Guilty Elite: Toilets #1

This is the first post in a start of a series (hopefully) which will show inequality. I will try and keep judgment out of it.

I went to watch Byomkesh Bakshi at R-City Mall today. When I was in the loo, it seemed like they had managed to fit in an inordinately large number of urinals in that space. I don't think anyone would ever have to wait for someone else to finish. Feeling very curious, I counted.

In a Cinema in Tokyo (from Wikicommons)

Another place where I have never had to wait is the public toilet at CST Station in Mumbai. It has many stalls for men to stand and pee on the wall. It doesn't have urinals. I remember counting the stalls there as well.

I did some basic finding and calculation about the number of people visiting at each location. R-City mall has 8 theaters. One theater I counted had around 250 seats. Let's take that to be the average. Tomorrow, 6th April Monday, there will be 42 shows running during the day. So the maximum number of people that can ever watch a movie in a single is day is roughly (250 x 42) 10,000. I think, R-City would be happy to have even 7,000 people in a day and the average would be more like 5,000.

So here are the statistics (minor errors possible):

Movie show timings - 9 AM to 1:30 AM
Train timings - 4 AM (ish) to 12:45 AM

Number of people visiting daily

1. CST Terminus: More than one lakh -  > 1,00,000
2. R-City: 5,000 average (10,000 is the absolute best case)

So CST has at least 10 (usually 15-20) times the number of people.

Toilet Facilities

1. CST Terminus: 42 urinals. 4-5 taps. Don't know about toilets.
2. R-City: 47 urinals. 7 wash basins. 7 toilets. 

More number of every facility and obviously, much better in quality. I don't have pictures of either since I couldn't find any of them empty at any point of time.

P.S. As much as things change, the more they remain the same. :)

Our consecutive seat numbers. 17 after 15

Murder in Mumbai: My first Indian murder mystery

A month back, I started reading my first ever Indian murder mystery. That's right. After 26 years of growing up in India, I read the FIRST mystery novel which is Indian in its setting, characters and tone.

Murder in Mumbai by K.D. Calamur is about a police inspector and a journalist investigating the murder of a foreigner in Mumbai. It is not the best murder mystery I have read by far and not really a page-turner. However, it was engaging enough to capture my attention for a couple of days because the context was something I could relate to. After years of reading American mysteries and thrillers, it was wonderful to read a story with 'Inspector' and 'police' rather than 'Sheriff' and 'cops'. Just the Indian setting made the novel so much easier to relate to and I did not have to make the effort to understand and visualize American novels. 

Why did it take 26 years for me to read an Indian murder novel? Some of it is my fault. I haven't explored enough or taken effort to discover good Indian mystery novels. However, the fact that I have to 'make an effort' to discover good Indian books in India is exactly the problem with the system. Throughout my childhood, reading crime fiction meant Hardy Boys, Nancy Drews and Agatha Christie. As I grew up, the abundance of Sidney Sheldon, Harlan Coben, James Patterson was unavoidable. Not only crime fiction, in children's books as well, it is tough to find Indian books outside of mythology and Panchatantra genre moral tales. Young adult is full of Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, Divergent series etc. 

Where are the Indian authors? Where are the books in Indian languages in Indian settings? Books which show that in India, going out in the sun is not joyful. Books which talk about Holi, Onam and Id instead of Thanksgiving and Easter (I still don't know what these two are all about). The problems are many - lack of quality authors, lack of distribution capacity outside big cities, lack of book reviews and lack of a book reading culture in general. 

Do you feel this is changing? 

Will you beat me?

We have recently revamped our ‘basti’ library. Xook (pronounced zook) Books is its new name. We are trying everything to spread the word and get kids into the library. We are quite innovative about it too. Our strategy is that we stand on the road, stop kids walking on the road and ask them to come to the library. Does it actually work? Well, it does. A lot of them walk in after asking questions like – "What kind of books?" 

"Is there a fee?"

