The Hindu Business Line : A road show of a different kind

The evening watch comprises men, women, young and old, talking into their mobiles or chewing a vada pav ... exhilarate; most run, only the disabled walk...

There is a small stretch in the suburb of Khar Road (west) called the 12th Road. No politician has yet usurped the road and given his name to it. The piece of tarred road has no pavement and one has to be careful while walking as otherwise a speeding car may ferry one to the land without an address.

Temple trees and other varieties bend over walls of housing societies to have a look at the goings on. Between towering housing societies, live uncertainly some old wooden homes painted in bright reds and blues. Quite a few of them are two-tiered structures with the owners probably deep inside, in rooms cooled by split air-conditioners. They may not qualify for heritage status but are fine to behold.

Sometimes, on Sunday mornings, one has stood before them taking in the architecture; strong wooden beams, precisely set apart, hold up the rooms with open balconies serving as lookouts. Broad front yards, back yards cluttered with vegetation and wicket gates at entry points complete the edifice. Free flow of wind and sun keep the aged homes young while inmates lock into unsure futures.

Stride down from the MTNL telephone booth and one will come across a Ram temple and a Gayatri temple. The resting place for this writer is the Sri Ramakrishna Mission at the far end. The Mission does not display its presence except for some old trees and well-arranged potted plants which one runs into as one steps inside. At the end of a spacious meditation hall is a white idol of Sri Ramakrishna (in the sitting posture). The floor of the hall is carpeted and visitors are requested to keep quiet; mobiles have to be switched off (wonder how people can meditate with live mobiles in their pockets).

The lofty Mission building, built in sandstone, resembles the Kalighat temple and Belur Math in Kolkata and needeless to say one can come across people speaking Bengali. One has spent time sitting in the Hall, but never meditating, as quite a few do, that being beyond me. Yet, it is a fact you come out of the Hall an altered man, at least for a few moments. Maybe one corresponds to T.S. Eliot in the play The Elder Statesman, when he gets a character to say, "... ... the longer we pretend/The harder it becomes to drop the pretence,/ Walk off the stage, change into our own clothes/ And speak as ourselves... "

For a few moments, pretences (as a journalist one is hugely pretentious) go into a shredder. At another place in the play, Lord Claverton exclaims: "Say rather, the exequies/Of the failed successes, the successful failures,/Who occupy positions that other men covet./ When we go, a good many folk are mildly grieved,/And our closest associates, the small minority/Of those who really understand the place we filled/ Are inwardly delighted. They won't want my ghost/Walking in the City or sitting in the Lords./And I, who recognise myself as a ghost/Shan't want to be seen there. It makes me smile/To think that men should be frightened of ghosts./ If they only knew how frightened a ghost can be of men!"

For the monks of the Ramakrishna Mission, whom one can find busy in communion with their gods, Eliot may be little matter, a minor nuisance, a maya. Recently, when one was there at the Hall, one saw monks cleaning the ceiling fans using a mobile steel ladder. Sri Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi and the Vedanta philosophy have nettled this writer and one is waiting for the day to engage in a talk with a monk on the subject; in modern lingo to be briefed on the issue.

Arthur Osborne, who has written a biography on Ramana Maharshi, was my principal at Hindi High School in Kolkata. One liked him, being warm and compassionate to wards, like me, who were weak at studies. I do not think he ever got angry. Next to the Hall is a small, partly wood and partly tiled home for Ma, Ramakrishna's wife. One climbs a stone stair and squats on a raised stone platform in front of Ma. Personally, one prefers the place, as some times it is stiller than the Hall. Across the road is a charity hospital and a book shop offering books on religion and other knick knacks.

Generally, one quits the place by 10 in the morning to enjoy hot dal wada (paruppu wada) with coconut chutney made by a Malayali family. After a strong helping of at least four vadas, a cup of tea and a cigarette one becomes a normal Mumbaikar bubbling with pretences. The shop is situated near the MTNL booth on 12th Road and the dal wada cannot match those made by Sugata Kurup, wife of my friend Kurup, who I think can qualify for reference in any international cookery book. She makes the best dal wada and chutney.

After the breakfast, one takes the train from Khar Road to Borivili and home, with the usual grumpiness. Between the Mission and spending evenings on the sit-out at one's office watching Mumbaikars going up and down Churchgate, this writer prefers the evening watch. Men, women, young and old, talking into their mobiles or chewing a vada pav ... exhilarate; most run, only the disabled walk; sometimes they drop office gossip (my boss is mad; he wants me to sit late and finish yesterday's work today) for the curious to gather. It has become something of a routine. Every evening Amit and myself, stroll down to the shop opposite Yogakshema, the headquarters of LIC, buy cigarettes and rest on the stone sit-out gazing at the pilgrimage. No city has so many daily pilgrims. When I retire, I will miss the road show more than the Mission.

P. Devarajan

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