Category: Humor

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Birthdays Unlimited

Birthdays were pretty tame affairs in the conservative milieu of India we grew up in. My mom, unfailingly, would indulge us with our favorite payasam, when any of our family birthdays came around. Till I was ten years or so, there were also new birthday dresses, and a bunch of candies to share with friends.

As for the adults in the family though, it was primarily a payasam treat and not much else. Except when an elder in the family crossed sixty years, or eighty and odd years (the shatabhiskekam,  marking the blessing of having seen  a thousand full moons). At these times, the extended family would gather for special religious ceremonies and celebration.

Things have changed dramatically. Nowadays, birthdays for kids, and even adults, are high-voltage events, with clowns, cakes, balloons and themed parties providing amusement and entertainment in ample measure. The simplicity of earlier times is gone. But there’s more to this than meets the eye. The complex culture that India is, even the simplicity of old was not without its merry share of confusion.

What we commonly refer to as the birthday is actually called the ‘English’ birthday. This is (ostensibly) the actual date of birth, and serves to mark records for the outer world of school and work. Straightforward? Not quite. Aside from English birthdays, there is also the star or ‘nakshatra’ birthday, corresponding to the asterism of the heavens one was born under in the year of birth. This star birthday holds significance from an astrological perspective. It has only a slim chance of coinciding with the English one in any given year. When it came around, mom would take us to the nearby temple, to make prayers and offerings on our behalf. The English birthday was for fun and cake with friends. The star birthday, in contrast, was quasi-religious and more of a personal affair. As a kid, I can recall the payasam treat on both birthdays.

For a long while, I thought this dual nuance was all there was to it for birthdays. And then, in my junior year of college, my horizons broadened in the most interesting manner.

In the summer of 1989,  a bunch of my classmates interned along with me at the stately Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) in Mumbai. The gigantic refinery was our first practical exposure to big industry, and as with most college summer internships, we made sure it was a time of nonstop fun. The BPCL internship was much sought after, both for its generous stipend, and for the sumptuous corporate lunch we could eat daily in the management cafeteria, for the ridiculous sum of 50 paise! Our days began at 5:30 am, when we would begin our two-hour commute from our college dorms. Switching bus, train and car, we would make our way through the early morning crush of suburban Mumbai, to reach the sprawling factory premises by 7:30 am.

Signing in, we would barely have time to catch breakfast, before reporting to the head of the department we were assigned, for the daily 8 am factory-wide bulletin. This session would be held on intercom, in the office of the individual department manager we were rotating through in our internship for that week. The bulletin consisted of unintelligible announcements about production schedules, piping leaks, volume targets and safety measures, and generally bored the pants off us. We would switch off attention for the most part, but towards the end of each morning’s bulletin, the announcer would read out the names of people in the factory who had their birthdays that day. This would usually be a list of under ten people, with the average being six or seven. Huddled around the intercom, the other interns and I would make this a little betting game for every morning. We instituted a grand prize for whoever amongst us would have the best accuracy of predictions for daily birthday counts, over the entire internship period. It was one of several little fun games we made up to keep our long days interesting.

The morning of the 1st of June dawned like any other day, the sky overcast with pre-monsoon clouds as we gazed out of the department head’s room we were gathered in. We each wrote our guesses for the number of birthdays to be announced that day in a common notebook, to be compared at the end of all the birthday announcements. After the drone of production updates and senior executive messages came the birthday list. Our ears now perked up for the all-important count that would decide our betting fortunes. We had our pencils and pens at the ready, to keep individual tally counts in our notepads for cross-validation.

The first few names, up to ten, came through loud and clear. In a few moments though, the count went past 15, then on to 20, then 25. Quizzical looks crossed our faces as we exchanged glances. We were after all, engineers in training, and claimed no pretense to knowledge of the fancy science of probabilities. Intuition told us however that this was already very unusual. As the count touched 30, we were certain this had to be a unique occurrence, an instance of that oft quoted probability term, the long tail event, or statistical outlier.

