How to get locked up inside a jail in Mumbai

If the litterateurs had to come up with an elegant synonym for 'anomaly', they could very well anoint it as 'Mumbai'.  When I first read in the newspapers that Mukesh Ambani was constructing Antilia, a 27-storey residence at Altamount Road, Mumbai, I found it amusing -- this city has some of the world's biggest slums, and now she is hosting the most expensive residential house on the planet! Mumbai is the pulse point of India's financial, political, religious, and even fashion trends.

Zara hatke, zara bachke, ye hai Bombay meri jaan – "Be alert, be street wise, this is Bombay, my love". This famous yesteryear song of Hindi cinema sums up the spirit of Mumbai. I showed this to the co-founder of ChessBase, Frederic Friedel, who remarked: start the video at your own peril – you will not be able to get the song out of your head for hours – or days.

The maximum city. See some stunning pictures of Mumbai here: Raskalov-vit Journal

On January 28, 2016, IIFL Wealth, in association with the Indian Chess School, organised a beautiful chess tournament in Bombay. It was hosted in the suburb of Bandra in Mumbai and I was in the mood to show my friends the moods of this bustling part of the maximum city. Therefore, I made a pitstop at the Bandra Railway station on my way to attend the press conference as the tournament's official photographer.

Karimji has been selling books at this very spot at the entrance to the Bandra station since 1970! Sometimes, at night, he just folds the whole paraphernalia up and goes to sleep at the same spot.

Just beside Mr Karim's book stall is this place where you can eat some lip smacking samosas

Bandra is one of the busiest railway stations in Mumbai...

And it was at this point that a police constable got hold of me and asked why was I taking pictures. I answered truthfully about the same -- that I am a journo and I work for... -- he did not want to hear any more. He replied that photography is not allowed in railway stations and asked if I have permits.

'But so many people keep taking pictures all the time on cell phones and what not!'.

'No mister. Those are for personal consumption on cell phones -- you are clearly taking pictures to highlight the crowd here, and you cannot do that without permits.'

'Fine, I will delete them. Please let me go.'

'Chalo thane!' (You have to come to the police station!)

And therefore, I was unceremoniously dragged to a Railway Police Force station and was made to stand in front of some serious looking guy who was a superior official.

The boss was adamant. 'No! I don't want to hear any of your stories! A charge sheet shall be filed and you have to answer in court,' he boomed.

'But sir, nowhere in this station has it been mentioned that photography is not allowed...'

'Shut up! Has it been mentioned anywhere that you cannot kill people?'

With nothing suitable to counter, I resigned myself to being charge sheeted (the minor one for petty offences). Then, I was actually put behind bars with some other people who were caught crossing railway tracks or pissing on the bushes near them.

Now, this was a particularly new experience for me, and to be honest, I found the whole thing funny -- the reason I wasn't worried too much is because a constable told me that it is a question of just appearing in the petty matters court and paying a fine.

After an hour of waiting they took me, along with some forty other 'criminals', to the petty matters court at Andheri in a local train. We were actually divided into batches of five, each assigned to a junior constable, as we travelled from Bandra to Andheri. We got chatting with the constable, who originally hailed from Uttar Pradesh.

'So, how did you happen to join the police?'

'Actually, what happened is that I was once caught by the railway police in my village for crossing a railway track! I thought joining the police might be a good option. I gave the exams and here I am.'

Amazing.

The petty matters court was quite understandably busy, with a sea of blacks (lawyers), petty offenders and constables waiting for their turns. We went in quite effortlessly, as this seemed to be a routine matter for the officials there. We were made to stand before a judge in a special 'Railway Court' and probed about our respective offences. I was asked if I admit to have committed the offence, and I sighed a big audible 'yes'.

I was let off after paying a Rs. 500 fine to the court. I called my colleague Shubham Kumthekar who carried the blazers and shoes to the venue of the press conference, where I changed and got down to work.

That is Mr Karan Bhagat, co-founder of IIFL Wealth, speaking while Praful Zaveri of Indian Chess School looks on.

Ironically, the pictures that got me inside the jail in the first place were not even deleted or asked to be deleted! So much for Indian policing.

