Bombay to Burgh

(I should note that this latest post complements my good colleague Eric’s recent post on traffic in Addis Ababa!   Gora minds think alike, apparently

The autorickshaw I was riding in was moving along at a steady clip when we hit the guy who was crossing the street.  We had just passed the uber-modern Harinandani shopping complex, just after the rickshaw-wallah had extricated us from a traffic scrum near the main gate of India Institute of Technology.  The guy seemed unhurt, but I thought I was going to have a ringside seat to a stabbing.  He was frothing mad, hurling abuse at the exasperated wallah before stumbling away.

Violence, or the threat of it, is very real on these streets if you are not a sensibly assertive driver.  And it doesn’t seem to pay to be over-cautious, as you’d run just as much risk of causing an accident as you would being reckless.  Traveling by road much more on this trip has privied me to at least a half-dozen teeth-baring altercations between motorists, one overturned truck, a snarl on the eastern expressway caused by a rickshaw crash, and daredevil helmetless motorcyclists, who routinely cut and weave into the opposing lanes to avoid tie-ups.  No doubt I’ve inhaled untold amounts of toxins and particulate matter from the exhaust generated by the vehicles in these jams.  Someone here told me that breathing the air in Mumbai was comparable to smoking 10 cigarettes a day.  If only – you get all of the ill effects with none of the benefits out of that deal.  The sensation of lightheadedness I’ve experienced in the back of a gridlocked rick is not the pleasant, relaxing drift brought on by that first drag from a cig, or from any other illicit inhalant of choice for that matter.  And that’s saying nothing of the accompanying nausea.  I’m glad I quit smoking 3 years back – I need fully functioning cilia in order to deal with the air quality here.

Indian traffic queues up just like Indian folks do on foot, as when waiting in line for rail tickets.  That is to say, it clusters.  Monday (14 July) night driving home from Bandra past Powai Lake, seven disorderly lanes of traffic squeezed onto a road designed for barely four.  Cars literally scraped against one another to move onward, with drivers simply repositioning their bent mirrors and continuing on.

One of my favorite sights here are the women who ride mopeds or scooters, tearing through the streets right along with the guys, their mouths covered with scarves against the exhaust fumes and airborne dust and their colorful saris or salwars fluttering behind them.  The last time I was here I saw a group of 5 – 6 of them, which reminded me of a desi take on 70s girl-biker gang movies, like Jack Hill’s “Switchblade Sisters”.  The motorcycles here are strictly Hondas and Bajaj – no Harleys in sight, though Abhilash tells me that there are clubs of Harley Davison enthusiasts in India who ride the highways like cyclists in the U.S.  I have some Harley-riding friends in the states who had asked me both this time and last to try to get some photos of any hogs I come across, but I doubt if I’ll be able to oblige. 

Speaking of ‘shady movies’ – I am fascinated with the Hindi horror movie, “Saya”, which is advertised in some parts of town with the posters that flagrantly rip off “Evil Dead II” (see “Seven Churches…” entry).  There is no way that it’s on the same tier budget-wise as the Bollywood blockbusters like “Mehboob,” and “Love Story 2050” that have recently opened.  Hence, it’s probably right up my alley.  Asian horror movies are over-the-top as compared to American offerings, maybe second only to the golden age of Italian trash/horror (Ruggero Deodato, Lucio Fulci et al).  I’ve never seen an Indian horror movie, but the excellent “Zinda Laash”, a late-1960s Pakistani retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula hinted at great future direction for the South Asian horror genre.  Check the trailer here.  (Incidentally – I would recommend the DVD version of this film over just about anything else available.  This is not a shill – it’s the best overall produced, presented, and perhaps the most historically important horror release I’ve had the pleasure to rent from the now-defunct Incredibly Strange Video, where it remained in the must-see queue for a while.  The DVD includes a brilliant documentary on the South Asian horror movie industry, which produced some ultra-cheap masala gore flicks from the 80s until the early 1990s, when it collapsed under the weight of market oversaturation and studio mismanagement.)   Browsing some titles at an online video store based in Lahore, Pakistan, called the Hot Spot Online confirms just how wacked South Asian cinema can get.  Descriptions of Pashtun-language films like “Haseena A-Bomb” suggest a serious John Waters affectation.  Accha laga!  I asked Abhilash on the way to work the other morning where I could see this picture, and he chuckled, saying that there’s no way I should go to see such a movie by myself.  The theater, called ‘Dreamland’ according to the poster, is in a rough part of town, apparently.  He also said that even though it’s a horror film, the theaters routinely intersplice pornographic short subjects between features.  It sounds like New York City’s seedy cinema-stocked 42^nd street of the 1970s has shifted east.  It also sounds to me like all the fixins’ for a violent assault, so I think I may have to reconsider.  Another movie, “One Clever Woman” looks totally Russ Meyer. 

Jeevan rolled her eyes when I asked where that one was playing, so I am sure that it would place me in the company of a similarly anti-social element.  I’ll just have to wait for the VCD.

Forgive the closing masala: “Ek Chatur Naar” also sort of looks like one of those trashy 70s movies like “I Spit on Your Grave” (AKA “Day of the Woman”), which purported to show a story of a degraded woman taking violent revenge on her assailants.  Of course, the exploitation element far outstripped any kind of “socially responsible message” of female empowerment.  There is one real-life set of kickass ladies who made the news here recently.  Star 20/20 cricketer and Chennai Super Kings captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has a crack team of heavily armed lady guards defending his skin during his offseason back home in Ranchi, Jharkhand, in eastern India.  Kalashnikov-tastic!