Malavika’s Mumbaistan: He Said, He Said

In this digital era, who isn’t familiar with the syndrome of being made to eat one’s words publicly? Producer, poet and erstwhile publisher, Pritish Nandy, was the

In this digital era, who isn’t familiar with the syndrome of being made to eat one’s words publicly? Producer, poet and erstwhile publisher, Pritish Nandy, was the latest to experience it with his enthusiastic tweet to Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal on his proposal to waive ticket prices for the Capital’s female populace on the bus and metro. “What a wonderful idea, Mr Kejriwal,” he’d tweeted in support. But, economist Ashwani Mahajan, National co-convener of Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, had been quick to point out that Nandy had contradicted what he felt had been a self-stated position from six years ago.
“No one respects a freebie. Not even the poorest of the poor,” he’d tweeted at that time.
“Pritish Nandyji, can you explain the two tweets? People call this hypocrisy,” said Mahajan.
But, true to form, the wordsmith had been quick to thunder: “Fools call this hypocrisy. Wise people will know the contexts of the conversations are entirely different,” going on to quote no less than fellow Bengali, Tagore on the merits of inconsistency.
But if Mahajan had been in a mood to forgive and forget, he didn’t let on. His only repose till the time of going to press had been a smiley emoji.
In this digital era, who isn’t familiar with a smiley that is meant as a smirk?

Pritish Nandy (File Photo)

Migrant Museums And Melting Pots

Parmesh Shahani

“Migration Museum – a pop-up museum – is a continuation of interesting things we have been doing . It will be the Lab’s fourth mini-museum. Issues of migration, belonging, home and citizenship are especially relevant in India, today,” says Parmesh Shahani, author, cultural impresario and gay rights activist, who runs the Godrej Culture Lab in Vikhroli.
The exhibition that will pop up in Vikhroli on Saturday features new wave of protest poetry; a display of Reena Saini Kallat’s work, and a documentary featuring five country-based stories about conflict, migration, and the experience of exile. Interestingly, the pop-up museum follows on the heels of another more recent evocation of the larger subject, when Shahani found himself in Juhu this week, eating at Maharsh, Mumbai’s first pure veg Ethiopian restaurant. “As I was eating the lovely injera and a range of vegetables, I was reflecting on how Mumbai is truly a melting pot of cultures, and how we imbibe influences from other places and make them uniquely Mumbai! In a way, we are all migrants, na?” he said.
And in response to the clamour his discovery of Maharsh had created on social media, from other enthusiastic Mumbai foodies, he posted: “It’s really small so you need to reserve in advance. Very good food and service”.
This melting pot of migrants certainly loves the melting.

Two Generations Of Pretty Cheerleaders

Deepika Ghose

When Deepika Ghose, the young lady, whose enthusiastic cheering of the RCB team during a recent IPL match had catapulted her in to instant mega-fame, had called us in the early phases of the viral phenomenon she’d been swept up by, sounding bewildered and shaken by it all, naturally we’d been concerned. After all, we’d known her almost from the day she was born, her mother Ragini having been a close college mate of ours. At first, Deepika explained she’d found the attention of her millions of fans “very overwhelming” and an “unwanted invasion of (her) privacy”, and both mother and daughter had sounded shaken by the net’s notorious negativity. But since then, there had been a more pragmatic view with the dancer, stylist realising that her enormous platform “could be a really good thing” which she could use to speak up about her passions and other issues. Recently, she’d participated in a UNICEF advocacy platform on Menstrual Hygiene in Kolkata. But imagine our surprise when this week, we received a message from her Mum, our old college friend, of an account of how she’d found herself at Lords attending her first ever cricket match on June 25, 1983, when India and West Indies were playing the nail biting World Cup finals. The way she recalled it, she had been such a crazed enthusiastic cheerleader, that India’s then captain Kapil Dev himself had noticed her, as he stood fielding not an arms-length away in the game’s last few minutes. “I was jumping. He couldn’t help but notice me because honestly, I had lost complete control, and also, I was wearing a bright red sweater knitted by my Mum for my London visit,” she recalled. It was when Ragini mentioned “red sweater” that the delightful coincidence struck us: 36 years later, her daughter Deepika was also to make a big impression at another cricket match albeit in a red crop top.
But here’s where the similarity ends. Unlike her daughter, immortalised on a million social media feeds, her Mum’s recognition had come away from the spotlight, when she sayd Kapil himself thanked her when she, along with hundreds of crazed fans, had poured into his room after the historic win. “He looked up at this crazed fan (me) and turned to the players, a lot of whom were in his room by then and said to them ‘I want you to thank this girl in a red sweater.... yeh laal shirt wali’,” narrated Ragini.
Another thing: as further example of the vast chasm of difference that separates generations, here’s another: when we enquired from our old college friend if there’d be any pictures from that historic day, she said, “of course not” and then added, “I’d rather, you did not publish my picture at all.”