In Odisha: A pen drive full of porn and a trip to Jagannath Puri

I stood at the gate of the regal structure, a temple, and tried to absorb the sight around me—it can be unnerving, sometimes, to swim in a sea of humanity. People belonging to three different generations united by one common belief, a belief in a supernatural power that promises to purify them of their sins, and rid them of their miseries.

The sea of humanity

I am an atheist. But I won't lie to you, I have not been an atheist all my life. No one can be an atheist all their life. But, like everyone else around me in this vast land populated by humans, I was born an atheist. No human is born as a theist. We live in a society; culture and tradition are the fabric of such an existence. We, as children, tend to learn through our observations and follow the path that is taken by the people in our immediate surroundings. Ergo, we become theists, believing in a being that we cannot see, who will punish us terribly for our sins, but still, loves us no matter what. In that sense, god is more like a spurned lover—he will love you till the day you die, but will punish you with an acid attack if you don't love him back.

We grow up to finally enter the school system, which is, more often than not, practiced by institutions that have very close ties with religious organizations—churches, temples, mosques, and so on. How convenient for the people who be to control the masses by not allowing a child to question the very first thing they teach you at school—the morning prayer.

For me, a young and curious non-believer, it was a strange experience to stand amidst lakhs of invisible-superpower-believers.

Anyway, back to the story:

The KIIT Law College in the KIIT campus

February 2016: I was in Bhubaneswar to cover the National Team Championship 2016. The flight landed late in the evening and I had no idea how to reach the venue of the tournament. Luckily for me, I found GM Abhijit Kunte heading in the same direction from the airport. We hired a taxi and first headed towards a grand, I don't know how many stars or moons, hotel where the ONGC men's and women's team were staying. It was regal, glittering in yellowish golden lighting.

But I belong to the darkness. Next, the taxi headed smoothly towards the KIIT University, and for some reason, a 'technology' university had a law college that stood on the outskirts of the campus, like a lonely boy without friends. The university campus itself stood on the outskirts of the city anyway. Through narrow paths full of teenagers and adults acting like teenagers, we made our way, dodging sewage work-in-progress here and a cow there, to the law college campus. The organizers had provided the college hostel as the accommodation for the players from around India, from various teams.

A number of teams had already arrived, but it seems there was no room for me. And there were some more who wanted to get their rooms and rest before the tournament day. The men at the reception were betel-chewing uncles who obviously weren't getting paid well as I could make out from their lacklustre body language. Apparently, they had rooms, but there was some minor problem which they could not sort out. This is when the (law) students around noticed that their inept staff was not treating the educated, hard-working, sportsmen — who had obviously travelled a long distance to reach Bhubaneswar — well.

These boys did know to talk. And the receptionists were awarded a roasting. Then, the students took it upon themselves to make sure that they give us rooms! These particular hostel rooms were empty because its occupants were away on a vacation and it was allotted to us chess people. There was a separate hostel for the females as well.

The room was unkempt, but alright—chess players are used to seeing all varieties of terrible rooms. This was usable, but with a caveat. There were no attached bathrooms. The bed was quite obviously full of bedbugs. Too tired to think too much, I had a quick dinner in the hostel mess and fell asleep. Next morning, when I walked into the common bathroom, I realized how the situation actually was. Apparently, the authorities were cleaning them on a regular basis, but nevertheless, they were infested with flies and mosquitoes of all sorts. Plus, it was winterish. I suffered a bit, but it got worse when a google search revealed that there were no good hotels nearby. All the teams were, thus, forced to stay there, and this included grandmasters and international masters. The bigger teams like the ONGC got plush hotels, though, from their employers.

I stared aghast at the computer screen resigning to the fact that I must spend a week in this place. Shutting the computer, I bent to keep the machine on the floor, when I noticed it.

A red-black pen drive sat below the bed.

Curious, I plugged it into my laptop to see what exactly it contained, and honestly, I wanted to hand it over to authorities at the reception. In all likelihood, it must've belonged to the student inmate to whom the room belonged. I plunged inside the drive, and was not at all shocked, albeit a bit amused, to see what I saw.