There was no letup though. Picking up momentum, the names now came in a swell tide. In no time we were up from 30 to 50. Imagine fifty folks with the same birthday! Then 75, and rapidly on to 100! We were wide-eyed in disbelief. A century count of people with the same birthday in the same workplace! Something remarkable had to be going on.

Being in Mumbai, the plant personnel were of mostly Marathi origin, reflecting the predominant lingua franca of the workplace. Shinde and Munde. Bhonsle and Bhongale. The names continued to dance and roll. Dongre and Khopade. My knowledge of Marathi surnames was gaining ground rapidly, enough, I thought, to create a companion volume to Maneka Gandhi’s famous book of names. There was the odd South Indian Rao or Shenoy, and a lone Mishra, but it was primarily a sustained cascade of Marathi names. I could as well have been reading off the telephone directory.

The birthday roll now picked up further momentum, even as the departmental manager began to chuckle at our incredulous expressions. It breached 120, breezing through 130, and soon sailed past 150. The tally marks in our slim notepads now overflowed into multiple pages. Cricketing analogies kicked in. This was the kind of blitzkrieg score many Indian cricket batsmen would have loved to put up against Caribbean pace bowling, in contrast to their usual single digit exploits.

The count continued merrily, barreling past 160 and 175, then entered the 180’s. We were in sight of a double century! Then the last name rolled in, topping the birthday boy count at a magnificent 188. Fittingly, this matched the crowning score of Sunil Gavaskar, the Mumbai cricketing legend, in his swansong innings against the MCC at Lord’s a couple of summers earlier. In our minds, this rare shower of birthdays felt like having just witnessed the usually staid Gavaskar pulling out all the stops for a breathtaking innings.

The bearded department chief, seated across the room from us, was clearly tickled seeing our puzzlement at this enormous birthday coincidence. Allowing no further musing though, he bade us goodbye, and we decamped from his room, wandering into the plant’s long alleyways, searching for explanations.

Our hormonal brains quickly converged on a theory, working backwards nine months from 1st of June, to 1st of September. One of the bright sparks in the group ventured that 1st of September would have been some sort of collective action day, for synchronized festivities under the sheets all those years ago. Perhaps it was a mini (and literal) forerunner to the Summer of Love. It might have been a novel form of mass protest against a government family planning diktat or some such stupid socialist scheme of those days. Or perhaps, to take thumping advantage of new baby subsidies which may have been abruptly announced as being withdrawn after 1st June of the next year! Whatever the trigger, we were pretty sure it had to have been one long and sultry September night of flat out ardor and love making.

The question however remained as to why all the resulting babies would then come to converge on Bharat Petroleum as their workplace. That was still a big puzzle. Our 1st of September lovefest theory, colorful in its beginnings,  only flattered to deceive.

During our leisurely corporate lunchbreak, we then came upon the most obvious hypothesis, which while not as fancy in imagination, certainly appealed to our college mindset of tinkering with the system for everything. The cut-off date for school admissions all those years ago would have been 1st of June. Harried parents who were keen to get little brats off to school (and off their backs), would have, in keeping with the typical Indian enthusiasm for early schooling, brought forward several July, possibly even a few August and later birthdays to 1st of June. That would have given the kids a strategic head start to schooling, having several of them begin a year ahead of normal. These official records, tinkered as they were at the very beginning, would have persisted all the way through into later life.

The staff canteen in the plant had a birthday treat item on its menu. One way to verify this new hypothesis was to find out if there was a spike in the number of people ordering birthday treat items that day. And sure enough, when we checked in the afternoon, it was only the normal count, no different from any other day. Our second theory stood handsomely vindicated!

