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भूमाता ब्रिगेड और मीडिया की भूमिका शनि शिंगणापुर और नासिक के त्र्यंबकेश्वर मंदिर के प्रवेश मे मिली भारी सफलता के बाद  तृप्ति देसाई यानि भूमाता ब्रिगेड आज मुम्बई में हाजी अली दरगाह पर प्रवेश पाने के लिए मार्च निकालेगीं. कारण तो पता नही पर जितना समझ आया  वो है पहले उस दरगाह पर महिलाओं को […]

The post भूमाता ब्रिगेड और मीडिया की भूमिका appeared first on Monica Gupta.

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‘My first impression is of daybreak, light and colour and golden and purple fruits at the level of my shoulder.’ With this beautiful sentence, so characteristic in its fusion of poetry and physical, bodily detail, Rudyard Kipling evokes the fruit-market in Bombay, the city (now Mumbai) where he was born in 1865.

The post Something of myself: the early life of Rudyard Kipling appeared first on OUPblog.

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राधे राधे …

अक्सर जब बडे बुजुर्ग मिलते हैं तो राम राम या राधे राधे करते हैं … ये उनके अभिवादन का तरीका है पर जिस तरह से आज कल इन ढोगी बाबाओ या देवियों की पोल खुल रही है जनता का इन पर से विश्वास ही उठता चला जा रहा है … बेशक अफसोसनाक बात है कि हम लोग पढे लिखे होकर भी ऐसी बातों को बढावा देते हैं और सबसे ज्यादा न्यूज चैनल पर हैरानी है कि अच्छी भली खबरे छोड कर, मात्र टीआरपी बढाने क्योकि खबर मे  अश्लीलता रुपी ग्लैमर का तडका जो लगा है , पीछे पडा है …

 

 IBN Khabar

राधे मां पर आरोप लगते रहे है कि वो सिर्फ आशीर्वाद देने में ही नहीं, बल्कि तंत्र मंत्र में भी निपुण हैं। बताया जाता है कि मुकेरिया में डकोर खालसा के बैरागी संत बीरमदास के संपर्क में आने के बाद उन्होंने तंत्र-मंत्र में अपना ज्ञान बढ़ाया। मुंबई पहुंचने से पहले मुकेरिया में गुरबत के दिन काट रहीं, राधे मां उर्फ सुखविंदर कौर उर्फ पप्पू लोगों की समस्याएं दूर करने के लिए तांत्रिक क्रियाएं भी करती थीं। इसी तंत्र-मंत्र और तांत्रिक क्रियाओं ने उन्हें ख्याति दिलाई और मुंबई का रास्ता दिखाया। Via ibnlive.com

 

  ABP News

पंजाब के बिजली विभाग में काम करने वाले सरदार अजित सिंह के घर तीन मार्च 1969 को राधे मां का जन्म हुआ था. बचपन में राधे मां को घर वाले प्यार से गुड़िया बुलाया करते थे लेकिन जब उनका दाखिला गांव के ही स्कूल में करवाया गया तो उनका नाम बदलकर सुखविंदर कौर रख दिया गया था. दोरांगला के गवर्मेंट एल एस एम सीनियर सेकेंडरी स्कूल से राधे मां ने दसवीं तक की पढ़ाई की है. राधे मां को बचपन के दिनों से जानने वाले उनके भक्त विवेक पाठक उनके स्कूल की ये कहानी कुछ इस तरह बयान करते हैं.

दोरांगला के मोहल्ले की गलियों में राधे मां उर्फ सुखविंदर कौर का बचपन खेलते कूदते हुए गुजरा है. राधे मां को करीब से जानने वाले बताते हैं कि बचपन से ही उनका मन धार्मिक कामों में ज्यादा लगता था. राधे मां के पिता का ये दावा भी है कि बचपन में राधे मां उनके घर के सामने बने मंदिर में अपना ज्यादातर वक्त गुजारा करती थी. राधे मां के परिवार के करीबी रहे विवेक पाठक बचपन के अपने दिनों को याद कर बताते हैं कि सुखविंदर कौर उर्फ राधे मां कम उम्र से ही भविष्यवाणियां भी करने लगी थी.

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The post राधे राधे appeared first on Monica Gupta.

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The Mumbai slums have recently achieved a weird kind of celebrity status. Whatever the considerable merits of the film Slum Dog Millionaire and the best-selling book by Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers (now also a play and a film), these works have contributed to the making of a contemporary horror myth.

The post Hope, women, the police panchayat, and the Mumbai slums appeared first on OUPblog.

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With Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo does more than merely bear witness in Annawadi, the slum that grew up in the shadows of the Mumbai airport and features a sewage lake, horses painted to mimic zebras, and every possible form of corruption.

She does more than sit with the trash pickers, the schemers, the envious, the hungry, the souls who conclude that death is the only way out.

