Thinking aloud !

Vada Pav Trivia

2011-01-19T06:02:00.001-08:00

BEST FUSION FOOD – Vada from the East and Pao (Portueguese for bread) from the west

Etymology – the combination of the traditional Batatavada and Pav and accompanying tangy chutneys supposed to have been invented by a street vendor outside Dadar station. Its the true 'By Mumbai/ For Mumbai' street food !

Energy contents -1 Vada Pav = 295 Calories (Look at it this way- a poor man can get calories enough for one meal in just 2 Vada Pavs/ about 12 Rupee i.e.20 cents )

Sociology - Nothing can beat bonding over vadapav and cutting chai ! Saste mein mast !

Politics –The Sena staked a claim on the vada pav as their own, and started a chain of Shiv Vada pav stalls in Mumbai. What’s more they got MacDonald’s to sponsor a Vadapav sammelan in Mumbai. Talk about smart marketing!

Mukul Shivputra

2009-03-17T05:16:00.000-07:00

Attended a concert by Mukul Shivputra, Kumar Gandharva's son, a few days back at Yashwant Sabhagrah.

Few sons of gifted fathers grow out of the long shadows cast by their illustrious parents. We’ve all grown up listening to Kumar Gandharva’s distinctive music in awe…can’t think of a longer shadow than that.

Before the concert we talked about how so many sons and disciples of the classical music maestros seem like pale imitations of the original. They imbibe the style and technique but the creative genius is missing.

I had heard a lot about the reclusive Mukul Shivputra…didn’t know how much of it was truth and how much, hearsay. That he has spend the last 20 yrs like a sanyasi in the temples of Madhya Pradesh, that he sung only in temples for many years, also that he had addiction problems, had performed rarely in his lifetime but still was rumored to be one of the most talented singers of Hindutani classical music. We were curious to hear for ourselves…..almost expecting to be disappointed. The organisers hadn't even announced his name after earlier performances. Heard whispers going around...'has he not turned up !'. He also had a reputation for being quite the infant terrible and not turning up for concerts, they said. However, to our relief, when the curtains opened after the break, there he was tuning the tanpuras.

His first notes poured in and they totally captivated us. There were no calisthenics to show off his prowess...the raag poured forth, mellifluous and smooth. A beautiful and delicate fabric of the Jaijaiwanti was woven. Often singers show off with complicated ‘alaaps’ and ‘taans’ to impress listeners, not realizing that this sometimes violates the very nature and mood of the raag. Mukul is clearly a maestro and he did not need to do that. I would say his Jaijaiwanti was remarkable and up there among the very best.

His style is clearly different from his father, with clear influences of the dhrupad, dhamaar gaayaki. You don’t feel like you are listening to ‘junior’ but a ‘Pandit’ who has spent a lifetime in ‘saadhana’.

He ended what felt like a short performance with the Bhairavi. The Bhairavi, to me, evokes a feeling of completion; a feeling of finishing one journey and setting off on another longer sojourn. It has both the sweetness of having enjoyed a great time together and the grief of parting. To me, Bhimsen’s rendition of ‘Babul mora….naihar chooto jaye….’ is the classic Bhairavi. Mukul ended his performance with a Bhairavi so brief and piquant and of such heart-rending finality…. that we sat numb in our seats….forgetting to clap, craving for more!!

I will return to listen to Mukul Shivputra if he visits our city again….I want to hear him sings the more aggressive ragas, the introspective ones and also the playful ones.
Most of our stalwarts of Hindutani classical vocal music like Bhimsen Joshi, Kishori tai, Prabha Atre, Pandit Jasraj are 75 +….they have their best years behind them!
It feels good to know that we have gifted singers like Mukul to listen to for the years to come.

Two Divas on International Women's day

2009-03-08T06:50:00.000-07:00

Today, on international women’s day, I want to recount an evening with two Granddames of Indian classical music and theatre respectively – Kishore Amonkar and Vijaya Mehta. The occasion was a the publication of Kishori’s book ‘Swararthmani’.