In India, therefore, especially for those born around different academic year cutoffs, birthdays can be a triply nuanced phenomenon. You have not just the English birthday and the star birthday, but quite likely a separate official birthday as well. You might also find the official birthday to be the same for a large number of folks in your workplace, a mass (and essentially fake) phenomenon! Call it madness, or practical ingenuity, we sure can confuse the heck out of the rest of the world, even with something as basic as birthdays. Even for the old guard who might prefer to avoid big bashes, one can make up by celebrating this big day  with triple fervor every year!

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Tomato Kumbh Mela

Tomatoes are a perennial favorite, especially in summer time, and there are of course several delicious ways to savor their bountiful goodness. For long, all I thought possible with tomatoes were grills and sautés, stews and soups, purees and ketchups. Till one fine day in Spain, when an encounter with tomatoes turned out, to put it mildly, beyond culinary.

Several summers ago, a group of us friends caught the European travel bug. Spain and Portugal, by popular consensus, was where we would peregrinate. Itinerary planning was given over to our ever-resourceful Hari Sathianathan, who set about poring over the maps to chart the course for our trip. Our jaunt was to last just over a week.

A quick glance at the itinerary revealed the names of several familiar places. Next to Valencia in Spain, though, was earmarked a day’s outing to Buñol. The next time I met Hari I probed him on what the side-excursion to Buñol was all about. His response was a mischievous smile, and then to evade the question, by deftly changing topic. I let it go, thinking best not to prod further, for it might just be that some places are best encountered sans any preamble and expectations.

Shortly after, our trip got under way, crisscrossing the Spanish countryside, touching Madrid, Seville, and beautiful Lisbon in Portugal. My Spanish vocabulary stayed confined to two magic words, ‘aqua caliante’, to help with my daily herbal tea regimen. After several such days of hot herbal tea, and evenings of fruit sangria, our road journeys brought us to Valencia, home of famed Valencia oranges. The next day was to be our outing to Buñol, and in the evening group briefing I finally heard the program. It was Tomatina, Buñol’s famous annual tomato festival. We were told the plentiful summer tomato harvest would bring thick crowds to indulge in a mass tomato throwing spree, and therefore to dress for any and all eventualities.

Early the next morning we took a cab to Buñol, reaching there in under an hour. It was just dawn, and we could already see swarms of people buzzing about the visitor drop off terminal. The streets wore a carnival look.  To weather a tomato deluge, I wore a bright cherry red T-Shirt and a flimsy pair of red shorts, sans underwear.  Best, I thought cleverly, to save my dwindling trip stock of all white underwear for after the festival. In retrospect, it proved to be a rather brave, though prudent decision.

We sauntered down a long downhill stretch of road, at the end of which there was a roundabout from where you could turn in to the center of town, with its narrower streets. As we came to the roundabout, we were witness, much to our amusement, to some spankingly good morning entertainment. Strutting about were two burly bare-bodied blokes, in pointed headgear, tight briefs and spiked boots, their outfits a bright tomato red. Their skimpy costume looked part Roman soldier, part Phantom. One of them read out orders from a scroll, while the other milled about submissively, tidying up odds and ends.

All of a sudden, perhaps to reassert authority, the scroll reader cracked his little whip for a tight slap to his companion’s not insubstantial bottom. The latter yelped in feigned surprise, proceeding to give his wide derriere a manly recovery rub. His booty cheeks blushed crimson, matching the solar orb just risen on the horizon. The scene was so extraordinarily comic we could not help but burst out in guffaws. Ignoring our irreverent bunch, the brawny duo went back to their show of order barking and subservience. Our excitement at the naughty spectacle of an enormous pink bum slapped red was utterly beyond limit.

The crowds gradually grew thicker as we made our way towards the center of town. As we crossed over a small bridge, somebody called out saying no T-Shirts allowed for men. I paid no heed, but as soon as we came to the next street intersection, there was a line of young men tasked with enforcing the rule. Even as I tried to duck and dodge, two of them came up, one from each side, to rip my T-Shirt off in a flash. In less than milliseconds, my bright red T-Shirt was history. As much as I mulled over the loss of it, the dexterity of the act left me hugely impressed. A feat such as this would have taken hours of practice to be able to execute so flawlessly. I was now bare-chested and free to celebrate. We were soon amidst a crushing crowd, very close to the center of town. The heat was turning up, and at one point we almost had the beginnings of a mini-stampede, but thankfully everyone stayed put without triggering further panic.

