Bladerunner

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Mohammedali Road, Mumbai.

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Counting down to dusk...

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The attached picture is one of Mumbai's many famous landmarks. A neo-gothic wonder that rivalled anything the empire had back home- the Rajabai Clock Tower on the Bombay University campus. Rumour has it that they closed it off a few decades ago when it turned into a suicide magnet for students who did not fare that well in their exams. The maidan (field) in the foreground, now cricket central, was once the vast open areas the Brits cultivated around their forts to have clear firing range on any attackers. Ironically the university was built on the footprint of the fort's walls, and the expanse of open space, once Bombay's lungs and emerald jewels, has been whittled into irrelevance by generations of land grabs, corruption and negligence. Behind where I stand and take this picture stood a row of fine Art Deco apartments, now renovated into nouveau riche hell. I decided to let my legs take me around the City today and walked and walked for a few hours along familiar
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I've seen my fair share of them, and tonight some more. On the train downtown, I saw a man bully his own child. Sick... This lovely boy, not yet 6, got on with his mum and this man. He was playing with his trains, and like most kids do, entertained himself. The man kept threatening the mother that she should have left the kid with her parents, that if the kid didn't behave the night was off and they were going home, that he was misbehaving, that the kid was the reason their relationship wasn't going to work. The child sat between them through all of this, slowly shrinking, getting still, wanting to be invisible. The mother kept fawning over the weasly excuse of a man. He did interrupt his rant to call a friend when the train surfaced briefly to tell him he was "out with his girl" and that he'd bet 40 on three games. And then he started picking on the child. We all sat still, involved yet not. I'm angry, at the man, but even more at myself. I glared a
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A Faustian Bargain

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