Gaan-saraswati Kishori is 77 yr old and is one of the most eminent singers of Hindustani classical music of our times. Vijaya Mehta, 75 yr old, theatre actor, director and director of NCPA has left an indelible mark on Indian theatre, experimenting with various indigenous and international theatre forms.

It was privilege to listen to these women in discourse with each other….I don’t know if the younger generations would ever have such an opportunity.

They talked of defining moments when they felt a oneness with their art and which left lasting impressions on their lives. Kishori, when she sung the Raag Baageshari once as a young girl had the experience which changed her life. While she sat to do her daily riyaaz in a very jovial and happy mood, she ended up feeling very despondent and introspective after her riyaaz. It was then that she realized that it was the very essence and ‘bhaav’ of the Raag Baageshri which had seeped into her mind ….that the ‘Raag’ was a living, breathing entity……had a life of it’s own and was not just a sequence of notations. Thus she stressed that its important when singing to immerse oneself and to be one with the soul of the ‘Raag’. She say’s; ‘I realized that even if I die, the Raag Bageshshri will be alive and will thrive through other voices…I’m just the instrument”

Vijaya Mehta recounted how, once as a novice actor, she had arrived early for a rehearsal of a play….she was alone in the theatre and she had this out of body experience where the stage, the light beams, the gentle swaying of the curtains, the silence in the auditorium made her feel part of the ‘Natya bramha’ (the cosmos of theater), she felt it breathing with her and had tears streaming down her cheeks. She had to strive to seek to seek a oneness with it everytime she performed/ directed plays on the stage.

Vijaya Mehta talked about attaining ‘Solititude in Public’ with every person in the audience connecting individually with the artist/ performer and both the performer and listener forgeting their physicality. Like emotional memories where some sensory stimulus like a the smell of new rain for example can evoke old memories so vividly complete with sounds, textures, colors, smells and emotions …..in the same manner once an actor becomes one with a character he/she should be able create an environment which is so alive to the audience they become totally engrossed in what’s happening on the stage.

The two women who have striven for excellence and realization in their art, embodied ‘Streeshakti’ at its most vibrant and

vital at 75 +.

Running out of time !

2009-01-27T21:31:00.000-08:00

Quoting some provocative thoughts that appeared in an article in the 24 Jan, 2009 issue of Tehelka, by Prerna Singh Bindra

"Upto 4 species go extinct every hour. If we want to preserve our world, and ourselves, we must act immediately. An estimated 99.9 percent of all the species that have ever appeared on this planet are now gone forever."
"Biodiversity is vital for the survival of life on earth. Everything is linked, nothing exists in isolation, but instead in a symbiotic relationship. A break in a crucial link in the chain and life as we know it would collapse like the proverbial house of cards"
"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left", was Albert Einstien's apocalyptic vision.

The Forgotten Temple

2009-01-08T03:15:00.000-08:00

I had never heard of this 12th century temple before I stumbled upon pictures on Flickr and was totally entranced. I just had to visit the temple soon and my wish was finally fulfilled.

Though, the guide books say 60 kms from Kolhapur, it took a much longer time to drive down as most of the road meanders through small villages. It was sugarcane harvest season and every now and then bullock carts loaded with sugarcane would block the one-lane roads and we would have to patiently cool our heels and let them pass before driving on. The tourists obviously have not discovered this place yet.

It was harvest season and driving through rippling fields of millet, ripe yellow sunflowers, dense sugarcane and cool banana plantations made us forget the blistering afternoon heat.
This was real village life untouched by urban ugliness. Old fashioned red roofed houses with wells in the courtyard and the beautiful white flowering ‘chapha’ trees gracing the courtyards. Bullocks instead of tractors tilled the farms and not a single car zipped past us.