Interessante

There was about seven gigabytes high definition porn, in an eight-gigabyte pen drive. College life can be frustrating for some, and this guy had precautionary measures handy in the time of need. Heavenly. But the appalling sight that actually made me feel sorry for him was when I saw what the remaining one gigabyte of space was occupied by:

Just the mere look at its poster convinces me that Indian cinema is doomed. Why the fuck is she starting at the camera, can't she act?

Wiki: Sooraj, a gangster, kidnaps Radha, the daughter of the Chief of Police. As they spend some time together, they fall in love and have to face several situations yadda yadda yadda. 

In other words, this movie harps on the 'Ek Gunda Ek Police Ki Beti Se Kaise Pyaar Kar Sakta Hai' era. It is 2016, people are dying around us—art, and cinema will do better to show us the hardships that people face and inspire us to become better humans.

Now, I had a new problem to solve: should I really hand this over to the betel-chewing uncles out at the reception?

Anyway, the tournament began and I came across my good friend Ram Krishnan of BSNL, to whom I was narrating the situation in the hostel when he invited me to stay in the BSNL guest house. "Really? Is that possible? I don't even use a BSNL phone!" "Why not, man? You are welcome to stay with us." I moved to the BSNL guest house the next day. The pen drive was proving to be a source of good luck.

The next day, I took this timely shot of the ONGC team enacting Gandhiji's three monkeys—hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Honestly, it was pure luck, but I did imagine the previous day that such a shot was possible.

I did take some nice pictures and was doing my daily reports with imagined gusto. But it was getting monotonous—the daily work, and when the BSNL guys made an impromptu plan to make a trip to Puri, some seventy kilometers, or two hours, away, I was more than happy to tag along. After a quick lunch, we headed to the Bhubaneswar bus station and saw a colourful rectangle box, half-full, waiting for passengers.

I gleefully jumped onto the window seat in the last row and saw the landscape of Odisha pass by. Like any Indian state, the conflict of the rich and poor was starkly visible. Red soil coupled with dry green fields and bumpy roads for the vehicles to traverse on was the summary of this trip. The people in the bus were mostly the common villagers, some doing this journey to and fro on a daily basis. A number of them looked like daily wage labourers.

After an interesting bus journey, we reached Puri. The bus station felt calm, but as we gravitated towards the temple, the turbulence in the atmosphere began to rise:

As we took a rickshaw towards the temple, we were all but taken by the swarm of men and women that made up the city. And beggars, there was no death of beggars.

The temple top.

The police were doing their job brilliantly, and we had to stand in this queue to get inside the temple.

And it was chock full of people inside.

We had to keep our footwear outside, in the open, and there was a good probability that they would be stolen. Therefore, we decided that it would be best if we went inside in groups of two. I stood there with considerable amazement as I absorbed the sheer number of people and their emotions and actions around me. Mr. Sharad Ukey of BSNL stood by me and noticed my wonder.

"So, you believe in god?"

"Not really—I'm here to just experience this. It's education for me. You don't believe in this concept, too?"

"No, I don't."

"Then, why are you here?"

"It is fun!"

Mr. Sharad Ukey is a senior official at BSNL

It was our turn to enter the temple now, and we did—two atheists in one of the most famous temples in India. This out-of-the-blue connection made us very good friends (we had already played a tournament game before, in Nagpur in 2015). We seamlessly flowed along with the crowd to reach the centre of the temple, where the gods stood.

People were jostling, like chicken inside an overcrowded coop, only that they were glad to be in the presence of the deities they revere so much. I was enchanted by the architecture that formed the temple. No cameras were allowed inside, maybe, because it would see a drop in sales of the pictures of the gods. You can read a detailed account of the temple architecture here.

It was  carved out of stone originally, centuries back. The carvings were beautiful. A work of art to behold. More recently, it had been coated with a plastering to protect the temple from the saline winds blowing from the sea.

People outside of the temple were resorting to advice from priests who made a business out of religion.

But religion is also a source of an honest livelihood for many.

It is a paradox, really. But then life is like that. Every coin has two sides, and so does the theory of religion. Only that it has more downsides than upsides.

The temple from the outside

Due to past experiences, I thought it would be apt to take permission from the authorities before taking pictures. I was jailed the last time I tried taking pictures at a public place. I went up to a police constable and asked him if I could do the needful. I was tactful when I asked him. He agreed.

