Smelly Cat.. Smelly Cat

It's amazing how integral smell becomes as a part of memories..

This became more clear when I realised that my daily route to office is classified not so much by the different buildings on the side but by the different smells which are distinct to those different parts.. Can't use the word aroma or fragrance to capture the exact essence!

The Tulsi Pipe stretch encompasses a multitude of smells, the stench arising from the slums on the side to the overpowering nose tickling smell of fresh green chilies mixed with coriander. Following this is the heady fragrance of fresh flowers soon to be replaced by the smell of even fresher fish being loaded into the trucks.

Smell is something that we get used to, and after a while we stop realising that it exists.. As it is stated, if you live next to the garbage dump, soon you will be oblivious to it, not because you are ok with it but because the sensitive nose gets acclimatized to it.

I remember my initial trips to Mumbai, when I would feel that I would gag due to the overpowering smell of humanity. Now I don't even realise it..

The smell of rain, which is currently in the air evokes a lot of memories and often makes a lot of us want to snuggle in with a good book and a steaming cup of coffee

Where food is cheap, life is dear.. where food is dear, life is cheap!!

No where have I seen such a stark representation of this than in Mumbai. At any traffic signal, the complete nonchalance with which people cross the road is awesome. The pedestrian signal could be red, but who cares.. Cars could be zipping along at 60+ speeds, but who cares...

Could the fact that cost of living in Mumbai is amongst the highest across the globe be why Mumbaikars really don't care too much about their own lives.. It's not that the vehicle drivers are jumping signals, they are to some extent following the rules, but the people on the street don't care.

Someone pls explain this phenomena to me, if there is any other reason for this. Maybe the sea breeze impacts reasoning or blurs your vision. Or maybe everyone is colorblind, so when you see red you think it's green. Could be anything.. or it cld be that yes food is dear n therefore life has no value beyond it's daily strife to ensure food on the table.

Homogeneity

A friend spoke at length about how he hates the way this city (infact most cities i guess) are all beginning to look the same. there is the intrinsic sameness amongst the people. How all the malls infact represent this exact sameness... He was extremely perturbed by this bland homogeneous culture which he cannot seem to accept and thus ends up feeling like an alien in the exact world that he belonged to since birth.

And this is coming from a guy who works in the "glamorous" space of entertainment, which I am sure is populated with a multitude of this homogenous mass. He travels using his own car, shops in malls, watches the latest movies in the multiplexes, dines at various restaurants (some hip some not so hip) around town.. so why is he feeling alien??

But firstly what is this big issue about homogeneity?? Just because people living in Andheri or Colaba or Gurgaon or Lajpat Nagar or TN Nagar all seem to be dressing in similar fashion, shopping and perusing entertainment with similar zeal (or lack of it), eating the same cuisine!!! But then what else do you expect. All these people are exposed to the same cues through media. End of the day we are what we are because of what we consume!!

Why crib about Andheri vs Colaba when on most music channels you see international artists prancing around with bindis on their foreheads.. sporting henna tatoos.. what about the curry culture which has overtaken every possible cusine in London or even the US? The bright gujarati colours and other Indian motifs are seen on international ramps if one were to have a closer look..

Isn't that an extension of the sameness!!

A research done by VH1 amongst the youth showed Hip-Hop as a major influencer.. and I'm not talking music.. the low waisted jeans sweeping the floor, the oversize shirts, the accessories.. the youth has adopted it all with zeal. And they flaunt it as the badge of their oneness with their global peers.

And from some few thousand miles away, comes music which is interspersed with bhangra beats, and here i'm not talking about our brethren from southhall..

So who decides that this amalgamation is bad? An extremist view on similar lines is what takes amongst our cultural police who shout from roof tops about our youngsters being corrupted by western influences..

I agree we all feel alienated with certain aspects of the society. Some more so than others. A joint family culture might be alien to me, living with an extremely conservative tamil iyengar family would be a difficult idea to digest. But why despair because things change?

What I do agree with and also find a little disconcerting is the random adoption of any culture without it having any kind of relevance to a person's upbringing their current stage in life or society..