When the traffic light turned red, kids would dart up. Peering into the auto-rickshaw, tapping at the cab window, they offered a dozen rose...
When the traffic light turned red, kids would dart up. Peering into the auto-rickshaw, tapping at the cab window, they offered a dozen roses for Rs 100.
“Okay, 50.. 30! Only 30, aunty!... Didi!”
Some people said the flowers are so cheap because they have been stolen from graveyards. Anyhow, it was possible to buy cheap roses on the streets of Mumbai. At a roadside florists’, wrapped in cellophane and bunched with a sprig of delphinium or myrtle, a dozen cut roses could be had for a couple of hundred rupees, but you could pay as much as Rs 500, Rs 600, Rs 700 on Valentine’s Day.
One of the odd things about the roses sold on the street was that they did not smell like a rose. They did not smell of death either. They smelt of a vacuum.
In February 2017, Mumbai’s Churchgate, a train station that reportedly serves hundreds of thousands of passengers on weekdays, had been the chosen venue for the re-branding of February 14 as “Matru Pita Pujan Divas” (Mother Father Worship Day).
Commuters were greeted with billboards with an idealised image of a family: mummy and papa sit on chairs while two teenage children kneel on the floor. Boy’s head on father’s knee, girl’s...