The temple rules prohibited me from taking the pictures of the beautiful carvings and the architecture of the structure. Ironically, it did not stop me from taking the photos of the people around it.

'Differently abled' beggars...

...beggars in the name of god...

...female beggars.

The commerce of Puri:

The city in itself is bustling with activity and enterprise. As I said, this is the other side of religion. The tourism industry is huge here, and many of the beneficiaries are small and medium sized traders and businesses. This in turn also creates a lot of jobs and a flourishing economy.

The biggest chunk belongs to the hospitality industry. Small time sweetmeat shops are found in abundance.

And also the paraphernalia related to gods. I suppose this is an important reason why they do not allow you to take photos in the temple. It makes a lot of sense.

A mini rath-yatra for the gods that sit in the temple.

A unique mode of transportation here are the cycle-rickshaws

The beach is the important facet of the commerce in this city.

The beach is adorned with bustling small time traders selling eatables, ice-cream, and other wares.

The long coastline

I learned a lot from this trip. I understood the fabric of the people's emotions that surround their devotion to gods, the economics, and the commerce around it. A place worth visiting.

Trip to Thrissur

Last month, I got extremely busy reporting the 2015 National Premier Championship for ChessBase India from Thiruvarur in Tamil Nadu. Nevertheless, on my way to the host city, I made a pit stop at Thrissur in Kerala, better known as God's own country, although the Keralites themselves scoff at any such reference, to meet a certain kid who is extremely witty outside the chess board and a phenom over it. But more about him later.

Clicking photographs in a moving train with a simple camera, when you are as horrible a photographer (guffaws) as I am, can be a tad difficult. However, here is a small pictorial story for you to enjoy.

I caught a (fairly) early morning passenger train from the Mangalore Central station

The water is so clear that from certain angles, you can actually see the stuff beneath!

Light doing its job

The railway stations in Kerala are not as glitzy as the ones in other states

However, as in any other state, crossing tracks remains a national hobby

The train met a colleague mid-journey

Kerala's palm trees are pasted throughout the landscape!

One remarkable feature of the railway line plummeting south in Kerala is this...

Yes, the line runs over an uncountable number of rivers, parallel to the Arabian Sea!

 

And it is endless! You can actually see the sea and the rivers meeting...

And some places like Mahe, which is actually a part of Pondicherry, offers a dock to witness the trains pass, river flow, right into the sea ahead

I visited Mahe for the first time in November 2013, a day after Anand lost his third game at the Chennai World Championship with Nf1??. Until that day, I never knew that a part of Pondicherry, adjoining the Bay of Bengal, which is actually situated near Chennai in Tamil Nadu, was on the other side, in Kerala adjoining the Arabian Sea. More about this and the story behind how I happened to land here in 2013 later, in some future article.

Anyway, the pristinely land managed to capture my imagination 

Neha with her father Dr. Sarin Abdulsalam

I reached Thirssur and it was time to visit Nihal Sarin and his family. Nihal's sister Neha is a bubbly six-year-old child who is as sharp as her elder brother is...

White (some GM) is threatening to promote next move and with barely seconds left to calculate, Nihal (Black) saved the game with the simple...

Nihal would be busy with his routine of playing blitz online on multiple chess playing servers, where he would sit and hunt titled players of varied stature. I observed him go about his day, peppering him with questions, asking why he chose specific moves in his games, and so on. The result of my work is detailed in this ChessBase article.

Soon, in the international ChessBase website, you will see a videotaped experiment where Nihal is supposed to solve a study. It is the traditional test ChessBase has been providing to talented youngsters and in the soon to be published article, you come to know the story (involves a famous World Champion) and also see how these talented players fared in the experiment, including Nihal.

I was curious to find out what is the key to his thirst for chess. What is the golden rule...

I saw that the golden rule is, there is no golden rule 

Mangalore 01: Tipu Sultan’s Battery and Tannirbhavi Beach

In my twenty-two years of existence, I have lived in and visited numerous cities, spanning across the cultures of India. However, never have I felt at home, as I feel in my hometown of Mangalore. The delectable seafood with their enchanting aroma, the narrow winding streets fringed with coconut palms, the terracotta-tiled house rooftops, the pristine beaches and the calm religious places – all make it the city where I want to live, forever.

