Carromming with the B-list
There's this Bollywood actor -- not on the superstar level of Amitabh Bachchan; just an ordinary ex-model-turned-somewhat-successful-actor -- who once came to pay me a courtesy call at work. He wanted to pitch me an idea for an AIDS PSA. We don't actually fund stuff like that, but I thought he was charming in a semi-loony sort of way, and was touched by his public spirit. I mean, his proposal would also have fuelled his comeback, but, hey, nothing wrong with doing well by doing good. I shopped his idea around to other agencies for him, and did succeed in linking him up with an award-winning photographer, but neither one of them really knew what they were trying to do, and the whole thing sort of fell apart.
Nonetheless, N kept dropping me little free-associative emails, and I kept replying. He started inviting me out to fashion shows, which I kept declining. His correspondence dropped off for a while after my photo appeared on the main newspaper's society page with K's, with the caption "[my name] and fiancé." (K, incidentally, tried to put on a brave face about making his Mumbai debut in such a derivative fashion, but there was some bruised ego with our cornflakes that Sunday morning, believe you me.) But, then, he started dropping me little chatty notes again, and, recently, had been after me to come play carrom with him. I turned him down once or twice, not the least because I had no idea what carrom was, but, finally, I couldn't without being rude, and agreed to a short-notice game, even though I was exhausted.
I took K, of course, and, for good measure (read: tethered goat), our unmarried friend T. I figured we'd stay an hour or two, and then I could hit the sack. N lives out in Andheri, of "hell is an autorickshaw to..." fame. No way I was going out there. But he had a friend, F, who lives near the U.S. housing compound on Altamount Road, which is not far from our apartment.
N's friend F turned out to be one of these delightful Indian men who speak with an Oxbridge accent but have never been to the UK. He was the dilettante child of a wealthy family, and had an expensive -- if, through no fault of his own, crumbling -- apartment tastefully furnished in bright, unusual colors and gorgeous antique furniture. There's a kind of style in Mumbai of "shabby-chic meets money": it doesn't result in "cheap-n-cheerful," as you'd get in the US or UK, but rather, "ruination as a bittersweet aesthetic." Done with proper consciousness, it can be superb.
Carrom turned out to be sort of like pool, but played on a smaller table, and using finger-flicks rather than cue sticks. Sounded simpler; turned out to be more difficult. N kept insisting on giving me lots of extra tries, and kept draping himself over me in demonstrating proper form; T, quite ignored, giggled snidely, and K, quite oblivious -- not for the first time -- chatted animatedly with F. Much beer was consumed, and much fun was had, even if I turned out to be a miserable player (T had played as a child and did fine; K, mysteriously, turned out to be a natural at it). After the second game I jumped up, ready to take our leave. N and F were both incredulous: surely, you're not planning to GO?
K and T both seemed to be having fun. Snacks had just been brought out by a shy servant. Ok, fine. The merriment continued until 11. Then, once again, I started to explain: my work day starts at 8:30. We've got a "duck-and-cover" drill, of all things. I think I have to inaugurate a school, though I'm sure that's not a big deal. F looked at me pleadingly.
"But dinner's about to be served."
I laughed.
Then I realized he was serious.
Ok, ok. We don't want anyone's housestaff beaten for being tardy with the dinner. The board was put away, more beer was brought, we chatted, I struggled to stay awake. I promised myself I'd leave at 11:30, even if it meant leaving K and T as forfeited collateral and walking home myself. At 11:29, an elaborate feast was set out on the huge faux-ivory carved serving table: several different types of curries. Naan. Goan rice. Raita. Chutneys.
We'd all, of course, eaten dinner before coming. But one doesn't want to give offense, even if one can hardly be blamed for putting on thirty pounds, what with these midnight multi-course dinners.
About an hour later -- what seemed like the minimum polite time -- I started in, a little more determinedly, on the leave-taking again.
"But there's dessert!" F said. "Pure sugar cane, in ghee, with ice cream!"
Luckily, that made it easier. I won't be rude just for the sake of my sleep, or my health. But my thighs are another matter.
