MUMBAI PAUSED: July 2013

Dr D N Road

I cannot criticize my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor. And I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression. It means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is something on which to pride yourself. But poverty itself is romanticized only by fools.” ~ J.K. Rowling

Andheri

Work Space Mumbai: Desktop Safari.

The cubicle is such a wonderful space for people to reveal their interests in life. Here are some random desktops that reflect the typical cubicles in Mumbai.

Mobile holder and a happy Ganesha

The gods of India including cricket.

The girl with babay soft skin.

Every office has a racing fan and here's the only cubicle I have seen with a rear view mirror. Auto drivers will be happy to see this.

My own desktop

Party Animal and Sai Baba Ash

Mumbai Garden

Water bottles: Cauvery, Teesta, Indus, Tigris and Eupharates water fights are nothing compared to the fights that happen when your lips kiss another's bottle.

Crawford Market

Mumbai Smell

The smell of Mumbai
is the smell of shit
extracted from landscapes
of New Zealand
young mountains
of Himachal
some place called
Washington
the red soil of Ratnagiri
the blue sky of the Cape
not Comorin
but
good hope

Dr DN Road

Crawford Market (MJP Market)

Crawford Market Inside

Crawford Market Outside

Dr Dadabhai Naoroji Rd

Rudyard Kipling Statues inside the dean's bungalow, Dr JJ School of Art

Eastern Freeway

Soak

Eastern Freeway

Cold Concrete

Kalanagar

Modi replaces the late Bal Thackeray at Kalanagar Junction.

An over enthusiastic BJP wala seems to have bought ally Shiv Sena's favourite hoarding space to print Modi's statement. Good for you Mr Modi. All of us Indians are patriots too whatever our political and religious beliefs. We love this part of the planet too. Jai Hind.

Panjrapol. Deonar

Mother's little helper treks for his mother carrying water for the day from a far away tap.

Telecom Factory, Deonar

Workspace Mumbai: The Last Days Of A Telegraph Office

The last telegram will be sent and received this week in India. Here's the telegraph office that's next to the BSNL Telecom Factory in Deonar. BSNL in MTNL territory? Yes. And telegrams are sent over the BSNL network. The man in charge of the place was kind enough to let me shoot a few images of the office and the last days of the telegram. Thank you, Mr Jiv.

I was imagining a teenage Florentino Ariza from "Love in The Time of Cholera" in a telegraph office somewhere in Colombia from a time when telegraph was fresh magic and he meets Fermina Daza and falls in love with her. It air was as heavy and moist as the city in that book with the heavy rain today. Except that the window was empty and dog slept under the counter.

Messages were still being printed using the software BSNL uses to send telegrams as I as clicking away. And I sent a telegram too which I hope to publish here once I get its photograph. :)