The Urban Ghetto

This is not for those looking to bash up MCD or BMC for what they have made out of our cities. Not the infrastructure but our people who are just…indifferent.

We come across news items every fortnight or so where a driver mows into a pavement killing 5-6 people who were sleeping there. Alright, it is wrong to be driving drunk but if you are sober and genuinely do have an accident then do the pavement dwellers get to sue the government for not providing them with a safe place to sleep…or is the road okay just because they are not as privileged as you and me?? Life is cheap in the urban ghetto.

Looking for a new assistant I got a guy who proudly said that he works at the most up market mall in Delhi. He describes his experiences as life changing which makes me wonder…how can arranging stock and shelves for 40 hours a week 10 years at a stretch be life changing?? Apart from the fact that your house is OCD organized and the fact that you have learnt to clean up customers who have relieved themselves in their pants!

Aah the call centres…the swanky buildings with free pick up and five star food .. making morons out of our youth .. making them speak in strange accents and killing the entrepreneur in them. Booze parties as perks and an I card with a string making them look like tagged dogs.

In Mumbai, with the humidity, every day is a bad hair day. Also, if you are anywhere less than 5’9 tall you qualify as armpit level. You would know what I mean if you have traveled in Mumbai trains in hot muggy weather. It isn’t what you would call a pleasant experience. It’s the axe effect…use it to cut off the smelly pigs. It rains and the urban landscape is replaced by a vandalized vision of the backwaters..and the olfactory senses become even more pronounced.. being infused by the external odours.

Well dressed women are being replaced by ones in sweatpants…I don’t care even if they are juicy couture..It just sends a sign that I am unable to compete in normal society…I am miserable so I might as well be comfortable..What next.. flannel pyjamas??

Life is fun in a city where a pizza can reach you faster than the police or an ambulance..the cyclists on the road make their best efforts to encash the life insurance policy they had saved up to buy.. the fitness freaks riding their bikes in beige spandex shorts looking like nude eunuchs..the men who have taken the responsibility to water every tree and clean every wall of the cities with their brand of Morarji cola..

There are others who use spit as a form of freedom of expression… even a form of urban art..spraying at will and creating canvases out of boring clean walls.

Life is fun in a city where the most dangerous act is that of parking your car at another’s “place” as if they had bought the rights to the sarkari land along with the car..then the fact that they don’t even know who their father is because they keep saying ‘Do you know who my father is?”. Where you can get shot for just not giving way to the car behind you in bumper to bumper traffic.
Life is fun in a big city…but is it sane anymore…