted the bhajia and when she actually saw him staring greedily at the grilled cheese sandwich one night, she decided to change the bait and make it grilled sandwich that night.
When the rat doesn’t respond to the bait.
Alas, it didn’t work either so she went down to the Baniya and got some sticky mats the kind that look suspiciously like a slice of bread slathered with strawberry of jam. She placed it near the rat hole ( as per the instructions on the sticky mat) and this morning she found a poor little baby rat dead with exhaustion as he tried to run away from the sticky mat.
On close inspection, Kay realised that the little one didn’t look anything like the big one who had stared down at her sandwich two nights earlier so now she had to put out some more sticky mats for the big one to trample on, each with a different bait.
Would the rat go for the grilled sandwich this time or would the bhajia win?
And yet another question came to mind : was there just one rat or some more down that deep big hole?