This is the scene right outside my ‘home cum office’ window.

In Karnataka, especially in the areas of Coorg and Mangalore, there is a resentment in the public with regards to the Karnataka government’s idea to hold a festival to commemorate Tipu Sultan’s birth anniversary (November 20, 1750). The Sultan is widely known as one of the most powerful kings and battle commanders of India, with the British considering him to be their last big challenge during their invasion of India.

The resentment among the people, however, is about Tipu’s intolerance towards non-Muslims. Nothing is clear about the functioning and the thinking process of Tipu, who in my opinion was a ruler who went through a change of ideologies. Tipu was known to ransack temples and churches and convert non-Muslims. On the other hand, there is a proven account of Tipu helping rebuild the Sringeri Mutt after the Marathas (who themselves were proud Hindus) raided and destroyed it. I don’t have any opinion about this – maybe the Sringeri case was just a political move to appease the followers of Hindu religion? However, even the capital city of Tipu’s kingdom was and still is a place of religious importance for the followers of the Hindu religion. Of what I know, he used to consult astrologers and even did rituals at the Sree Ranganatha Swami temple in Mysore. Maybe, he didn’t attack temples and churches in the areas which were already controlled by him, and destroyed those in the kingdoms he was invading to show that he was their new ruler? Maybe, he saw that the only way to defeat the British is to stop being communal, and unite against the common enemy?

Okay, Tipu Sultan was a complicated man. All that said and done, there is no doubt that he was an astute battle commander with artillery about a century ahead of its time. The British, though, had weapons that are more intellectual: politics and economics.

I made a trip to Sultan Battery in Mangalore, to have a look at the famous battery situated at the banks of the Gurupura River, which Tipu used effectively while battling the invaders, especially the British. The Sultan’s Battery used to be a unit of guns, mortars, rockets and missiles that would work as a single machinery while battling battle ships and enemies invading from the sea.

Sultan Battery: The structure built in 1784 A.D., reportedly from the stones of the 23 churches that Tipu destroyed in his 15-year imprisonment of Mangalorean Catholics.

The cannons and rockets have vanished.

So, if a cannon is placed in one of the gaps, this is how a target would look like…

And this is all that would be visible to the target.

The battery is situated a short distance ahead of the point where the Gurupura river meets the Arabian Sea. This is also the headland of the Mangalore Port. (NMPT: New Mangalore Port Trust)

Palm trees at the other side of the river, opposite the Battery.

I decided to take a ferry across the river, which cost me a mere Rs. 5 for a trip.

At the ferry point, I observed this trawler stationed in all its glory.

Ah! This is how they move!

The closest I have ever been to look like Jack at the tip of the Titanic.

While in the ferry, I spotted this guy (gal?) atop a trawler.

More palm trees in the banks of the river!

After the ferry ride, I walked some 3 minutes across this hamlet to reach…

…Tannirbhavi Beach!

I love it when they rise…

… and rise higher…

… and then crash!

In case you are interested to watch it in action, here is a 9-second video:

Am I the only one who loves to just sit and watch this?

This gives you an idea about how clean the water is… 

The bigger ones are very tasty and a must have treat in Mangalore.

A practice I have stuck to at each of my beach visits. I have done this at Juhu (Mumbai), Miramar (Panjim), Calicut, Kanyakumari, Marina (Madras) and now at Tannirbhavi (Mangalore).

If you are tired of visiting Goa, why not try Mangalore?

The Sultan Battery is situated approximately 4 KMs away from the main city. The place is open all the time, of course. There are numerous city buses (Bus No. 16) that ply to and fro between State Bank (main city) and Sultan Battery/Tannirbhavi Beach. The last ferry across the river is between 7:00 PM and 7:20 PM. A bus ride from the main city to the Battery/Beach costs less than Rs. 10 (one-way) and the ferry ticket costs Rs. 5 (one-way). There are numerous stalls serving eatables in the hamlet across the river, around the Beach.

You are free to use the images, with due credits to the author.