birthdays at home, please

once upon a time, when mumbai was still bombay and a larger number of us could afford to buy dal by the kilogram, our streets were tolerable for a number of reasons. for one, few of us knew what a sedan was. sure, we had heard about them via archie comics, but our limited world-views prevented us from imagining roads without hulking ambassadors or shrinking marutis.

secondly, protests were relatively mild because there were no malls to gather around or attack. there was no satellite television either, which meant these protests may have occurred, but few of us found out about them until the world this week aired days later.

best of all, we could actually see traffic lights because there were no political hoardings blocking our view. the smaller number of gaudy posters had nothing to do with less-narcissistic politicians. they loved the idea of looking down upon us even then, irrespective of how much they all resembled extras in b-movies. no, the reason they abstained from the now popular habit of wishing each other a happy birthday in public was printing technology.

hand-painted posters were possible, but didn’t exactly lend themselves to mass-producing. now, with high-end machines easily enabling printing speeds of up to 2000 feet per minute, the carpet-bombing of street corners at a nominal cost becomes irresistible for these wannabe leaders. it also leaves them with enough to splurge on amateur photographers and first-time photoshop users. the result is a mismatched mess of fonts, colours and bathetic praise for anyone even remotely related to someone at mantralaya.

acting as a deterrent to this flood is the maharashtra defacement of property act, 1995, violation of which results in a fine somewhere in the vicinity of rs 100 — or what a kilogram of dal now costs.

this morning, i passed a hoarding bursting at the seams with greetings to a local councillor. it was the latter’s birthday, so a great deal of praise was evidently in order. what saddened me more than how awful the hoarding looked, however, was the man’s age. he had just turned 34, which meant he — and the rest of us photogenic folk residing in the area — could expect similar displays for a few decades more.

i’m all for doling out praise where it’s due. fix our roads, plug holes in our water pipelines, clear the garbage on time, and give yourselves a pat on the back in public if you really, really must. but blocking our roads with posters to celebrate your birthdays? that won’t get you my vote.