Accha, don’t try and correct my Hindi! Samjhe, this is Mumbai! ‘Tu kya karega’ is correct Bambaiya
Illustration/Uday Mohite
Accha, don’t try and correct my Hindi! Samjhe, this is Mumbai! ‘Tu kya karega’ is correct Bambaiya.
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So, what was I saying?
Okay, see if Supreme Court says we can only have a 20-feet-high dahi handi pyramid on Janmashtami, then we will erect a 40-feet-high one. Samjhe na! Tu kya karega? Two to three boys will fall, chot lagega, but that’s life na? Bees foot mein challenge kya hai? Next year, they will say pachaas foot ka limit, so we will extend to 60. Whatever rule they try and enforce, we will break.
See boss, rules are there to be broken, nobody has value for life anymore. Tu kya karega?
See this last eleven days, Ganapati Visarjan and all…yes we call it Lalbaug ka Raja. But it’s also my Raj. When they say, 11 pm deadline, how can all our celebrations stop at 11 pm? That is nonsense. You see, I think they mean, we can start at 11 pm. I believe in being, what you people say, ‘fashionably late’. If we don’t make noise, how will Ganeshji hear us?
Also, I feel our modern Ganapati celebrations are not religious enough. All these young people, they bang those drums, and those big big speakers, bigger than the pandal itself, playing Hindi film music. That is not correct. I mean, you cannot make everything Bollywood, na? Do our temples blare item numbers? Do our priests play all this percussion? Nahi nahi, what is the most religious sound in our mandirs? The temple bell, na? So, I have made sure that every lorry, every truck, every pandal, whether on the streets, in gallis, outside hospitals, old age homes, silence zones, animal shelter must ring a large bell, so the sound is heard over all Mumbai sheher — you must feel the impact in your brain, so you never forget us, so all our wishes comes true. That is tradition.
Sometimes, the police try and restrain us, control us. So, we beat them up. That has become common now. One guy killed a cop for asking to look at his licence. This is for God, how dare anyone stop us. Where is the comparison?
See we don’t care for rules. You say 10 feet high, we will make 20. You say 11 pm deadline, we make it 1 am. You put up a one-way sign, we say entry from both sides. You say speed limit of 55 kmph, we say 60. You say, 70, we say 100. Tu kya karega?
Now, many opportunities are coming for us to disregard rules. The law says no water balloons, let’s have dry Holi, this year good monsoon, so we can have full mazzaa. Diwali, you will say, no bombs and impose deadlines. You know my feelings on the subject. We will burst crackers well into the night.
We will build illegal structures and destroy mangroves, FSI... kya FSI...? No seat belts, no helmet, no red lights... we only see green. It is our city to do as we please. Tu kya karega?
Rahul da Cunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahuldacunha62@gmail.com
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