My visit to the mumbai zoo

I recently visited the Mumbai zoo – also called Jijamata Udyan, wanting to see the different corners of the city. The last visit was some time when I was very small.

The zoo though having nice greenery as it’s also a botanical park, is nonetheless a very suffocating place. I felt. It won’t take much of empathizing to know what the animals in the zoo might feel.

Imagine a snake having to live in a place not bigger than our TV carton, but then that’s what zoo are all about. How about a duck having no water to paddle. There were so many instances like this.

I wondered at the large cages and now wonder who terrorizes whom. Animals looked quiet sad. And seeing them i remembered slavery. Have we not abolished slavery? So why keep these animals in such bondage. And then there were people making funny noises, some clicking photographs with an elephant in the background.

The zoo needs to be shut, and the animals need to be rehabilitated. Why do we need a zoo- for education, entertainment, tourism – all these arguments seem to be out of time. Regarding preservation, I’d say – please don’t use Mumbai to preserve animals in this fashion.

It'd be great if peacocks could dance, deer’s could run, ducks could paddle, monkeys could jump and elephants could walk freely, may be in the forest, and may be in a sanctuary. Fortunately we have a national park in Mumbai.

I hope, this is my last visit to the zoo, anywhere in the world!

The Beauty inside a BEST bus or The BEST bus democracy

Every-day in Mumbai, most of us on the move, takes the BEST bus.

We board the bus, sit, the conductor, often called master, comes to you so that you can take the ticket to your …….destination. This is great!

This is so obvious that we may just scoff at it being called ’great” but I find it very rare! You see – The conductor comes to you rather than you going to him (up till now it’s mostly done by men, so unfair!)

In which other Government Department does this happen? But the BEST bus – obviously a government department – is different!

I just wish that our democracy is like this. Where there is a bus to wherever we want to go. Where every bus has a conductor that comes and asks us, ‘Kuthe zaychsa aahai,” (where do you want to go?), we simply take a ticket and everything is fine.

So as I dream, I find the bus stopping at the stop I have to alight, the dream breaks halfway and I get down!

The motorcyle diaries go on.........

Saw the film 'The Motorcycle Diaries," last week, a memoir of a young man's journey through South America back in 1952. A break from studies, a desire to see the neighborhood land and to eat new fruits, but the journey transcends all this only to transform Earnst Guevara's life.

Passing through the world of poor Indigenous people who lost their land, a couple searching for a mining job and having only the warmth of their partner in the chilled desert, people forced to work in mines, people affected by leprosy, separated and cities built on gunpowder which destroyed the Inca civilization. All this changed his world view. But our minds our pretty conditioned by all this being obvious.

Though a controversial figure in history, he didn’t go unnoticed, like many of us go. He turned out to be a revolutionary, the communist type. Ironically, He too believed in gun powder.

Wonder why he turned to extreme communism. Wonder why people seeking reform, for a more egalitarian society are termed communist. Wonder why, mainstream debates usually are of the Capitalist v/s communist kind and where we knowingly or unknowingly take one of the two sides when both our equally bad. They both are monopolies.

We need to get rid of both, capitalism and communism just as we need to get rid of poverty and hunger. It’s not at all fine when people are displaced from where they belong just to become mine workers, where people are systematically robbed of their resources.

However, corporations are growing out of proportion and governments are too not reliable. They are usually with the corporations. The corporations are trying to grab hold of natural resources which should ideally be managed by the local people. The government has failed us.

However with a long history of monopoly and with most likeliness of it being repeated the journey to the desired horizon shall go on.