A few days back, my mother stopped a small boy and asked him to come and explore the library. 

"What's there?"

"It’s a place for you to read." 

The boy was a little skeptical. He asked – 

"I can read anything?!"
"Yes, you can read anything."
"If I don’t read, you will not beat me, will you?"

She was stunned. Speechless. She wanted to embrace him, comfort him and say – 'We will not beat you. Ever!'

Beating children is widespread in India. Everyone does it - parents, relatives, teachers, principals. This report, though slightly old, highlights the issue of corporal punishment. As this article mentions- 

"Despite being outlawed by the Right to Education Act in 2009, corporal punishment continues unabated in India’s schools. Just some headlines from the last few weeks. Jharkhand: "Teacher beats 8 year old to death." Ghaziabad: 6-Year-Old Allegedly Beaten by Teacher For Not Doing Homework. Howrah: "Class Eight Student Allegedly Beaten with Iron Chains by Teacher." One teacher in Kakinada did not even spare visually challenged students, beating them mercilessly."

A couple of days back, a new boy walked into the library. He looked a little lost so our librarian made him sit down and read him a story. After finishing the story, she told him to wander and explore the books. He went through multiple books before choosing one and sat down to read it. It appeared like he was struggling with it. Seeing him struggle, our librarian got up to help him. To get a better look at the book, she moved his hand. His hand automatically turned with palm facing up – prepared to be caned. He pleaded - 

"No. I am reading. Don’t hit me."

When I heard about it, I was disturbed and shocked at the instinctive sense of fear. Violence and fear is ingrained with reading and studying. However, what happened next gave me hope and belief to continue to do what we do. One of our 'Xook-ie' (yes, that's a word) kids looked at him and informed him – 

"Arey! Don’t be scared here. Nobody hits anyone here. You are safe here."

There is just joy of reading here!

This post has also been published on Indiateach - The Indian education blog.

Mohtarma visits the library

Preeta finally visited the library after hearing about it for a year. On my request, she has penned down her experience there. This is the second guest-post on the blog, not counting the student writing posts, and as usual, the writing is much better than what is normally written on this blog. Hopefully, some of it will rub off on my writing too.

---- Mohtarma (Preeta) Speaks -----------------------

I was visiting Bombay in my first vacation in over a year, and I had this library on the list of places I had to visit. I had heard about it since the days of its inception – from stories of painting the walls to acquiring bookshelves. Finally, in January, I came around to visiting it. I had a couple of hours to myself before the children started coming in, which I spent browsing the books and revisiting the books that I had read when I was a kid like the Malory Towers books and the story about the enormous turnip. Before I realized it, the children started streaming in – some of them directly from school, without even having changed out of their uniforms or having lunch.

The curiosity about the new visitor, yours truly, spread like wildfire. “Nayi didi aayi hai”, the word went around. Soon, they took it upon themselves to show me around – where the library passes were kept, the balcony where they likes to read, where the fiction books were kept, where the science books were kept, and where the games were kept. The sense of pride and ownership they felt about this place was amazing.

They asked me about myself, and were eager to talk about their lives. When they heard that I was from Delhi, they even asked me about the jhadu party and how they won the elections.

My conversations with these kids were refreshingly honest – it took me a while to register how differently I was used to acting in a profession where every word is weighed to meet a certain purpose. When they asked me why I was visiting, I told them, “I love reading, and Prachur bhaiya told me about your library”. They told me about their favourite stories, or the homework assignment that they were working on and gossip about who got scolded in class for what mischief.

I read with some of the kids – watching their expressions change as they slowly moved from word to word. They took up books to satiate a curiosity, and not out of compulsion. To see them inspired by stories like Malala, to be scared of gruffalos, to be excited about the history of different countries reminded me of my own reasons why I enjoyed reading. Some of them played games. They involved me in their games, and they showed me how to play. Their acts of spontaneous kindness and unguarded friendships made me feel completely at home.