The walk back, from Altamount Road to Kemp's Corner, is always a little strange. Altamount is on a hill, and it's an oasis of both wealth and quietness. The street meanders past enormous banyan trees and deco mansions on large lots, the ultimate luxury in this city. One can even see a couple of constellations in the black sky, whereas from our building the night is opaque -- a heavy, sooty, shroud of grayish pink. Descending the hill means feeling the temperature and the city's odors rise. The street at the base of the hill, Peddar Road -- my road -- is one of the city's busiest, and the short walk takes you from the cool, dark and night-jasmined to the sticky, floodlit, and exhaust-fumed. Kemp's Corner after midnight, is eerie, too, because...well, I almost wrote, "because the homeless go to sleep." But that really doesn't capture it. "Homeless," as used in the Western vernacular, carries the connotation of rare, or low-density; y'know, those unusual people who don't have homes. I don't know what the statistics are here, but it can seem like half the city sleeps on the street. The density is so high, that it's regulated: you can't just sleep anywhere; the choice spots under overhangs or away from traffic are carefully allocated. In that sense, people do have homes, it's just that home is a particular piece of sidewalk. Walking on the sidewalk after midnight, or even along the side of the road, is like trying to pick your way across a prime beach on an August weekend. Nor is it the familiar shopping-cart sort of scenario that is homelessness in the urban West. These are families with children, with perhaps a few belongings stacked neatly at the perimeter of the ragged sheet they're on. The parents are often even employed, but the big problem on the streets is the inability to save money. Cash will be taken via theft or demands of baksheesh; material possessions will not. Daily cash gets converted into food, silk, bangles, or -- this being Mumbai, city of cinematic dreams
-- movie tickets.
It's disturbingly easy to tune out Mumbai's poverty after you've been here for a while. During the day, you just don't even register the commotion of skinny, naked children playing in the gutters while their mothers tend small cooking fires. At night, though, when it's quiet, when it's just bodies, everywhere, is when the numbers start to clobber you. And descending into it from Altamount Road, from a pleasant, empty evening with a Bollywood actor whose films these homeless dreamers save up to see, after a second, gluttonous dinner...it isn't the facile cliché of liberal guilt -- it's all a lot more complicated than that -- but it doesn't go down easily, either. It’s hard to place yourself in relation to this carpet of humanity; it’s not a simple continuum of privation and privilege. As we rounded the main intersection, by the Kemp's Corner flyover, a block from our apartment, I saw that a huge billboard of Amitabh Bachchan, who’s probably alone responsible for drawing a million now-destitute hopefuls from the villages to the city, had been put atop a six-story building. The sidewalk below, one of the broadest in the neighborhood, was completely and efficiently crammed with dreaming, sweaty, filthy families. And I couldn't help but think of the Oscar Wilde line: "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
Nonetheless, N kept dropping me little free-associative emails, and I kept replying. He started inviting me out to fashion shows, which I kept declining. His correspondence dropped off for a while after my photo appeared on the main newspaper's society page with K's, with the caption "[my name] and fiancé." (K, incidentally, tried to put on a brave face about making his Mumbai debut in such a derivative fashion, but there was some bruised ego with our cornflakes that Sunday morning, believe you me.) But, then, he started dropping me little chatty notes again, and, recently, had been after me to come play carrom with him. I turned him down once or twice, not the least because I had no idea what carrom was, but, finally, I couldn't without being rude, and agreed to a short-notice game, even though I was exhausted.
I took K, of course, and, for good measure (read: tethered goat), our unmarried friend T. I figured we'd stay an hour or two, and then I could hit the sack. N lives out in Andheri, of "hell is an autorickshaw to..." fame. No way I was going out there. But he had a friend, F, who lives near the U.S. housing compound on Altamount Road, which is not far from our apartment.
N's friend F turned out to be one of these delightful Indian men who speak with an Oxbridge accent but have never been to the UK. He was the dilettante child of a wealthy family, and had an expensive -- if, through no fault of his own, crumbling -- apartment tastefully furnished in bright, unusual colors and gorgeous antique furniture. There's a kind of style in Mumbai of "shabby-chic meets money": it doesn't result in "cheap-n-cheerful," as you'd get in the US or UK, but rather, "ruination as a bittersweet aesthetic." Done with proper consciousness, it can be superb.
Carrom turned out to be sort of like pool, but played on a smaller table, and using finger-flicks rather than cue sticks. Sounded simpler; turned out to be more difficult. N kept insisting on giving me lots of extra tries, and kept draping himself over me in demonstrating proper form; T, quite ignored, giggled snidely, and K, quite oblivious -- not for the first time -- chatted animatedly with F. Much beer was consumed, and much fun was had, even if I turned out to be a miserable player (T had played as a child and did fine; K, mysteriously, turned out to be a natural at it). After the second game I jumped up, ready to take our leave. N and F were both incredulous: surely, you're not planning to GO?