On both sides of the streets were apartments packed with tourists awaiting the beginning of the fest. Elegantly dressed ladies, perhaps on a package tour, peered curiously from the safety of the balconies, as the throngs from below exhorted them to come down and join the fun. There was even a Bollywood film crew, camera all set up and ready to capture live action. Soon enough, the first truck piled high with tomatoes rolled in slowly through the center of town, its helpers tossing tomatoes generously into all sections of the waiting crowd. Like thick pellets of rain before a summer shower, the first tomatoes whizzed about in the air and burst on us with a pronounced pop. Their speed through the air was surprisingly fast, enough to sting, leaving you little time or space to duck. Before long, the truck came down the street past us, and we were bombarded by a hail of tomatoes.

A second truck came, and then a procession of trucks unleashing a continuous barrage of the red missiles, with people trying futilely to fend off the zippy projectiles before they landed. It was soon a complete free for all as everybody turned to pelting squishy red blobs and peels at each other, while effectively scrubbing chests and arms and legs with lycopene, the healthful ingredient released from all that tomato pulp in the heat. The streets were soon flowing streams of tomato mash, as scantily clad hordes of men and women made sure there was not a patch of skin on anybody that wasn’t tingling red. Excitement touched peak. Everyone was going to smell of tomatoes for at least a day or two.

About an hour and more of the tomato volleys later, the last truck made its way down the streets, and the sun smiled bright from blue skies on the red bodied mass of frenzy below. Ingenious humans had managed to put tons of tomatoes to massively cosmetic purpose in a riotous street celebration. If this had been in India, you might have been excused for thinking it was a religious fair or mela, where everyone had been showered with vermillion dust from above.

India is indeed known for its grand Kumbh Mela festivals, where millions dip in the confluence of sacred rivers like the Ganges to cleanse themselves spiritually. As much as it is a cleansing time, it is also a time for celebration, attracting devout throngs, curiosity trippers and every kind of tourist in-between. Buñol’s annual Tomatina with its packed streets is verily a kumbh mela as well, except that the communal scrubbing that ensues is not so much of souls as of bodies. The crowds are however no less enthusiastic, with a frenzy of fervor to match and exceed. Not all of them may be up for a sobering dip in the holy waters of the Ganges. They certainly know however, how to revel in this unique tomato kumbh mela, with immersion in a Ganges of lycopene.

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Retail Therapy

I am no scientist, but I do consider myself rational. I once even took a master’s level course on inventory and logistics. Rationality however can be an elusive phenomenon, especially when confronted with the temptations of Retail Therapy.

Years ago, I was strolling the aisles of a Ukrop’s grocery store, right next to the apartment complex I lived in, in Richmond, Virginia. Ukrop’s was a family owned chain of stores, where I made frequent errands for precisely what I needed, which in those days of blissful simplicity, could be for even as little as a single bag of chips. On this particular occasion, I was weighing my choices between a small bottle of pretty Himalayan pink salt, and next to it, a large Morton’s salt jar. Health conscious, organic me would have normally opted for the Himalayan salt, but for a minute I dithered. Pinch for pinch, I calculated the Himalayan pink salt would cost several times over the Morton salt, and there was also family due to visit soon, who couldn’t care less, among all things, for dilemmas over table salt. My economical brain thus prevailed, but just as I reached for the Morton salt, I had my first comeuppance.

‘Don’t take that’, a voice rang out, in Gujarati, as a short and stocky lady puffed up to me, grandmotherly concern writ large on her face. ‘There’s a sale going on in Costco, where you can get 5 of these same jars for a dollar. Be not taken in by the pretty lights of this store!’

