A kaleidoscope of men, matters & moments that make the madness & magic of Mumbai
Food for thought
After the fire in City Kinara restaurant in Kurla, in which seven students lost their lives last month, the BMC has initiated strict action against the hotels and restaurants in the city over following fire safety norms. The BMC has revoked the licences of many of the restaurants. Till date, the BMC has taken action against more than 200 restaurants.
All the restaurants owners are scared of action being taken against them. Now, many restaurants are keeping their restaurants shut during the day time, because that’s when the BMC usually takes action. After the BMC’s official working hours are over, the restaurants begin their business.
“If we keep restaurants open during the day, BMC officials unnecessarily come here and try to bother us. Even if we have all the required permissions, they threaten us with action. If the BMC is really concerned about the public’s safety, they have to keep a continuous check and not wait for such accidents to happen. But right now, the action being taken amounts to harassment for all the hoteliers,” said a restaurant owner from Dadar.
One up on the BMC
Everyone in Mumbai is now aware that the BMC has decided on no-hawker zones especially outside railway stations so that commuters can freely travel to and from offices and stations during rush hours. But most of the offices are closed on Sunday, including BMC ones.
This diarist works on Sundays. Yesterday, when she got off at CST station, she realised that there were many hawkers on the footpaths outside the station. There was a lot of rush as people were excited to buy things at discounted rates. She had to struggle to make her way out, which was frustrating of course and the journalist in her got fired up. She started looking for the board stating, “WARNING — hawkers are prohibited”, which she easily found.
So she went to a hawker who was selling mobile SD cards at heavily-discounted rates and asked him how much it was for a 32GB card. He replied that it was Rs 50. She questioned him why she had not seen him selling on weekdays, wherein he replied, ‘BMC utha le jati hain madam’ (BMC officials pick us up for action). The diarist then asked, “You must then be bearing losses for the whole week,” to which he smiled and replied, “We put up our stalls after 7 pm, as the BMC office gets closed, and on Sunday, we do a full day’s business. Who will check on holidays?”
The diarist had no answer.
Another hawker she spoke to, who was selling clothes, said, “Yes, I bear a bit of a loss due to BMC actions but I travel on weekdays within the city with my parcels of clothes and on Sunday I put my stall up here. Hence I manage with my garment sale business with discounted rates as I anyway don’t carry any branded clothes, and thus selling them is not a problem.” This was evident from the three sellers at his stall, who were all busy with customers.
Much ado about nothing
This reporter was travelling to Churchgate during peak hours on a certain evening and boarded the general compartment, instead of the ladies’ compartment. As can be expected during such a situation, she faced her worst nightmare when stunned men awkwardly stared at her, wondering why a girl would board the general compartment at this time of the day. Meanwhile, a transgender entered this compartment and went around asking for money from the men. He approached the reporter and turned away instantly, as if he was scared to talk to her.
The reporter then followed the transgender to the other side of the compartment and stood beside him, noticing that this made the transgender extremely uncomfortable. This behaviour was beyond the reporter’s comprehension. She soon struck up a conversation with this transgender and got him talking about mundane things, like, ‘Where do you come from,’ and, ‘Where is your village?’ Soon the transgender opened up and the reporter had quite a conversation with him up till Churchgate station. His name was Santosh. Santosh said quite sadly, “No one gives me a job. Begging does not yield much money, unless you are like this.”
Tail Piece:
Two people in conversation at the London airport:
A: Do you know the Queen of England will now get a new name?
B: Really? Why?
A: After Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the UK, she will be called Elizaben instead of Elizabeth.
Contributed by Eshanpriya M S, Devashree Bhujbal
(Compiled by
Eshanpriya M S)
[alert type=”e.g. warning, danger, success, info” title=””]
Good Cops, Bad Cops
The police don’t have a reputation for being very understanding and polite. Bollywood is perhaps the reason for this. They portray cops as human beings who’d love to throw everyone into jail for the smallest of reasons. This correspondent realised on a recent visit to Bandra police station that the police can, in fact, be quite the opposite.
Two bus ticket-checkers walked into the station with a man, aged about 30, dressed in formals, all of them arguing ferociously. On probing, the police found that the ticket-checkers had caught the man without a ticket when he was two stops away from the one he wanted to get off at. The man on his part claimed that the bus was crowded and that he was going to buy a ticket before he got off.
The police told him to pay the fine, which was a nominal Rs 75 and forget about the incident. The man protested saying that this was unjust and that he would rather go to jail than pay the fine. The kind police officer asked him to sit down and have a glass of water.
They told him that if he went to jail, it would show up in his records and that he would have a problem when he next looked for a job. It might have been the water that had a calming effect on the man or it might have been the police officers’ advice that worked, but he eventually agreed to pay the fine and an amicable solution was reached.
[/alert]