Khidrapur really is a very small village with only a couple of tea stalls outside the temple complex. Stepping through the simple stone entrance, the sight that great your eyes leaves you spell bound. My teenage daughter, who usually greets new places with the bored cynicism typical of a teenager, was speechless and just wandered around touching the smooth, time worn stone structure with reverence. The beauty of the old stone temple takes your breath away.

The lone guide roaming the premises soon spotted us and gave us his spiel on the temple history and mythology. It was a wondrous story... the myth behind the beautiful, ancient stone temple. Lord Shiva is bequeathed with an unusual name here. ‘Kopeshwar’- the furious one and never was a name more befitting to his true nature. The story goes that his wife visits her father, King Daksha. She is insulted when he insults her husband. (Shiva- the ascetic, who lives in the rarified mountains of the Himalayas, with his austere and almost frightening demenear, he who gets punch drunk with his followers and dances the wild, abandoned ‘tandav’, has a serpents around his neck, adorns his body with the ashes of the dead and carries the river Ganga in the wild, matted locks on his head was not know to be the most genteel of Gods.) She is angry and she jumps into the ‘Yagna’ and immolates herself. Shiva infuriated on hearing this starts emiting tremendous heat. The legend says that temple was built to cool him down.

According to the guidebook,this temple was built by three generations of kings, the Shilahar kings- Gandaraditya, Vijayaditya and Bhoj-2 between 1109 and 1178 ad. There are inscriptions in Devanagri in the temple to support this. It's also one of the few temples where both the shaivas and vaishnavas, who are arch rivals, come together in worship.

Step into its cool precincts and marvel at the beautiful circular swarga mandap which is most unusual in its architecture. There are twelve beautiful tapering pillars which support the stone ceiling that is open to the skies. The Sabhamandap, Antaralkaksha and Garbhagriha, which is almost entirely in darkness, follow. The guide book informs us that the temple is adorned with ‘105 elephants and 95 pillars and hundreds of sculptures from the Shiv charitra, Mahabharata, Ramayana and flowers, trees, birds, human figurines.'

Unfortunately, the sculptures are badly mutilated by Islamic invaders in the later centuries. The story goes that one of Aurangazeb’s progeny strayed when wandering around on her own and came across this temple. She was so entranced that she refused to leave the temple complex and go with her attendants. The Emperor came personally to fetch her. She requested him not mutilate the temple and mar its beauty and so the temple remained unscathed from the otherwise merciless Aurangazeb’s sabre. It was Khyder Khan a later invader, who supposedly mutilated the carvings on the temple and the cut almost all the elephant’s trunks. There is no accurate historical record of this, though. Whoever destroyed it, you feel pained to see such beauty marred and mutilated. The irony is that the village of Wadi-Kopeshwar later came to be known as Khidrapur after this cruel invader.

Though one does feel that this treasure should be appreciated by many, the thought of tourists invading in hordes is distressing. I want to visit atleast one more time before that happens.

Street gastronomia

2007-10-12T23:23:00.001-07:00

Paani puri is an Indian snack that should ideally only be had on the streets. This photo shows a sanitised version served in the food court of a mall. Notice the plastic gloves worn by the guy, the bottle of mineral water and the sparkling clean utensils. No fun !!

I attempt to describe this snack with much trepidation because one only just has to eat it to understand what it is all about. Its not as much a gastronomic delight as its a tangy gastronomic sensation !

These crisp fried rounds (puris, which you can see in the picture) are punctured with a finger and filled with steamed lentils, boiled and spiced potatoes and what have you. Then these are dipped in a sweet sour chutney (made of tamarind, dates, jaggery and other tangy spices). Finally this puri is dipped in the pot containing the 'paani' -spiced water. (which he is doing here). What goes into the paani is a trade secret the paanipuri walas never reveal and you can never get it just right at home). Then with the water brimming over the puri you are to pop the puri whole into your mouth, crunch on it and just drown in the sensation.
I feel no-one makes Paani Puri like the Bumbaiyya panditji - something about the water here :) I think ! Its not for the squeamish and those prone to stomach infections though. When I was new to the city and was trying it for the first time I choked on a puri and stayed away from it until I could muster enough courage to try it again!