I was a combination of miffed and amused. What would I do with 5 salt jars? Have salted tea? Elderly ladies can sometimes give you the most insistent, yet ridiculous advice, but you only take them on at your own peril. In this case, this was easily the most harebrained proposition I had heard in a while, or so I thought. But I decided against voicing my reaction, and told her instead that I would surely checkout Costco sometime.

Several major retail conglomerates dot the modern American economic landscape, and among them are a few who have helped shape whole new paradigms in consumer buying behavior. In the world of bulk buying, I was soon to discover, Costco is king.

Shortly after the encounter with the Gujarati lady’s advocacy, I was on a long afternoon road trip in California, while also looking for roses to bring to a dinner party later in the evening. ‘Find the nearest Costco’, a friend advised, even as I had a 4 hour drive ahead of me. ‘They stock lovely red roses, and you’ll get plenty more roses than from a local florist for the same price’. With quite a few social occasions slated over the next few months, I decided this would be the impetus for my plunge into the world of buyer’s club shopping.

At 55 dollars per annum, I knew I had to make the Costco membership pay for itself. And it didn’t disappoint. Several times in the subsequent months, I went to buy big bunches of red roses. And then one day the same friend called out of the blue to say there was a Costco deal going on with innerwear. In an impulse bout of bulk buying, I carted dozens of sparkling white vests and briefs. I had managed to find the break even, or paisa vasool as they say in India, for the cost of membership. It was in fact a truly economic order quantity, I consoled myself, except with a restocking frequency of 10 years and more. One could, hopefully, still emerge rational in the long run.

Till the day I discovered that you could do even better by sharing costs of membership, or better still, piggybacking, if your purchases were occasional, on the generosity of a friend. I have since been lucky enough to do the latter.

Just last month, I needed to get some vases and plants for my front porch. After considering several local stores, we found that Costco might have the best deals. So piggybacking on my friend’s membership, a group of us embarked on a ‘Costco Run’. Not surprisingly, we were not the only ‘buyer gangs’.  One could see several gangs of software geeks trooping in along with us, ready for their slice of adventure.

Yes, the conquest of shopping can satisfy as much as the conquest of a peak, or similar such adventure sport, for the majority. Retail therapy is indeed the great American adventure of modern times, especially during the weekends, when enthusiasm understandably surges high. Conducted on terra firma, amongst fluorescent aisles in the safety of the indoors, this is a sport almost everyone can indulge in.

By the Costco entrance, one could see families wheeling in their kids in shopping carts that are wide enough to seat two kids at once. The difference, on the way out, is usually that the same kids are now precariously positioned over endless cartons and boxes, and may even have to perch atop their family SUVs on the ride back home. Outside, new tires are readily available should you want to replace your old worn out ones, especially considering the gargantuan bulk of what the typical shopping expedition ends up with.

Entering the store, one feels one has just come through the gangway of a major ocean liner that has docked at port, stacked with its trove of mercantile treasures from halfway round the world. Row upon shining row of goods can be found stacked on shelves impossibly high. You might do well to come in with your own tall ladder, should you intend exploring the upper decks of the ship.

A trained eye can easily sort out the seasoned shoppers from the novices. The novices, or ‘Costco virgins’, spend their time gaping at the promotions on display, usually in the front section of the store, or by the checkout. They are the ones who have made the brave (and grave) mistake of barging in without a shopping list. The optometry section right upfront offers help to such folks, ensnaring them with every imaginable kind of lens so they might be able to shop and impartially succumb to all deals with clear vision. As if that might not be enough, there are rumors of soon to be introduced Costco retrievers, dogs trained to help you navigate to the juiciest deals store wide, cutting through all the crowds and confusion. The catch? True to Costco spirit, you’ve got to bulk engage a dozen of them at one go. Which is as well, considering one might have a sledge of goods to check out with, having come in not knowing what to buy in the first place. The longer you linger around, the more enticing your shopping discoveries, and the bulkier you will return home.