These were extremely smart, sensitive and impressionable children. They had a childhood very different from what I, or most people I know, had. And still, I could see in them the same excitement that I feel in turning the page of a book. Between long school hours, tuitions and work, the tiny room above the Mahalakshmi dairy in Kamraj Nagar was to these kids an alternative universe. A small space, and window of time, where the possibilities are endless. Everybody deserves that. 

Readers visit a book store

For the first time ever, the blog has a guest post written by my co-teacher Shruti. I think that it's a beautiful write-up and a pleasant change. She is much more succinct and paints a vivid picture of the wonderful experience. Pictures are courtesy Anish who has been handling the camera for the past few months. Here is Shruti in her own words -

Off late, I have increased the number of read-alouds in class. More often than not, the meticulously picked out book from the library, intended to be a novelty for the kids from my side is intercepted by Soumya, who enthusiastically whispers the next events in the story to her neighbour as I read in class. I give her a silent disapproving look, afraid that she might ruin the story for her friend.  I am greeted by her smiling face in the recess, to be told that she has read ‘this’ book too. She even offers to pick out the book for the next read-aloud.

Soumya is one of the nine kids we took to The Comet Media Foundation at Fort on 8th February to celebrate our dedicated, passionate readers. As a bonus, they were asked to pick out a book for their library to be added as their selection. We spent a considerable time chalking out the list; elated about the fact that we had so many avid readers, disheartened that we could only take a few.

The afternoon heat that day did not deter the girls, Gayatri, Ragini, Rashmita, Yamuna, Nameera, Saira and Soumya from dressing up in their finest salwar-suits. The boys, Ravi and Karan wouldn’t be bothered with clothes and were the first ones to arrive, tugging at Anish’s shirt urging us to leave.

It was a comfortable train ride, with conversations having questions like “Didi, will it be a big bookstore?”, “Will we be allowed to talk there?” or the one which was asked every five minutes - “How much more time Didi?”

A brief walk to Hutatma Chawk got us to a building, with The People’s Bookstore on the ground floor. The watchman directed us to the second floor. A narrow but creatively decorated passage led us to a tiny room with bookshelves stacked on all sides with books and games. The place housed a range of books by Tullikha, Pratham, Tara and a plethora of simplistic but interesting toys. Within five minutes, each kid had found a book they liked and had started reading them. Karan was especially fascinated with the wooden caterpillar and suggested we get that for our library.

Karan with a toy

Yamuna playing with the blocks

Ragini is focusing on her puzzle after reading through a few books

By the end of thirty minutes, Anish found himself humming a Malayalam song from a multi-lingual book (which was picked up by Nameera later) and I was busy building the ‘perfect’ house with Rashmita out of colourful wooden blocks. Two hours later, all the kids had selected books for the library, all without any say from our side. Rashmita hoped that all the students liked the book she picked up. Gayatri was confused between two books that she claimed she loved equally. She made up her mind after a twenty-minute long contemplation.

A lovely picture of Gayatri and Shruti sharing a laugh

Rashmita in full concentration

Ravi, our Science enthusiast, was a bit disappointed about the place not having too many science books. But as we stood to get our books billed, he noticed a stack of thin, light-coloured books. They were by Arvind Gupta and contained beautiful science experiments. Ravi’s face lit up when we told him he could pick up two. We ended the day with lovely ginger biscuits and bun-maska at German Bakery.

It's now Ravi's turn to play with the blocks

The library now has these books with the kids’ names on them. Every time those books are picked up, it is a reminder to us about how far we’ve come; from making do with all the books that were donated to us, to having our kids pick out new books by themselves for ‘their’ library.

Soumya is pretty happy here

Day of water and fish

Incessant rains in the city forced even the trains to come to a halt in the city today. This came as a surprise news to me early in the morning. How will my co-teacher reach the school came to my mind immediately? After speaking to him, realized that he was fighting his way through such pretty constraints.