P.S- I saw an interesting journey into evolution of Indian street food on a News Channel on TV, the other day by veteran journalist Vinod Dua. He took us to the streets of old Delhi which still bear some traces of Moghul culture in its old buildings and street shops. There are some shop in the food steet there which have been in the business for 7 generations and still use the same recipes. Paani puri seems to have originated in the Moghul times when there was a water infection in the city and people added some spices known for their digestive properties (like cumin powder, black salt) to the drinking water.

The ‘Kawaii’ Kraze in Japan

2007-08-01T04:43:00.000-07:00

(I clicked this photo in a suburban Mumbai mall. It was their monsoon decoration theme and seemed, with its pastel colours, an apt illustration for this blog post)

Young women squealing –‘Kawaiiiii’ in a high pitch, long drawn out voice is what you will hear most commonly in Japan. Kawaii means cute and cute seems to be the all pervading trend in Japan. It’s not so much a wave as a tsunami and 'Kawaiiness' seems almost embedded in their culture.

The most popular fallout of Kawaii – the ‘Hello Kitty’ motif, adorns lunch boxes, clothes, office stationary, even kitchen appliances. Pink is the favorite color and several corporates have build multi million yen empires fuelling the Kawaii trend.

There seems almost an obsession with being cute with Japanese women: Kawaii frilly pastel shirts, pink lipstick, butterfly hair bands, hello kitty wallets. Women talk in cute squeaky voices, pout, act silly and strike affective poses.

Feminists strongly opine that the traditional male centric Japanese culture attempts to keep its women dependant, immature, simpering to keep them from becoming assertive like western women.

There is a contrasting point of view however, which thinks these ‘Kawaii’ women are material girls….with their unashamed consumerism and self indulgence!! Young women more often than not live with their parents, save on housekeeping expenses and splurge on branded clothes, cosmetics and foreign holidays. They don’t want to get married and follow the conventional Japanese ‘home and hearth’ dictum.

Isn't that in keeping with the world ! Women all over world are becoming consumerist with a vengeance and Japanese women have just given consumerism a 'Kawaii' twist !!

Change the Way the World sees you......

2007-07-30T09:26:00.000-07:00

IT
...BE AN IT PROFESSIONAL !!

This Ad on a bus in Mumbai seemed bang on....pressing the buttons of almost every young Indian students aspirations !!

Ironically, the people sitting in the bus seemed to symbolise those who have actually missed the new economy bus; (the beneficiaries being the new IT professionals with their swanky cars, five figure salaries and jet setting lifestyles); and are stuck with socialist India's shackles.

A man who had worked for 30 yrs of his life said despondently, " I finally paid off my apartment mortgage after working for so many years and it was my biggest achievement but today my son (the IT professional) has bought an apartment and a car in just two years of working and is planning a 'foreign' honeymoon. I feel like a failure."

Today's Indian youngster does not rebel against parental restrictions...she does not have the time....she joins coaching classes paid for by parents, studies long hours...clears her exams and gains her coveted IT degree which is going to be her passport to freedom and a lifestyle which her parents didn't even dream about.

'India didn't benefit only from the dot-com boom, it benefitted even more from the dot-com bust' say's Thomas Friedman.
SO BE AN IT PROFESSIONAL OR IF YOU CAN'T MAKE THE MARK ATLEAST JOIN A BPO !

From Pillar to Passport

2007-07-24T02:29:00.000-07:00

“Is Asia’s other powerhouse (India) ready for its moment in the Sun?”
Reads a headline on a 2006 issue of Newsweek lying around under a heap in my office. Most times, I would answer with a resounding ‘YES’!!

