Saturday Night Insight


I avoid Saturday evening outings like the scourge. More on reasons why later.

This last weekend, I happened to be on the way to a good friend’s wedding. Saturday evening and Andheri West are a bit like mixing karela juice and soured milk, you always knew it was going to be bad and you were stupid in trying it in the first place.

After 15 futile minutes of hailing rickshaws politely, a friend and I decided to do it the way it actually should have been always done. An uncivil forced entry into an empty Rick which refused to ply suddenly put us in the position of unprepared Priests subject to a confession. The man behind the wheel confessed that he wasn’t taking passengers cos he was rushing to an emergency. In Mumbai, emergency happens only when the bowels are over active or if there are bloody riots. Since the Sena was in power at the BMC and riots happened only when they were in opposition, I assumed it to be the former. A compromise was reached though. The man in distress would drop us halfway and then god willing another auto wallah who presumably wouldn’t have an emergency would take over.

We found an alternate one soon and started the second leg of our journey. An empty road beckoned tantalizingly and our Rick driver fell for it. In Mumbai, empty roads have the same effect as snow would in Somalia. You really don’t know what to do with it, but hell would break loose for sure. So our autowallah and all his brethren carting various other souls all got into Formula One mode. I had an eye on the road, so that I could at least see death coming. Sure enough, Satan passed us perilously by. The man who was winning the race toppled about 20 metres in front of us, thanks to a stray pedestrian. We careened to a halt and out rushed the man at the wheel. A crowd had gathered, curious to see how people wriggle out of an overturned Rick. Sure enough a PYT (Pretty-Young-Thing) party goer did, shaken for sure but not at all bruised. Looked like rickwallahs had a technique to topple over too, one that prevented any injury. That sight was surely an anti-climax and the crowd disappeared, like they had seen a bad Hindi film end. We thanked our lucky stars, the driver boarded nonchalantly and we were away.

At the wedding, we were surprised to find that we would get to meet only the groom. Shia tradition has it that men and women occupy separate spaces during wedding and as my friend who was getting married put it, it’s a bit like the Mumbai locals. Women can travel in the men’s compartment, if they dare to, but vice versa is a strict no no. Incidentally the venue was Good Shepherd Church. Next door, in the next enclosure, we had a pure Catholic wedding with the wedding march, the ball dance, wine and women. The crowd at my friend’s wedding had one dominant caste but there was a mix of the others too.

In the space of those four hours on Saturday, Mumbai, dare I say India, had shown me various values, good, bad and ugly.

The rickwallah who had an emergency symbolized how we sometimes share anything intimately with strangers. This happens frequently when on the road or when traveling. It’s a bit like saying, I know that I’ll never see you again, so what the heck. I call it the one night stand conversation.
The Rick that toppled over episode symbolizes our resilience and ability to cope with almost anything (some might call it apathy). Half an hour after the episode, the incident became juicy news for me to tell everyone. It stopped being a spine chiller. In fact, the next day I even forgot to mention it to some people.

The marriage for me symbolized how we as Indians are comfortable with conflicts or maybe contradictions. A traditional Muslim wedding, held in a Christian church, amidst the revelry of a Christian wedding and attended by Hindus like me. I might also hypothesize, that the grooms on either side may have even gone to the same school and might have had the same education. But on one side, the Muslim groom is comfortable and happy, being cut off from his bride by purdah while next door the Christian one jives away to glory with his partner for life.

Comments

voyager said…
As usual, excellent post :)
May 08, 2007 10:12 am
Ajith said…
thanks Vilas :)
May 08, 2007 8:52 pm
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