72 - ENGLISH VINGLISH, MARATHI SWARATHI, HINDI FINDI......

English is perhaps the only language that has an upper case and a lower case.  After a fullstop, a capital letter is used, and proper nouns too have a capital letter.  In Marathi, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, etc there is no need to use capitals. Also the pronunciation of every word is not too predictable.  Very often English words are pronounced incorrectly,  which is not the case with most other languages as the written word can be read as is.

 In India, most of the citizens are not familiar with English speaking and so they tend to translate from marathi or hindi, and then format the english sentence, which leads to hilarious sentences.  So if  the Hindi phrase of  'Aap kaiseh hai?'  gets translated as 'You how are?'

If you do not read good novels and classical stories,  then you are at risk to format incorrect sentences too.  Spellings also go for a toss.  I have been very puzzled after perusing certain items on a menu.  So there is  a "paper sandwich"  correct spelling should have been "pepper",  and the "chess sandwich" meaning a "cheese sandwich".    And these two misspellings were painted on the menu board of the Mumbai university at Kalina.

Everyday I pass the Aditya Birla school lane at Tardeo and feel chagrined to read the signboard that they have displayed at the entrance of the lane leading towards their school.  It reads, 'School children alighting and get off.'  In Pune there is a bench on MG Road which has this painted on it 'siniour citizen bench'.  In a Virar local,. the neon light message reads 'Emergency number of ladies passengers.............'.  One Union Bank branch has this message displayed, 'Account will be freeze in case of non submission of KYC'.

And I fail to understand why the BMC has painted an English phrase in the Hindi script on its garbage trucks,  'clean up'?  Also, the hindi and marathi words for 'please',   'sorry'  and 'thank you' are almost redundant, and everyone uses the english options, even when conversing in a colloquial format or in any local language like gujarati, marathi and hindi.

Very often, the speaker makes a mistake, and the listeners are unaware of its incorrectness, so 'all is well'.

68 - ANUSHKA SHARMA and VIRAT KOHLI, KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK !

What a pleasant surprise, when I heard in the news that Anushka Sharma scolded a rich, spoilt, bad mannered, uncouth guy, who was littering.  This gives me a reason to be her fan.  As I have mentioned in my previous blogs, the rich don't care if they throw garbage onto the road, and also let their pet dogs poop anywhere in public places, as long as no one pulls them up.

It is so typical for the offender in this case, to troll Anushka and try to save face,  after being publicly shamed online.  This is the only way that such imbeciles can be brought to book and behave well.  Like they say in Hindi, 'ulta chor kotwaal koh daateh'.

Not so long ago, I had suggested to the BMC, that certain areas in this so crowded city are unsafe and ruined by miscreants of different classes, rich and poor.  The rich are too arrogant and get away with so many broken rules, the poor are too indifferent to care.  Many of the bridges over local train rails, have no shops or houses, only slums and chain snatchers, who get away with it with immunity.  Garbage, rubble etc is discarded by anyone and no one cares.  The underground subways in so many areas that have no shops, are dangerous and dirty.  The underground subway at Metro theatre, the one near Haji Ali and so many others.  If a large screen would throw the images of the subway to the public above, such areas would be used by everyone to commute, and not become a haven for loafers, flashers, beggars, urinaters.

But the Mumbai Corporation does not bother to do ground work on the feasibility and solutions to problems that arise in such schemes.

65 - THE FITNESS CHALLENGE

Rajyavardhan Rathore started the fitness challenge, and it is getting linked with celebrities, who are boasting online about their fitness regimes.  But the message is so hypocritical.  These 'healthy' persons should also clarify that their fitness also depends on their diet. 

Dino Morea had installed 2 open air gymns at Marine Drive in the year 2016, which were dismantled by the BMC.  And then 'open air yoga' is sponsored by BJP?  So hypocritical!

The Prime Minister posted how he walks on the clean manicured lawns of his official residence.  Where can I walk on one?  The lawn at Nehru center at Worli is off limits for the public,  the one at Priyadarshini Park is fine,  the Governor's bungalow lawn is also off limits, as also the Tata garden lawn at Breach Candy.  It would be ideal if the public could exercise on the Chowpatty beach, but it is too polluted and dirty.  You cannot walk barefoot on the wet sand, without dodging garbage that has been washed ashore, and feces and urine. 