K and T both seemed to be having fun. Snacks had just been brought out by a shy servant. Ok, fine. The merriment continued until 11. Then, once again, I started to explain: my work day starts at 8:30. We've got a "duck-and-cover" drill, of all things. I think I have to inaugurate a school, though I'm sure that's not a big deal. F looked at me pleadingly.
"But dinner's about to be served."
I laughed.
Then I realized he was serious.
Ok, ok. We don't want anyone's housestaff beaten for being tardy with the dinner. The board was put away, more beer was brought, we chatted, I struggled to stay awake. I promised myself I'd leave at 11:30, even if it meant leaving K and T as forfeited collateral and walking home myself. At 11:29, an elaborate feast was set out on the huge faux-ivory carved serving table: several different types of curries. Naan. Goan rice. Raita. Chutneys.
We'd all, of course, eaten dinner before coming. But one doesn't want to give offense, even if one can hardly be blamed for putting on thirty pounds, what with these midnight multi-course dinners.
About an hour later -- what seemed like the minimum polite time -- I started in, a little more determinedly, on the leave-taking again.
"But there's dessert!" F said. "Pure sugar cane, in ghee, with ice cream!"
Luckily, that made it easier. I won't be rude just for the sake of my sleep, or my health. But my thighs are another matter.
The walk back, from Altamount Road to Kemp's Corner, is always a little strange. Altamount is on a hill, and it's an oasis of both wealth and quietness. The street meanders past enormous banyan trees and deco mansions on large lots, the ultimate luxury in this city. One can even see a couple of constellations in the black sky, whereas from our building the night is opaque -- a heavy, sooty, shroud of grayish pink. Descending the hill means feeling the temperature and the city's odors rise. The street at the base of the hill, Peddar Road -- my road -- is one of the city's busiest, and the short walk takes you from the cool, dark and night-jasmined to the sticky, floodlit, and exhaust-fumed. Kemp's Corner after midnight, is eerie, too, because...well, I almost wrote, "because the homeless go to sleep." But that really doesn't capture it. "Homeless," as used in the Western vernacular, carries the connotation of rare, or low-density; y'know, those unusual people who don't have homes. I don't know what the statistics are here, but it can seem like half the city sleeps on the street. The density is so high, that it's regulated: you can't just sleep anywhere; the choice spots under overhangs or away from traffic are carefully allocated. In that sense, people do have homes, it's just that home is a particular piece of sidewalk. Walking on the sidewalk after midnight, or even along the side of the road, is like trying to pick your way across a prime beach on an August weekend. Nor is it the familiar shopping-cart sort of scenario that is homelessness in the urban West. These are families with children, with perhaps a few belongings stacked neatly at the perimeter of the ragged sheet they're on. The parents are often even employed, but the big problem on the streets is the inability to save money. Cash will be taken via theft or demands of baksheesh; material possessions will not. Daily cash gets converted into food, silk, bangles, or -- this being Mumbai, city of cinematic dreams
-- movie tickets.
It's disturbingly easy to tune out Mumbai's poverty after you've been here for a while. During the day, you just don't even register the commotion of skinny, naked children playing in the gutters while their mothers tend small cooking fires. At night, though, when it's quiet, when it's just bodies, everywhere, is when the numbers start to clobber you. And descending into it from Altamount Road, from a pleasant, empty evening with a Bollywood actor whose films these homeless dreamers save up to see, after a second, gluttonous dinner...it isn't the facile cliché of liberal guilt -- it's all a lot more complicated than that -- but it doesn't go down easily, either. It’s hard to place yourself in relation to this carpet of humanity; it’s not a simple continuum of privation and privilege. As we rounded the main intersection, by the Kemp's Corner flyover, a block from our apartment, I saw that a huge billboard of Amitabh Bachchan, who’s probably alone responsible for drawing a million now-destitute hopefuls from the villages to the city, had been put atop a six-story building. The sidewalk below, one of the broadest in the neighborhood, was completely and efficiently crammed with dreaming, sweaty, filthy families. And I couldn't help but think of the Oscar Wilde line: "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
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