Ghatkopar

 

Ghatkopar

 

Ghatkopar West

 

Hirachand Desai road

Link Road, Ghatkopar

gangmen

Link Road, Ghatkopar

Purity For All 

Purity For All is the slogan the vigilante groups in Prayaag Akbar's Liela chant. While the novel is set in an imaginary future, the world that comes alive in the book that is filled with walls, divisions and conflicts between castes, religions and groups is not too distant from the things around us at present.

We are building walls across the city that has been a melting pot of people for years now. Here and around the world, as distances between people are reduced because of technology, cheaper transport and various other reasons, we are building and strengthening walls that we think will protect what is traditional, past that us real or imagined or the heritage. We are increasingly looking inwards as we are exposed to more things that are unlike what we know.

Prayag Akbar's book has many insights into what we have become and one of the many words that stand out is Purity. No doubt it is derived from the world around us today. Here are two pictures of two ads that I spotted today on the streets that talks about purity. They are ordinary ads but they represent a certain aspiration or fear (depending on how you look at it). It represents the erection of walls, ghettos. To me it represents looking inwards, a fear of the others. It seems like a step back while we move forward pulled by things beyond our control, these simple looking ads are like heads turned back as we walk into the uncertain future.

Purity.

Nityanand Nagar

Jawahar Road

Ghatkopar

Water free.

Amrut Nagar, Ghatokpar (W)

Ghatkopar Hills.


My friend, Stephen Mascarenhas who flies often into Mumbai called me up on one of his visits to Mumbai to ask me where that hill filled huts and resembled Brazil's Favela that greet you to Mumbai, as you fly in, is.
He lives in Mangalore and he was surprised and wanted to know what the place looked like from the ground. I've always wondered what that place is like and so off we went on one of his visits to see the place.





Meanwhile, things are churning in Amrut Nagar.
Change is slowly creeping up the hills that greet you to Mumbai. This is how our city will be rebuilt.




 

Stephen is a Konkani writer, he uses the pen-name Hemacharya and is one of the founders of a magazine called Daiji World. It's an only magazine as well as the only English language weekly published from my home state - Karnataka.