We were of course predetermined with our shopping plans for the plants and vases, and happily, found a couple of enormous, yet beautiful blue vases from Japan. The plants and pottery section was indeed stocked with some great items for home decor. We then headed for the excellent selection of organic fruits, chips and other snack items which have now become a mainstay for the grocery business.

But if you did not quite know what to get, and came in with an ‘open list’, the treasures of the Costco universe are endless. There’s dog food to feed all the dogs in town, strays included. There are enormous sized hiking pants that can make excellent gifts for any grizzlies you might invite over to your campfire. There’s organic maple syrup that could represent the output of a large Canadian forest. Enough laundry detergent to wash all global politics clean. Batteries to power your home for the next decade, and endless arrays of diapers and toilet paper. Thankfully, if you belonged to a shared buying team, bulk scale is less of an issue, especially when settled through the wonder app, Splitwise.

One has to wonder, however, what all of this humongous retail therapy portends philosophically for happiness. In terms of sheer scale, I would not be surprised if we found out that the annual business of a single Costco store could be about the same order of magnitude as the GDP of Bhutan, the tiny modern Shangri La which prefers to measure Gross National Happiness over GDP.

In this case, we should perhaps then look for the happiness afforded from Costco shopping and see how it compares. The happiness of the Bhutanese stems from lightness of possessions and simplicity, and of course, pristine mountain air and fresh tasting jam.  Americans, by contrast, can buy the equivalent of the average Bhutanese’s annual purchase, from a single visit to Costco. At least in the immediate aftermath of such a shopping expedition,  their finances become modest, and a content frugality settles in.  Overall happiness might thus turn out quite comparable. Especially if you owned stock in Costco, which would allow you to have your cake and eat it too.

Bhutan still beckons though, and we must explore it some day. Hopefully before the advent of Costco in Bhutan.

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Mumbai’s Rhythms, Human and Bovine

Mumbai, or Bombay for old timers, is India’s version of the Big Apple, heir to a still visible Victorian legacy juxtaposed with eternal Indian ingenuity. One can almost touch the pulsating energy in its air, thick with ambition and enterprise. This is a city that never sleeps, with Bollywood for a glittering dream machine. The city is also synonymous with big Indian business, having played home to the legendary Jamshedji Tata, whose vision bequeathed to India its very first modern industrial empire.

I’ve often wondered what makes Mumbai tick, the city’s secret sauce, so to speak, that sustains all of its tremendous bustle and activity. The city bucks the stereotype of the average Indian metropolis, and is perhaps, in many ways, a closer cousin to Tokyo. Just as Japan is culturally the most Westernized of all Asian countries, Mumbai is the most Westernized among India’s cities. There’s a clockwork precision to Tokyo that Mumbai tries to emulate, and fairly successfully at that. For Mumbai, far more than the rest of India’s cities, thrives on a remarkable orderliness.

Take queuing for instance, something one might take for granted in the West. Most of India would prefer a non-linear approach to get ahead with life in general. The Indian mindset is smartly endowed to figure out the shortest path through any and every situation. Mumbai, by contrast, queues up for just about everything.

The lifeline of Mumbai is its suburban rail network, which like Tokyo’s, is one of the world’s busiest, transporting millions of people day in and out with relentless efficiency. Mumbai’s rail network, with all of the feeder systems that support it, does a stellar job of keeping the whole city on the move with a palpable rhythm.

The exception to orderly queueing, curiously, is for the actual suburban train ride itself, which can demand an act of genuine acrobatic dexterity to board and exit. Rest assured, however, that this is for good reason, and there is a still a certain knack to the process, which requires positioning oneself strategically to ride with the crowd’s momentum. Embarking and exit is then simply a matter of being swept in and swept out with the tidal surge of humanity. For coaches with crowds packed like sardines, this system works far superior to queueing.