She tells a story. She involves her readers in the intimate dramas of an open-wound place. She compels us to turn the pages to find out what will happen to the prostituting wife with half a leg, the boy who is quick to calculate the value of bottle caps, the man with the bad heart valve, the "best" girl who hopes to sell insurance some day, the "respectable" rising politician who sleeps with whomever will help her further rise, the police who invent new ways to crush crushed souls.

She engages us, and because she does, she leaves us with a story we won't forget. Like Elizabeth Kolbert, another extraordinary New Yorker writer, Boo takes her time to discover for us the unvarnished facts, the pressing needs, the realities of things we might not want to think about.

But even if we don't think about them, they are brutally real. They are.

A passage:

What was unfolding in Mumbai was unfolding elsewhere, too. In the age of global market capitalism, hopes and grievances were narrowly conceived, which blunted a sense of common predicament. Poor people didn't unite; they competed ferociously amongst themselves for gains as slender as they were provisional. And this undercity strife created only the faintest ripple in the fabric of the society at large. The gates of the rich, occasionally rattled, remained unbreached. The politicians held forth on the middle class. The poor took down one another, and the world's great, unequal cities soldiered on in relative peace.

Like the photos featured in this earlier blog post, the picture above is not Mumbai; I've never been to India. It is Juarez, another dry and needing place on this earth.

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Last week, over dinner, I was telling friends about Juarez—about the trip we took years ago to a squatters' village, where we met some of the most gorgeous young people I'll ever know. We'd gone to help build a bathroom in a community without water. The children emerged from homes like those above, impeccably dressed and mannered.

Yesterday and today I am reading, at last, Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers. I bought the book the week it came out. It has sat here ever since, waiting for me to find time. I am, as most people know, a devotee of well-made and purposeful documentaries. Reading Boo is like watching one of those. Her compassion, her open ear, her reporting—I'll write more of this tomorrow. But for this Sunday morning I want to share again the faces of the children I fell in love with, the children who eventually worked their way into my young adult novel, The Heart Is Not a Size. 

They are breathtaking. Still. And I, as a writer, remain most alive when I feel that the story I tell might make a difference.

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NOTE TO SELF: PASS ON RENTING "SLUM DOG MILLIONAIRE"

Let's say... you're a film company who travels to Mumbai, India, to shoot a film focusing upon and that takes place in the Mumbai slums.

Let's say... you come accross some children living in the slums that would be perfect for your film and a decision is made to use them. The word "use" being the key word here.

The film becomes a huge success beyond everyone's wildest dreams and is nominated for an Academy Award. As a perk and perhaps even a promotional gimmick, the child actors are brought to the awards show all dressed up as movie stars usually are. Once the hoopla is over the young actors are returned home and back to their former lives of subsisting from day-to-day, living in shacks. One day a celebrity and now a homeless person.

Young 10-year old "Slumdog Millionaire" star, Azharuddin Ismail, was asleep when awakened and told to leave his family's home as part of a demolition of dozens of Mumbai shanties. It was among 30 shacks razed by city workers. As if that wasn't bad enough and according to Azhar, he was hit by a police officer. For their part authorities are saying that his family will be given a new home elsewhere.

Although the film earned US $326 million in box office receipts, the lives of the Mumbai "actors" haven't benefited from their appearing in the film.

"Slumdog" filmmakers set up a trust, called Jai Ho, after the hit song from the film, to ensure the children get proper homes, a good education and a nest egg when they finish high school. They also donated $747,500 to a charity to help slum kids in Mumbai.

Given this recent setback, it would seem that Azhar needs some of that charity money right away to get a roof over his family's head. Thing is - will he get it.

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Slumdog Millionaire won 8 Oscars last night, but for me, the best moment was learning that all nine actors who play the three lead characters in three stages of their lives, were flown to the ceremony.

Today, they're going to a Southern California theme park (widely believed to be Disney Land)!
Then, it’s back to the slums of Mumbai.

Whirlwind preparations for their trip (passports came through on Thursday!) are detailed in this Yahoo news article:

Meanwhile, all around them the slum continued at its usual pace: Sewing machines thrummed from small, dark rooms. Women swatted flies from fresh-cut meat. Mangy dogs slept in the sun. Barbers sat in their barren shops, waiting for customers.

After their trip to the ceremony and theme park, they’ll fly back to Mumbai and the slums. How do you think this will affect their lives? How will they cope with being dressed in Oscar attire one day, only to return to their lives in shacks and lean-to’s?

I am thrilled that they were given this opportunity after playing such extraordinary rolls, but I wonder…

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The recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai reminded me of how fragile life is. Stories of everyday people who were visiting and working in Mumbai, such as the Brooklyn couple who were held hostage and later killed, affected me in a way I didn’t think I was ready to write about. Tragic events are [...]

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