Today, however, I’m feeling stressed, hassled, bothered and deep down, despondent as I have not felt for a long time and I might just slump in my seat, not look in the eye, when I say ‘yes’ to that !

I have just stepped into my office at (12.noon) wasted ½ a day standing in queue in front of a post office. This is my third unfruitful visit to the same place. Reason? I have wanted to apply for my daughter’s passport and wanted to do it myself without going through the ubiquitous ‘Agent’ which a nicer word for the tout hanging around all Indian government offices. They make your work easier by pocketing a ‘commission’ which in turn is a nicer word for bribe to pay a network of people working in those offices to get you through the 'paperwork' which in turn is nicer word harassment & obstruction.

The passport application is a simple process…you have the necessary documents; you download a form, fill it and submit it. I have found that it does not work that way and everything is done to make you feel frustrated and give up trying to do it on your own. I have resolved to not pay the agent a Rs.2500/- fee for a passport in addition to the Rs.600/- which is the actual fee. Tomorrow is yet another day and I am going to persevere!! I will go and stand in queue at 7 am for a counter that opens at 10 am.

POSTSCRIPT:
How has the Indian private sector managed to grow at such an extraordinary pace?
“THE GOVERNMENT SLEEPS AT NIGHT AND THE ECONOMY GROWS !” say Gurcharan Das, former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, India…tongue firmly in cheek !!

Drives in the rain

2007-07-06T00:07:00.000-07:00

Drove out to Kolhapur...incessant rain...driving through the clouds...low visibility....white headlights/ red tail lights.......misty....goosebumps.....the smell of rain......dark/ lit tunnels.....starbursts on the windsheild....

mellow music....wet earth....swaying trees....the ploughing season...smiling village belles.....switching on the car heater to warm the toes.....a cuppa coffee had while parked on the highway.....vada pav at the highway stop.....breathing in cool, fresh air!! Hmmm Bliss too has to end ..back in Mumbai !!

Heralding the summer

2007-05-29T04:02:00.000-07:00

I have admired the beautiful autumn pictures on Flickr posted by the Americans and Europeans and the delicate, awesome ‘Sakura’; the cherry blossom from Japan and have missed having autumn in India. Wasn’t there an Indian equivalent to the Sakura, I’ve often asked myself!!

I am one of those very, very few people in Mumbai who have a profusion of trees around their apartment block. Come summer and the beautiful mango tree was in fragrant bloom with promise of rich rewards of ripe succulent mangoes. The ‘koyal’ (cuckoo) whose summer abode is the mango tree, sang in her shrill voice everyday and we had ‘jugulbandis’ (duets) with her ….the more you imitate her the shriller she gets till her call reaches such a crescendo that it wavers and breaks. Children love to tease and provoke her. I beam when I get phone calls and even the most formal of client is startled into asking a surprised ‘Is that a koyal singing? In Mumbai?’

As the mango bloom sings and tantalizes your nose what dazzles your eyes is the flamboyant ‘Gulmohar’ bloom that truly announces the summer with aplomb.

The ‘Royal Poinciana’ or Krishnachura as its known in Bengal is described as the most colorful tree in the world(by the Wikipedia, not me!). These trees have the most vivid color scheme I’ve seen on a tree – Flagrant red flowers; of its five petals one is a sensual striped orange-red. The leaves are a dark green. This tree is truly of an Indigenous color scheme – earthy, bright, vivid color contrasts !

This is probably nature's justice – the blistering summer heat to endure with the mango and the Gulmohar as the recompense to our parched senses !!

2007-04-30T09:47:00.000-07:00

Hum Tum (you n me)

I think this picture has a story waiting to be told. A working class Mumbai couple living in a one room tenement, sharing their living quarters with many others. Both working hard through the day, spending hours commuting in crowded trains....this a little moment of privacy, togetherness, spending some quiet time together, bonding with their child....these few moments are probably the glue which keeps their family together !!

