RJ Malishka, the BMC and the underlying breach of our freedom

If you have been listening to Red FM channel in Mumbai, then one of the celebrity RJs they have is Malishka. As part of a radio jingle, she made up this video –

Everyone knows that in Mumbai, rains wreck everything. This year, in fact we have yet to see a day where the entire city has come to a stand still. Having said that, there are a lot of gaps that BMC needs to address. The video was made as a satire, since then, it has had more than 3M views.

So what’s the big deal?

Instead of acting on this creative complaint, what BMC officials chose to do was extremely childish. They organized a “raid” on RJ Malishka’s place and supposedly “found” dengue mosquito larvae.

Then the local Shiv Sena team created a spoof video of this song and BMC went on to file a 500 Cr INR defamation case against the RJ.

All this over a silly jingle that was created. Yes, it was aired, and many people heard it and saw the video.

The big deal is that an individual’s freedom of expression, and the freedom of press is being trampled with here. I don’t know whether I would classify this video under press or under entertainment, but what I do know – is that there is more than a grain of truth to the song.

By reacting like a bully, the BMC has shown how it takes feedback. The next time Shiv Sena talks about giving the marathi manus a voice, think again. It’s all talk.

Mumbai Rain, the Driver’s Pain

While the Twitter world went abuzz with the Mumbai Rains, I was not seeing the big deal with rains. So what?

Then I went to my car on my drive back to home.

  1. Potholes are not visible, you have to look for them and differentiate the pot holes from shallow puddles
  2. The car is slow to react
  3. You come to know nuances of your car when driving in rains, it makes noises that you never knew it could!!
  4. Vipers + Drizzle makes for an irritating screensaver while driving
  5. WIndows and windshield fogs up
  6. Mumbaikars run to their home like madmen when it rains, in cars. So more traffic

All this in one drive back home. Eagerly waiting the monsoons :-)