The main problem is that people in Mumbai waste a lot of time and energy in travelling.  I wait at a bus stop for more than an hour.  How convenient it would be if the BEST could facilitate their buses with GPS or global positioning system.  It would enable passengers to predict the exact time that they need to wait at the bus stop.  Anyway, until such a time, it is such a waste of time and energy, just waiting and waiting for the bus to show up.  So, after travelling in a crowded train or a very tardy bus,  where is the stamina for anyone to do exercise?  And where is the place?  Not in a tiny flat.  There are the wise ones who say that you must climb upto your flat by the stairs and that that would be sufficient exercise, but it is not possible to climb 20 or 30 floors when one is tired after a day's work or after returning home with a heavy bag of groceries.

Mr Rathore has a very posh carpeted office/ house, where he is demonstrating his 'fitness challenge' and Virat Kohli and Anushka, are doing their workouts in their personal, private gymn.  As are all the others who have been nominated.  I leave for work by six thirty in the morning, walking along a road that has traffic spewing out smoke and speeding along, dog potty to be dodged, and potholes and uneven footpaths.  I then return by three in the afternoon, but lose all my energy, waiting at the bus stop for more than an hour, and then standing in a crowded bus to return home by five.  It is exhausting just to follow this routine and survive, forget exercising by having to visit a gymn or a garden.  Gymns are expensive and have limited timings, as do gardens. 

But what is the most hypocritical scenario is that, all these famous sports, film and political icons, are not mentioning that good health is not only exercise but a good diet of fruit, protein, both of which are expensive, and so the public satiate their hunger with vada pau, sandwich, samosa, chai, throughout the day, and that is the main area, which affects the health of the middle class people.

So, my fitness challenge to Mr. Rathore and Mr.Modi, is that, show us what you eat and drink, and then motivate us to follow your dictats.

32 - TERESA MY FRIEND

Teresa is a name that belongs to an icon of Kolkota.  Mother Teresa will be canonised on 4th September 2016.  Her maiden name was Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhia,  so complicated to pronounce,  and so she chose a path of service to the poorest of the poor,  a path that is complicated and gruelling.

A few years ago,  I saw a man on the Kemps corner slope,  lying on one side of the road, in the hot afternoon sunlight, and a rat was nibbling  his toes.  It is a very busy road, and thousands of vehicles were driving past.   I assumed that he was dead, until he flickered his eyes.   What could I do?  I could not touch him or even talk to him, because I was so rattled at his state.  I returned home and phoned the BMC, assuming that the municipal authorities would have some sort of rescue tactics in place.  But they replied that,  'we do not pick up sick persons from the road,  we have no provision for such acts.  Please phone "the sisters'  of mercy".
And I phoned them and within an hour,  their van came to the site and carried the sick man away.  In that moment,  my respect for the Christians increased.

Since then,  there have been many occasions, when I have wished that I could have had the compassion and the guts to do what Mother  Teresa did,  to physically and emotionally,  help the poorest of the poor.  But I have befriended another Teresa,  who herself is the poorest of the poor. 

In reality, this Teresa has befriended me.  She lives on the footpath and ekes out a living by collecting, segregating and selling 'radd-deeh'.  All the shops along both sides of the street are her means of procuring  cardboard boxes, plastic bottles, used bubble wrap,  wooden supports etc.
She sweeps a few upper floor homes, in return for leftover food and old clothes.  She washes their toilets and bathrooms, in return for permission to use them when she has to.  But the most laudable thing about this Teresa is that she helps herself and she is always smiling for me.  I am just a woman she meets at the bus stop,  until my bus arrives.  She approaches me whenever she is nearby and strikes up a conversation in perfect English.  Her saree is  a faded, sometimes tattered, hand-me-down,  but she sports nail paint and bangles and a mobile.  The nailpaint is courtesy the nick-nack selling shop that she swabs, and whose garbage bins she clears.  The mobile is an old model that the owner wanted to replace,  from one of the homes she sweeps.

She has no home, and takes shelter on the shop steps, after they are shut.  She has a twenty year old son,  who helps her.   But it is sad that he has no education and no support to learn and earn a respectable livlihood.  He is doing drugs with some other bad elements off the streets. 

Teresa asked me for a favour once,  and I made an effort, to fulfill it, but in vain.   She requested me to help her open a bank account, so that she could save her hard earned money.  But a bank needs an Aadhar card,  and an Aadhar card needs an address, and an address needs a house,  which Teresa does not own.  And so I could not help her to get a bank account.  And the situation has not improved for the poorest of the poor,  no matter what promises our Prime minister Mr.Modi boasts about.  And aslo petty politicians, who being in the vicinity, do nothing to improve the lot of humans around them,,,,, Mr. Owaisi for example.  But then he may wish to only help his own community,  I presume.

But this has not caused any rift in her friendship towards me.  She continues to smile and chitchat with me, as long as I wait for my bus, at this bus stop.