Would the moral police think this behavior as indecent, not becoming, a bad influence on society...perhaps/ perhaps not !! Maybe the self appointed moral police need to just....live a little !!

An Ideal life !

2007-04-11T03:44:00.000-07:00

Good books, good friends and a sleepy conscience. An Ideal life !!
Mark Twain

Exam Frenetics !!

2007-04-05T01:47:00.000-07:00

Across the country, as the late March sun scorches and summer sets in, a fever of another kind grips Indian households !! Its final exam times. In a country where a child's board exam scores ARE her IQ scores and they brand her for life, these are critical times. Mothers take month long breaks from offices, fathers bring back home the new self study reckoners. The topic of discussion at many a 'kitty party' are the feared finals.

Luckily my daughter's school didn't have exams till the 4th grade. So no pressures, no competition...it was fun !! But she is in 6th grade now and we are feeling the heat now. Last year I was nonchalant about final exams and she found it difficult to cope on her own. Her grades slipped and she was disheartened when her friends scored better. This year I'm home with her, helping her with her maths and revising her answers to the last point.

Yes, the system is regimental and rote learning is reinforced. Getting the answer pat, putting down all the points as given in the textbook is given more importance than understanding and developing an interest in the subject. Mathematics is becoming all about solving sums by method A or method B and not so much about using one's own logic and getting the answer right. I remembered my rebelliousness in childhood when i told my parents; "there are other types of intelligence than mathematical aptitude and just scoring in Maths doesn't make me a genius! "

Today as a mother I can't tell my daughter to go ahead and do her own thing. I don't want to see her crestfallen face when she lags behind on marks. I don't want her to get into a pattern of 'underachieving' under the guise of not conforming to the system. I don't want to her to not be able to get into the best college where every single percent could make a difference. I don't want her to turn around and say 'you did'nt help me to try beat the system'. I also don't want to have to buy an expensive 'donation seat' for her and make her feel like a fake when she qualifies for the profession of her calling !!

Rue the Education system in Indian with far too many aspiring students and very few academic institutions. But I shall roll up my sleeves, take time off from work, like all other good Indian mothers and help her do well within the system !!!
Wish me best of luck !!!

A ‘Sari’ State of Affairs

2007-03-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

Read Shashi Tharoor’s article in The Times of India the other day about the Fading allure of the Sari for the Indian woman.

I think Mr. Tharoor …as an Indian, working class woman……..

• A point in the favor of Indian women is that while their menfolk shamelessly shed their dhotis when they started working in the gora sahib’s offices long ago we Indian women still wear saris (albeit less frequently than earlier! ). The Dhoti, it is sad to say is now an extinct apparel… and we only get to ogle at hunky men in dhotis (Amir Khan on huge hoardings of Titan ads….drool !!) very rarely…what with the advent of the metro-sexual man who wears pink floral shirts with hair bands !!

• Yes, I do think the Sari flatters the form (especially the Indian form – wide hips, thunder thighs et al). I especially think so when I squeeze into trousers and fitted shirt for a meeting. My self image takes a battering when the mirror tells me I look like more lumpy than curvy. Not a very good start to a working day.
We do feel elegant and even beautiful when Sari clad.

So why are we giving up on the Sari and adopting the bland salwar kameez or the (western) trousers and shirt in flocks.

When I ask myself why….

• Practicality is probably one of the biggest reasons. Women who work find it too inconvenient, time-consuming and uncomfortable to be draping a sari with hectic morning schedules, to be boarding congested trains and buses (without the fear of the sari coming undone in public).

• The overriding Bollywood influence could be the culprit. Indians almost seem mesmerized and stupefied by Bollywood and the predominantly Punjabi Bollywood culture of the ‘kudis and mundas, soniye and baliye’. Thus the Punjabification of even apparel – women wearing chiffon shararas, gararas at weddings and pushing their Kanjeevarams and dharmavarams to the back of the wardrobes to dole out benevolently to maids for Diwali.

