The Sky Below

Salaam Mumbai...

The news that the BMC is thinking of constructing a series of ‘theme parks’ in Mumbai, at the sites of pumping stations, and reservoirs cannot have been met without a certain degree of consternation in some circles.

What has the BMC to show for its aesthetic prowess so far? Concrete dustbins of gaping penguins? Road dividers that skillfully obstruct the sea view? A bird feeder that flashes neon seagulls?

This PWD approach to city enhancement has left many an aesthete stricken with fear that an aqua theme park in Powai, a mock fishing village in Mahim and a 20 ft mural in Mazgaon depicting its port heritage is too ambitious a plan for a bunch of municipal administrators albeit with consulting designers.

I have another idea: instead of stretching themselves to come up with more in the line of ersatz urban culture-why doesn’t the BMC simply allow these public spaces to be occupied as landscaped gardens with flowering trees and plants? So much more pleasing to the eye-and less fraught with the possibility of offending people’s design sensibilities I would think.

Sara Singh, the thirty- something, sometime Mumbai based daughter of a Patiala prince and an American mother, has made an extraordinarily insightful 75 minute documentary on Partition, titled ‘The Sky Below’.

Travelling from Kutch to Kashmir and Karachi to the Khyber Pass, with two cameras, a sound recording unit and her back pack, and often encountering life threatening situations along the way, Sara spent a year and a half researching and editing the film interviewing some 75 odd people on both sides of the border along the way.

The film works on many levels, the cinematography is exquisite and her usage of the songs of itinerant musicians gives it all an ethereal quality. Of special interest is her footage of the Mohenjedaro and Harappa archeological sites, and the cultures they foster.

Singh has held one screening of the film under the auspices of the Asia Society last week to an appreciative audience. But it would be a shame if schools and colleges missed out on the opportunity of seeing this first hand unbiased eye witness account of life in Pakistan and India. For more information on ‘The Sky Below’ write to her at seetheskybelow@gmail.com

Seventy one buildings in the city on the danger list-and none of their tenants willing to move out to transit camps until repairs are carried out.

And can any one blame them? The chaos confusion and commotion in these camps is reason enough for them to take their chances and continue living in precarious dwellings while risking their lives.

I once interviewed a tenant in a partially collapsed building at Lion’s Gate two years ago. Even that single hour sipping tea and conducting an interview, flanked by the dark and foreboding, stairway exposed electricity wires and fallen beams proved to be surreal experience.

And yet, such is the state of the abysmal transit camps and spiraling real estate prices that tenants don’t want to budge!

The cops are challenging drunken driving with Breath Analyzer Detectors-that’s BAD for short!

s_malavika@dnaindia.net