Once on board though, you will find that that order settles in rapidly. If you rode in the same coach on the same local train every day, you might notice the same straphangers occupying the same spots, as if theirs by right. Not surprisingly, a lively community bond ensues, forged by this daily commute. Such bonds have lasted, in many cases, through entire working lives of 30 years and more.

Once the frenzy of the morning rush hour subsides, it’s prime time for Mumbai’s dabbawallas to swing into action. The dabbawallas operate a meal delivery system that can justifiably be called Mumbai’s pride. Their noble enterprise delivers hot lunches from homes to offices every working day. Hundreds of thousands of dabbas, or lunchboxes, make their way from people’s homes to their offices, picked up late morning to be returned early afternoon. Come rain or shine, hosts of clanging dabbas can be seen on bicycles or transferring on to the local trains, ferried by the intrepid fleet of dabbawallas.

Notwithstanding the humongous scale of operation, instances of mismatches or missed deliveries are exceedingly rare. The reliability of the century old system of the dabbawallas continues to confound modern day pundits of logistics. Many an aspiring Silicon Valley food delivery startup can take a leaf out of the dabbawallas’ book, and they have been the subject of several business school case studies.

Many of the dabbawallas are barely literate, and the stipend for their tireless efforts is hardly enough to make ends meet. Yet, they bring to their job a proud and passionate work ethic, and an almost religious sense of mission. A scriptural simile is appropriate here. Just as in a herd of a thousand cows, a calf unerringly finds its own mother, Mumbai’s wonderful dabbawallas ensure that each dabba finds its exact owner to bring them nourishment from home.

Speaking of cows, this is where Mumbai gets truly interesting. Humans and cows have coexisted happily for millennia in a rural and pastoral setting, with cows free to roam and graze. City cows in India though are a stressed and challenged lot, uprooted as they are from their carefree natural environs and having to contend with the dangers of modern traffic. Bombay’s cows are however champions of the game, with street smarts to surpass even their human cousins. In this respect, the cows of Ghatkopar, a Central Bombay suburb, must take honors for a most impressive spectacle of bovine order.

The rail tracks in Bombay, running through its suburbs, are for the most part unfenced, and several people tempt fate daily as they cross over from one side to another. The rail stations on the network, of course, have pedestrian overbridges and subways to cross over safely. For example, if you needed to cross over from one side of Ghatkopar to the other as a pedestrian, the rail station at Ghatkopar is one place to do so, and thousands of pedestrians use its overbridge daily.

As you enter the station to cross over the bridge, though, be not surprised if you find yourself in the company of cows coming and going freely in either direction. These are Bombay cows, and like the human residents of the city, busy and hard pressed for time, and difficult to schedule appointments with even if you tried. Yet, unlike some of their foolhardy human brethren, no cow crosses the actual rail track, always using the pedestrian bridge instead. Cows and bulls routinely make their entrance, to climb up the ramp, saunter across and come down on the other side with nonchalant ease and familiarity. There’s no one to point or direct, but every cow conducts itself perfectly as if following the signs.

Swishing their tails about to keep away the ever pesky flies, the cows of Ghatkopar have crossed in this manner for generations. It is a curious sight indeed, especially in the rains, to watch a seamless crowd of humans and cows, coats and tails, horns and umbrellas, marching in jolly stride. Bipeds and quadrupeds might even exchange notes as they go about their daily commute. Rumor has it that savvy stockbrokers in the crowd interpret bull language for trading tips on the bourses.

Monsoon rains can sometimes make it challenging, especially for inexperienced calves, to find their footing on the wet and slippery ramps. Some of them choose to therefore make a speedy and carefree descent, where even the burliest of human commuters must make way with alacrity. A little monsoon fun is always in order.

All told though. Mumbai’s cows are probably the smartest of city cows anywhere, with a discipline that would do humans proud. Bovines and humans share a most easy and familiar bonhomie as they go about their respective daily business. This forever funny spectacle has to place Mumbai in a league all its own.