Samir's Journey of Life −7

And the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.

-Bible (NewTestament); Revelation 21:21

All the blog posts I write this month are going to be on my street experiences.

There are many bouts I go thru in life, one such bout these days is the desire to have an experience of street life (not literally).  I think this desire probably is the result of  APY - last Saturday, some of us went to the old town for the photo shoot.  We explored the area surrounding Bhadra Kali Fort and Bhatiyar Galli.  It was an amazing experience.  The energy and movement around awed me. Not just the people, but the cars, buses, rickshaws, mopeds, bicycles, cows, dogs. All of these things conspired to give the environment a chaotic and anarchic feel that amazed me, not that I am new to this place but its been a long time since I’ve had the street level experience.  The apparently chaotic place, when closely looked at, was very well organized.  Vendors intensely negotiating and selling ‘Katrina’ brand of lingerie and ‘Ladrina’ brand of cosmetics!  It was all very colorful and vibrant.

Zipping traffic at Bhadra Fort (will soon be a history)

Aggressive marketing (order within chaos)

Colourful Katrina

Lustrous Ladrina

From there we ventured in to the much talked about ‘Bhatiyar galli’.  Just before we entered the ‘galli’ we noticed a series of ‘perfum’ (e- is missing) kiosks.  They had strange collection of perfumes 'Sandol', ‘Drax’, ‘You & Me’, ‘My love’ types.  Unfortunately, I missed trying out some of them, as I was too pre-occupied in taking pictures.  We entered the (in)famous eating joint and very honestly, we were thoroughly disappointed.  Not that we expected great hygiene conditions but what we saw even lacked basic cleanliness and hygiene.  We lost all the appetite after having roamed around the street full of filth and stink of rotten fish or flesh.  We got some food packed and I must tell you, what we had was a surest route to get pancreatitis (if one consumes 3 days in a row) not to mention other gastronomic complications (or probably the regulars must be having Teflon quoted stomach lining...)

"Perfum"

Gastronomic nightmare!

My desire to have a feel of street experience did not fizzle out – on the contrary it became stronger.  I decided to go for a roadside barbershop for a shave.  I wanted to go to one of the types with a mirror hanging on the compound wall or they ask you to hold the mirror and a high wooden chair (one often finds such barbershops around the city).  I had always noticed one such shop opposite my office, so here I go, I parked and looked at it closely, tried to muster courage to go and sit on the chair – but I couldn’t (I had all sorts of thought processes, what would the adjoining tea vendor think, what if my colleagues pass by etc).  Eventually I ended up in some obscure place in Mithalkali village.  The shop had a colorful board ‘Monopol Jents Salun and Beauty Parlur’.   The shop was not more than 4.5 feet wide by 7 feet deep.  It had two chairs and two mirrors, around which there were plastic flowers and lots of photographs of Bollywood heroes stuck (on the wall opposite the mirrors) and neatly stacked gadgets as well as many bottles, tubes of weird brands of cosmetics (probably of the similar types I saw at Bhadrakali fort).  It appeared that I was the first customer of the day.   The moment I sat in the chair, my ‘hair stylist’ took out a packet of ‘budhalal’ tobacco and some lime paste, rubbed it in his palm and shoved the mixture in his mouth and without washing his hands – he held my face and gave a detailed look.  By that time I had closed my eyes, sank in my chair with some palpitation and stated praying ‘god …please protect me from allergy or infection…please’.  After the job was done, I opened my eyes and was a happy customer (really? I wonder).  Since then, I have been closely monitoring my face – looking for some signs of allergy.  So far, I am spared.  And hence my endeavor with street experience continues…

OK hair dresser!

By the way….

Day before, I got a small dental surgery, partial tooth extraction.  I believe that all dentists have a peculiar habit of talking while they maneuver a large drill in the mouth and they expect the patient to converse during the procedure!  Following is the conversation we had, about 10 minutes after the surgery started (I am pretty sure that you all must have had a similar experience):

Dr:  Now…let me assure you that this will not hurt at all (a blatant lie)…

me: (while it was hurting very badly and I was profusely bleeding) …uh… hug… oogaulps…!!!

Dr:  I told you, every thing is going to be al right, you were needlessly fearing

me: @#...ou…grrrrr….dolp..dolp…

Dr:  What do you think of this babri masjid judgment?

me:  $$&***@##...eah…aehaa…ughhe…umm…shi…ugh ugh…glop…(all I was saying was:   damn…finish of the work fast and let me get out of here)

Dr: (what ever she understood of my talk) ummm, I thought as much, even I have the same view!!!!

And such meaningless conversation went on for next 23 minutes.  Some body please tell me that is it part of the training of dentist that they make their patients (read: victims) talk while they shove the deadliest of the gadgets in the mouth?

See you after 10 days with more street experiences