Tag Archives: Delhi

The Complicated Question of Mumbai vs Delhi

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Which city do you like best, aamchi Mumbai or saddi Dilli? Ask this question to anyone and they will have an opinion, even those who have not seen either place. Having spent time in both cities, let me be presumptuous enough to offer my take on the evergreen topic of Mumbai vs Delhi.

  1. Definition: land of business vs land of babu-dom
  2. Pace of life: quick and busy vs slow and easy
  3. Pollution: no visible dust or smoke vs “quick, I need to get a mask!”
  4. Traffic: escapable using the local train vs you’ve got no choice but to sit and curse away your time
  5. Auto rickshaws: black and yellow vs green and yellow; and the latter run on CNG
  6. Auto rickshaw drivers: charge by the meter vs fleece the passenger in direct proportion to his/ her ignorance of Hindi
  7. Capriciousness of auto wallahs: Ah, now that’s one parameter where both cities are equally exasperating. You are lucky if the place you wish to go to matches the place the auto wallah wants to go to.
  8. Temperature: uniformly comfortable throughout the year vs always hotter or colder than you’d like it to be (No wonder then that people from Delhi find Ahmedabad’s winter “pleasant”, as I complained in this post on what I dislike about winter)
  9. Rainfall: flooded roads vs desperately waiting for the rains
  10. Culture: “this city is for everyone, literally” vs “this is my city, what are you doing here?”
  11. Suburban train: dirt cheap (no pun intended) but efficient vs posh but inefficient
  12. People: mind your own business vs “I’ve got all the time in the world to stand and stare”
  13. Rent: resign yourself to the reality of effectively giving away an iPhone each month vs take comfort in the fact that you don’t give away even a smartphone each month

P.S.: The genesis for this post lies in a question: which city is better, Delhi or Mumbai?

My immediate answer was that I did not know enough to comment. For instance, I didn’t know till about three years ago that the h in Delhi was silent. And yet, my answer was not fully true. For one, you don’t need to know much about something to form an opinion. (Think of some of our dear politicians. Or some b-school graduates.) Indeed, if I could form an opinion of Istanbul without as much as stepping foot on Turkish soil, why not on two cities in India that are no longer alien to me? (In case my fairy godmother with her magic wand is reading this, Istanbul is one city I’d like to spend some time. Orhan Pamuk just has a way of weaving reality and dreams so closely that you forget to distinguish between the two.)

Moreover, I was ineffectually trying to be diplomatic because the questioner happened to be from Delhi and I am, if anything, mildly in favour of Mumbai. There, I have given away my opinion, if it wasn’t already clear! But I dare say Delhi is beginning to wield her old-world charm on me.

There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Safe Bet

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Chennai Super Kings or Delhi Daredevils – which team do you support? It was a rainy Tuesday afternoon as we discussed this on our way to watch one of the first matches of this year’s IPLTwenty20. “I have no regional favourites. I will go with Chennai Superkings – that’s a safe bet,” said yours truly. After all, CSK had been the champions last year.

At the entrance to Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla stadium, we were surprised that even the most mundane and harmless items were not allowed inside. To give two examples: umbrellas, on a rainy day, and coins. And so we had people dropping all their small change into boxes like those placed in temples. So it’s not just the big bucks that get IPL rolling in money!

On to the floodlit ground, and we found that the seats held water half an inch deep, due to the rains (which thankfully stopped in time for the match). Having shelled out a considerable sum of money for a seat, why is a spectator not even assured of a place to sit? It cannot be too difficult to find a solution to this problem which is inevitable in a roofless stadium. Something as simple as handing out tissue papers at the entrance would do the trick. In fact, even arranging for a goodie bag for every spectator is just as possible, given the scope it offers for marketing and advertising.

I was thrilled to be in a stadium for the first time in my life. (Yes, I have watched cricket on TV and in local playgrounds, and mind you, this includes serious matches where everyone is attired in white; I have played cricket in school; it was simply that going to a stadium to watch the game had never figured in my scheme of activities.) The match began. The first ball was bowled, and that’s when the first player of CSK was run out. To me, this highlighted that in spite of cricket being a more individualistic game compared to say, football or basketball, co-ordination between players is of paramount importance. Moreover, being run out is one of the consequences when batsmen take a risk and sometimes, the bet isn’t safe, and you just lose it.

The first over was over (pardon the irresistible pun) and I was in for a surprising discovery: after every over is bowled, the bowling and batting sides exchange ends of the pitch. All these years of watching and discussing the game, and I was oblivious to this!

In games at school and college, I have never noticed this movement of players. And on TV, such irrelevant activity gets no airtime when there is advertising dying to be aired. I knew that the bowler changed after each over while the ad was shown, so that one of the fielders became the bowler and the fielders reconfigured their positions. But I couldn’t imagine the batsmen changing positions during the ad break. And yet, now it seems that the game couldn’t be otherwise. Switching sides and positions is integral to sports such as badminton and tennis as well. This only goes to show that all of us, in our own different ways, sometimes remain unaware of even the most obvious facts unless we view things using a different lens. (If this sounds like “consultant-speak”, that’s unintended but inevitable.)

Watching an IPL match at the stadium also meant gaining bragging rights to having seen Sehwag and Irfan Pathan and Dhoni and others. Not that it meant much. I saw a bit of what it meant for Sehwag to be “in form” and to rain boundaries all over the field. And then there are things you don’t notice unless you are in the stadium – someone using the wide open skies to fly a kite (which soared higher as the game progressed), the way the graphic of the bikes in the ad display for Hero MotoCorp “ran” around the stadium at times when the entire advertising space was given over to Hero, even as the loudspeakers played the movie song tu mera hero (once upon a time these advertisements were static banners made of flex!), and the big screen lighting up with phrases such as “massive hit”, “clever shot”, “awesome hit” and so on at every possible opportunity. Not to mention some spectators screaming out to their “Peetu” (that’s Kevin Pietersen for everyone else). I could have done with some commentary, though.

The match itself was quite one-sided and the Daredevils won it without playing even 15 overs. So my “safe bet” did not work out. Ah well, it was, after all, merely cricket. (Did I just utter a sacrilege?!) As Rhett Butler said, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” For those who do, the match highlights are available on the IPL site here.

P.S.: If you don’t know who Rhett Butler is, you need to read Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. Or at least take the easier way out and watch the movie.