Alright, back to correcting papers. These were Math papers which hadn't been xeroxed properly and given to the kids. It was difficult to make out anything that was written on the papers. Sigh. A lot of time had been spent running around during that exam helping the kids read the question. When I entered the data into the tracker, realized that achievement on word problems was a brilliant 17%. Such a joyous moment for any teacher. They weren't the easiest problems on the planet but still. Just shows that there's a long way to go with the class.

Just as I was keeping the papers away, I heard a resounding crack behind me. I turn around and there's water gushing out from the fish tank and my feet are wet. The glass wall has given way. Ah yes, we have a fish tank in our house. Even when we didn't have drinking water, we had the fish tank courtesy our weirdo landlord. There are 3 huge fishes in a big fish tank in our hall. They are grumpy looking and apparently cost Rs.80 grand a pair. According to our voodoo loving landlady, they are auspicious and react to the mood swings of the landlord and house environment. They are supposed to change color when someone's sick in the house or when there's fighting in the house.

So clearly, today they realized the flooding outside in the city and decided that their own hall needs to be flooded. Within a minute, our drawing room was pool of water with mattresses and bags hurriedly removed. I spent the next 30 minutes holding the glass wall tightly so that water wouldn't gush out. I dialed, people came and things happened. Fish were to be transferred into a water drum. They clearly didn't like the idea. There was minute when we had a giant fish flapping around on our floor. Such a life-changing moment. I burst into laughter into the ridiculousness of it all. Here I was, soaked, arms aching, ankle deep in water and trying to save these grumpy, priceless fish that we wanted to get rid of. Such are the joys of living.

Managed to get myself to school in time. Spent the day explaining the social studies paper to the kids. When I was exhausted, went with a religious fanaticism to a leadership forum in the downpour. Was pretty soaked by the time I reached there. On the way back, waded through ankle deep water clogged roads.
Back home, a smile appears on the lips when I think about the day gone by. Any shortage of water in my life has been compensated for. Not much time to muse more. Work needs to be done for parent-teacher meeting and other plans need to be put in place.

DDLJ at Maratha Mandir

Well, this is another one that was on my wishlist for quite some time.
This Sunday, Neha and I saw Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge at Maratha Mandir. Yes, the same cinema that has been showing the movie for the past 14-15 years.
I so wanted to see DDLJ on the big screen as I had missed out on it when I was young, and I really love the movie. So this Sunday, we landed at central station with that sole purpose. Both of us were a little excited and filled with that feeling you get when you are doing something that you really hadn't imagined yourself doing. We thought, the hall would be empty with us laughing and enjoying the sheer experience of this adventure.
Lo and behold, Imagine our surprise when we entered the gates of the cinema to find that it was HOUSEFULL!!! Years after the release of the movie, with the balcony rates reduced to Rs.25, DDLJ with its tagline of "Come, fall in love..." still goes housefull on a Sunday morning. So we did something (again) that we had never thought ourselves doing. We bought tickets in BLACK! For only Rs.30. Life never ceases to amaze you, does it.
The balcony was full, as expected, with a less-than-IIT ratio of girls to boys. The movie was, to say the least, entertaining. We were mouthing almost all the dialogues along with rest of the crowd. The cheering and whistling at some points was incredible, especially the legendary train scene. It was so much better than the crappy wannabe-Hollywood-cool movies that have no heart and originality that one gets to see these days.
After the movie, we decided to go and see the Chor Bazaar. The reason being that we haven't been there before. It is something. Not very unlike Chor Bazaars at other places in India, it still has a distinctive feel that I haven't been able to point my finger at. Probably the whole village feel and classic 'mela' style shops. Predominantly Muslim area, we came across a big and beautiful marble mosque which surprisingly we had never heard or seen before. It was grand enough to deserve a mention at least somewhere among places worth seeing in Mumbai.
The day ended like a typical day in Mumbai does. Journey back in a local. A day well spent (right before endsems).