Taala (The Lock)

Some times, some things affect you in a way you would have never thought of. And they occur out of sheer randomness -- out of the blue! That's exactly how I came across this beautiful poem, pasted inside a bus in Mumbai, in Sept'08. I couldn't help but jot it down. Read on.
--

ताला

आती है गौरय्या
और दरवाज़े के लटकते ताले पर
मारती है ठोर

कुत्ता आता है
खोलने की कोशिश में
ताबड़-तोड़ पटकता है पांव

दौड़ती हुई आती है गाय
और ज़ोर-ज़ोर से हंकरने लगती है

सोच नहीं पाता है डाकिया
किसको दे वह चिट्ठी
ताला
कई दिनों से लटका है यहाँ

पुरबईया और पछुआ हवा के झोंके
हिला नहीं पाते हैं ताले को
कितना भारी हो गया है
यह ताला

कितना अखरता है एक व्यक्ति का न होना

-- कुमार वीरेन्द्र

Slum tourism

Last Sunday, The Times of India carried this very interesting piece on slum tours (Dharavi through a peephole). It came as a shocker. It raises a lot of issues about such tours and their feasibility. Is it simply tourism or voyeurism -- into poor people's lives? However, one thing is for sure. It'll give you jitters. It'll lay bare the naked truth about all the development taking place in the middle-class India. How sensible are we to the realities of life? We can't live without such people. We need them to wash our clothes, utensils, do odd jobs for us. But we don't want them on the city scape. We would like them to go, live somewhere far from the locales of the city. Howsoever far that may be or howsoever painstaking the daily travel may be, it's not our headache. Read this piece to get shocked.

Related stories:

1. Slum Visits: Tourism or Voyeurism? (Link)

2. Slum tours: a day trip too far? (Link)

Nudes disrobed!

Disrobing in front of strangers, lying to friends and family, not being able to celebrate the excitement of being immortalised by art. It’s just another day at work for Mumbai’s nude models, finds Labonita Ghosh in this worth-reading urban tale.

“What would my neighbours say if they knew that I sit naked for hours in front of people young enough to be my grandchildren?,” says Arai Shankar Naidu, a sprightly grandmother-of-two and a full time nude model for JJ School of Art.

Framed Desire (2006) -- Anita