What could the Sari campaign do to get women back in their 5 yard drapes?
Several solutions come to my mind:

• Perhaps if Indian husbands too caught up with the rest of the world and started helping their wives in housework in their morning chores leaving time for women to peacefully drape the sari.

• Pre-draped, stitched saris which women could just get into like trousers would be wonderful – (provided they are also unfurl proof)

• We could look at the Bollywood images of Sushmita Sens in saris under waterfalls, and the Shilpa Shettys with their hour glass figure draped in the avant garde sari for inspiration !!!

While I was gestating over this post…one day on a journey in the morning ladies train………when getting off at Churchgate a beautiful sight greeted my eyes. Thousands of bright sari clad, immaculately groomed women spilled out onto the platform and briskly made their way to their offices. I was pole axed….I didn’t even know that it was some festival day and they had all made an effort to look festive and still make it on time at 8.30 to office. I vowed to make the effort more often myself ...….….LONG LIVE THE SARI!

When there should be dreams in their eyes !

2007-03-13T02:28:00.000-07:00

I always lament the lack of open spaces; play grounds, parks for our children in Mumbai. They are growing up in this 'urban zoo' watching the sky through balcony grills with infinite buildings dotting the smoggy sky line. When I look back on my childhood in a then idyllic small city-Pune, and the freedom we enjoyed-cycling to school, climbing hillocks and going on cycling excursions to nearby forts with friends, theirs seems impoverished. Play stations at malls are their adventure zones and they get their thrills from playing the latests games on the PC. With even the sky on ration are we taking away our children's ability to dream !!

Morning mists & rickshaws !

2007-02-28T21:55:00.000-08:00

A South African national sitting next to me on a flight once asked how it was to travel in rickshaws. He was very curious; he felt it would be terrifying as they seemed to drive at break neck speeds and the rick seemed open on all sides, so one would maybe just pop out and the rickshaw would speed away without even noticing it !

I smiled my enigmatic smile...(always appears on Indian faces when conversing with non-indians about India)...I told him that it was a once in life time experience that he should not miss while in Mumbai.

I have always loved traveling by rickshaws....Why? Let me count the ways...

1) The only other option is the train...only painfully thin people who can aggresively push through like rugby players can squeeze into a Mumbai train at peak hours...so that rules me out...and how ! I have only ever followed cricket where it is all about not budging from the crease.

2) In absence of good amusement parks..(we have only handkerchief-sized parks in the city where on any given evening the density of people inside is so much that you need to stroll out of the park for fresh air)..this can be the best roller coaster ride you would ever get.

3) As the air in Mumbai (especially in winters) is kind if thick with smog and breathing it in is a lung exercise in itself...the speeding Rick really stirs it up and works up a little tornado...a gust of fresh air all only for you..its the only time you will have the wind blowing in your face in the city!

4) Mumbai rickshaw-walas are professionals and laconic to the point that I have to really try to get them talking.(Unlike the Lucknow-oily grins/ over familiar, Delhi-thugs, Pune- rude, obnoxious)Only if you can establish a rapport will they give you pearls of wisdom about the city traffic conditions today, when the next political rally/ strike/ festival is to explode on us and which roads are best avoidable on what days

5) Why go to a disco when you can sit in a Mumbai musical Rick instead. The latest Bollywood remix music blaring from speakers designed to blast out the passenger's ear drums, with the speed of the vehicle taking precarious turns on its three wheels can really make you feel...well...airborne.

6) Besides when I am stuck in traffic for a long time (which is quite frequently) I would rather read than get a sore back from keeping my foot perenially pressed over the clutch driving my own car.

Although it's not advisable for old people, people with hernia, pregnant ladies, people with back problems, appendicitis, allergies, coughs, spondilitis....its a long list....I have none of the above ailments yet and hence for me THE RICKSHAW ROCKS ! This bone rattling contraption shakes up and clears my aura, getting me all energized for a new day.....MUMBAI HERE I COME !