Dog Blogs Travel Trips

If you wanna see the ‘real’ side of Mumbai – get lost! No, I’m not kidding. I DO mean get lost and meander aimlessly and really see Mumbai for what it is. Let me quickly give you a background scenario of my take on Mumbai. I hate it. I hate the crowds. No silence anywhere. I stay up nights on end watching the stars (and Sanjay Dutt’s balcony) soaking in the silence around me. I hate the traffic. Start. Stop. People. No one makes eye contact. No one smiles. Every one looks at the ground. Rushing with their lives. Trying to survive. Cars. Big. Fat. Road Hogs. Rickshas. Swerving around at breakneck speed. I hate the weather. Either humid as hell. Or “balti baarish” like my friend describes it. Where it’s hot and muggy one instant. And then suddenly it pours like someone upturned a bucket of water on your head. So you struggle and dig out your umbrella from your bag. And almost rip the strap off trying to open it up. But lo and behold. It’s hot and muggy again! Yes, there will b...

I’ve been living in Pune for almost two years now, and I love this city. I moved here just when the rains had begun, and it was love at first sight. It was pouring and I got soaked to the skin, but the university campus had to be the most beautiful I’d ever seen. (People who have been to Calcutta University will know why.) I knew this is where I wanted to be… Over the years I began to know the city. I met some crazy people who went on to being my closest friends. I lived with some, fought with some, cried with some, but I love them with a passion and intensity I haven’t felt in a long time. Basically, at the end of these two years, Pune is home. I rarely go to Calcutta, and though I still love Calcutta, Pune provides me with a kind of speed in life which Calcutta is famous for lacking. What makes Pune my home?? It’s the fact that I love the weather, and I’m trying to learn the language. The fact that I love the hills. And the beautiful rain trees outside my windows. The su...

On Monday morning I found myself bundled into yet another State Transport bus. Yes. My department hires ST buses! We were visiting  SPARROW. They are a trust set up in 1988 to build a national archive for women with print, oral history and pictorial material. They include live archives reaching out to schools, colleges, women's groups and other organizations, believe they are active agents of change, maintain a forum for discussions, have created an interactive space and have made a daring flight into unexplored areas of experience and expression. We met their staff, and browsed through their publications. We went to their archives room, gingerly leafing through yellowed newspaper articles painstakingly inserted in plastic sheets for preservation. The amount of hard work and dedication required was evident. SPARROW has archived journal articles, newspaper and other print articles, movie posters, calendars etc all by or for women. Also, they have made up to 25 films on wom...

I travelled to Mhaswad, Satara today, and what an experience it was!! We took a bus, and it was a run down ramshackle excuse of a vehicle as compared to the ones our department has hired before. Anyway. Wannabe social activists should know how the common man lives so I settled down to what I expected to be a long, boring ride.  Like Naomi always says, when in India, expected the unexpected. After popping a pill for travel sickness, I promptly passed out. Sitting up. And began my collection of ‘tengus’. I whacked my head around quite a bit as I kept falling asleep. We were bumped and jolted around for four hours before we finally reached. The driver had already begun showing of his Schumacher-esque skills and I should have been prepared for what was to happen later, but I’ll come to that later. We visited Manndeshi Mahila Business School and Bank for women. A revolutionary bank set up to empower and enable rural women in banking, this one was an eyeopener for me. The bank prov...