Deviant from my regular routine, I fell into that of the majority of the city — the 35 lakhs that board our local trains daily — one morning earlier this month. I waited for the train that would take me to the city “center”, its alleged heart, away from the peripheries, with the rest of the platform. I missed it, the train.
There’s nothing new about taking or missing a Mumbai local train. And there’s nothing new about the feelings of destitution and frustration you experience when you do miss it, and funnily, when you catch it as well. On this day, that missed train dissolved me. It derailed my plans, and ruined my will to do anything — to go out and live MY day. The takeaways are clear - better, more robust public transport so that no one has to worry about stifling crowds and train frequencies. And the tyranny of the everyday, yada yada. But today I want to look at the feeling of defeat —the gloom that comes with missing a train. It isn’t just a train, though, but your expectations for the day, your imagination of exercising your will. A city like Mumbai, it keeps taking away your autonomy in hilarious ways.
I think there was a little mockery involved when I decided to walk back home from the railway station (I had the luxury to do that)—a good 3km walk. The sky turned stormy; every chance it got, it reminded me of the inevitable dissonance we face. But these days, I'm trying to be all about that silver lining. So, I did what one usually does with tragedies nowadays; I tried to click pictures and attach a false sense of value to it. So here it is.
Figuring out this problem by @vidyutpradhan has been super fun, you cut loose while keeping a lock-off on your left, then bring in a high foot while engaging your entire core, and finish with a deep shoulder lock to reach the final hold. It feels like a fun, orchestra of strength, flexibility and concentration...
Fav things about hampi in no particular order (non-exhaustive list) : Boulders, lemon nanas, paddy fields, high balls, birds, Tungabhadra, mantle problems, dramatic skies, the feeling of granite against your calluses, power screaming, foxy, sending, hampi post monsoons, egg dosas, Climbing friends, hampi chai, snakes.
The vast sweep of green, broken by boulders that defy geometry. Skies throwing all shades of light, the gushing sound of Tungabhadra, paddies and thorny scrub, slimy millipedes, the cheers of your group. Granite biting your fingers, crimps crusted with crystal, rain that won’t let you send, and the town's ancient mystic pull, Hampi was hypnotic.
Can’t wait for another season of sending, making new friends, drinking endless lemon nannas and Hampi chai.
So I used to workout with my friend Ninad in Vasai - Boxing, Muai Thai and Capoeira. Thought I'd exaggerate certain details and make an animatic out of it.
#storyboard #animation #desiartists
So many years of living in the city, and I’ve always had beef with the way people engage with its history—mostly through weekend walk tours that are obsessed with getting "wows" from the audience or stockpiling trivia for small talks.
It’s an uncritical, really lazy lens to wear, so disconnected from material reality that it feels like the past happened in another world.
There’s also this disproportionate obsession with the actions of a few individuals—like they “made” history. (Wrong)
To burst the bubble of pop-history myth, I wanted to shift the lens. Like Marx baba said, the material conditions of society—primarily the means of production, class relations, power relations—are the foundation for how history is shaped: social, political, and intellectually.
And ofc today, versions of history have become tools for fascists, used shamelessly to push ethno-nationalist fantasies of a “golden India”.
To offer a more critical lens. I took a fun bunch of people around Vasai Fort to talk about how Mumbai was shaped—its labour force, caste systems, the birth of colonialism, and the trade networks that shaped the food we eat today. To place this part of history in understanding the life today.
We ended, of course, with a local meal, bringing the story full circle. Might do it again soon.
A cow will piss on the valley.
A cow will shit on the valley.
A cow will mess it, then claim it and call it home.
But when it starts to stink, it'll blame the street dogs for the mess.
But the cow? It never leaves.
