My cablewallah is giving me trouble. And while I am quick to admit to my own mistakes, my present predicament is most definitely my cablewallah’s fault. Ideally I should be taking him to the consumer court or at least making myself be heard calmly. However, every other day when he decides to haunt me, I find myself shrieking and hobbling like a witch instead of dealing with the unfortunate misunderstandings that have caused a rift in our dependence on each other-he for his money and me for his unreliable connection.

I took my sorry tale to my friend who lives in a glitzy building in Khar where all these sundry services are handled by a contractor. Ha! Easy for her. She is not running behind her cablewallah like a screaming banshee with a bee on her nose!

However, she does not agree with me. Or more specifically with my ‘chalta hai’ stance. “You people just do not follow problems through,” is her puzzled refrain. She is in local parlance, America-Returned. And that actually makes her a completely different kettle of fish! Let me explain.

Of all the things that got her started, noise pollution took the front seat when she found that every time she looked down from her balcony on the 9^th floor of her building, she was confronted either with a festival playing out in full swing under her or a cricket match and even political rallies when things were beginning to look a little too quiet.

She lives next to a club which in itself is something that we all envy. No don’t get me wrong. I am certainly not vying for membership. It’s just that there is this expanse of openness to look into which is most endearing.

She snorts at this explanation. She says she showed utmost patience through all the shenanigans until one fine day during a cricket match when every single time a run was made (and those can be pretty frequent we lovers of cricket must agree!) a ferocious drum beat signaling this feat would take off!

On earlier instances she called the club-complained. She walked up to the ‘perpetrators’ of all kinds of noise and pleaded with them for the sakes of all collective eardrums, she even wrote letters but alas to no avail.

However, this time she was determined. Armed with the numbers of noise-pollution activists, local politicians and resolution she wrote letters, called incessantly, drummed up support, pledged help, pulled rugs et al until the club relented and accepted their fault.

She has had many a pleasant naps in the relatively quiet afternoons that have followed. This is not to say that cricket is still not played with noisy gusto right under her window, but she knows she can make the un-oiled machines of our civic sense turn.

The funny thing is she always knew. I did not. Every time I am confronted with a problem that is other than of my own making I never go out to remedy it. Be is garbage being thrown on the pavement in front of my building or even someone smoking on the balcony above mine and flicking their ash into my plants just below.

Today as I write this, I know all I need to do is sit down and figure out that if I am in the right nothing can stop me from doing what is right.

Gayatri

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I want to send the following bill to BMC.

1) Bill for the tyres of my car ruined driving around in Bandra Rs 16,000

2) Cost of the axel and silencer of my car Rs 25,000

3) Price of three perfectly beautiful shoes that are now consigned to the bin with their heels and straps broken -  Rs 5,000

4) Fees paid to the orthopedic doc because the rattling of the car over bumps dislocated parts of my vertebrae - Rs 3,000

5) Dry-cleaning bill for clothes splattered with mud by cars driving through pot-holes filled with mucky water - Rs 2,000       

6) Petrol wasted stuck in jams and driving in 1^st gear behind crawling cars that are negotiating the craters on the roads -  5,000

7) Mental anguish and trauma caused year after year due to the broken, pot-holed  mud tracks that are passed-off as roads in Bandra- Rs 5,00,000

Total owed by BMC Rs 5,56,000

Of course, I should also thank the BMC for saving me money as well. I don’t have to drive all the way to Esselworld for a roller-coaster ride. I have many roller-coaster rides all around Bandra, Apart from the mountain-like speed-breakers, driving into and out of the huge, gaping holes on our roads can give a similar thrill.

Or maybe, instead of suing BMC, I should ask CM Mr Deshmukh to enact his scheme of paying Rs 1,000 for spotting each pot-hole. I will be laughing all the way to my bank. 

Sangeeta Almeida

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My daughter is in love with Bandra. She has lived here since birth and now, as a teenager, she can’t imagine living anywhere else in Bombay, not even at Napean Sea, Malabar Hill or Altamount Road. For her, Bandra is a little city in itself, with the sea, the restaurants, the night life, the parks, the shopping and the theaters.

So yesterday, I decided to test her knowledge on her beloved her Bandra. I named certain roads and crossroads in Bandra and asked her to identify them. I am sharing below these as a little quiz for die-hard Bandraites. These are roads and chowks around Bandra West that we pass every day. Some we know by there traditional, old names and some we know by descriptions… Let’s see how many you can recognize:

1. Ramdas Naik Marg
2. R K Patkar Marg
3. Guru Nanak Road
4. Master Vinayak Road
5. Nargis Dutt Road
6. Sangeet Samrat Naushad Ali Marg
7. Mummy Ena Pereira Chowk
8. Arun Podwal Chowk
9. Smt. Sunita Nanda Chowk
10. Amjad Khan Chowk
11. Freedom Fighter Harsh Chandra Goyal Chowk

Of course, she could name only two of the above ten. How many did you identify? As I said, we use these roads so often, but are unable to recognize them by their current names. It is the same as we still say Fort or Fountain and not Hutatma Chowk or VT rather than Chtrapati Shivaji Terminus and call our city Bombay and not Mumbai.

See how well you know Bandra and were you able to come up with these answers:

1.   Ramdas Naik Marg - Hill Road

2.   R K Patkar Marg - Waterfield Road

3.   Guru Nanak Road - Turner Road

4.   Master Vinayak Road - Perry Road

5.   Nargis Dutt Road -  Pali Hill

6.   Sangeet Samrat Naushad Ali Marg -  Carter Road

7.   Mummy Ena Pereira Chowk  -  Pali Naka

8.   Arun Podwal Chowk - The Camy Wafer Crossroad                  

9    Smt Sunita Nanda Chowk  - The old Candies Crossroad

10. Amjad Khan Chowk  - Opposite Shatranj Restaurant

11. Freedom Fighter Harsh Chandra Goyal Chowk - The crossroad opposite China Gate

Of course, I know my daughter will never be caught dead saying, “Mum, I am going for a walk to Sangeet Samrat Naushad Ali Marg”, or “Dad, can I have some money. I am going shopping on Ramdas Naik Road with my friends”.

Sangeeta Almeida