My First Padyatra in Matunga :)

I took a day off from my world of Internet Banking, ATMs and Debit Cards and went on a tour of Matunga and Hindu Colony on foot. There were three objectives which I wanted to achieve through this.

(1) To visit the office of the Local BMC Corporator. I had managed to find his name and contact details on the Internet and had called him the previous week. After not answering the phone about 10 times, he answered and asked me to visit his office and fill up a form to register myself as a worker of the party. This would give me good experience in the activities conducted at a grass root level which according to one of the officers was blood donation camps, distributing gifts amongst the under privileged etc. (this would be especially useful given the feedback I had received in the discussions and interviews) I have collected the form, but could not submit it as address proof and photographs were required. I will complete the modalities by first week March, after which I hopefully would be able to play a more active part in the civic activities in the area.

(2) To visit the Ward Office of the F-North Ward of which Matunga and Dadar are a part. On the Internet you get all the data upto an assembly constituency level right down to the polling booths, but you do not get any data at the Ward level. I need to study the electoral boundaries of the F North Ward and the 10 divisions it has and I wanted to visit the Ward Office in this regard. I would also get to see how a ward office looks and try to get an idea of what happens there. The Ward Office is an old building on Bhau Daji Road which is near Kings Circle. Till this day, I had to rarely enter a Government Office and if at all, I always had an appointment with someone. The concept of being bounced from table to table was alien to me and I had experienced it for the first time today. The watchman / policeman at the entrance redirected me to the Complaints Department, they in turn to the Maintenance Department. In the Maintenance Department, I was passed like a ping pong ball from table to table until I was directed to an officer who was on leave and coincidentally he was the only one who had the map of F North Ward. Else I had to get it from the Head Office in Byculla or the Collectors Office. I am still searching for the F North Ward map, of anybody knows where I can get it, do let me know. I am hoping to get it by mid March to proceed further on the backend analysis while my frontend meetings continue.

(3) I wanted to observe the Matunga, Kings Circle, Hindu Colony and Parsi Colony Area closely. Observing is very different from jus walking down the street taking in the fresh air, it is being observant to all the things around you which all of us ignore given the pressures we are faced with in our day to day lives. I had a good time and spent 3 hours walking around taking a close look at the traffic congestion, hawkers and their wares, cleanliness on the roads and comparison of these roads to other parts of Mumbai, checking out the police station & post office and the ratio of policemen to population – you are not just walking but trying to analyse what you see and drawing conclusions from that and making note of them – it is like opening up another sense which you had kept blocked all these days. I rewarded myself with a coffee at Café Mysore at the end of it. I also went into the VJTI and sat in my Third Year and Fourth Year Classroom from where I had contested my first elections for Class Representative and got some much needed motivation that I could pull this off in the long run.

So to summarise, I have started taking some baby steps forward ….. let’s see where they take me.