Gawker nation: Why BMC chose Sachin's side of the road over mine

My illustrious neighbour is out of town, I think in Australia. (The doubt, because given the way the cricket has gone, you could make a persuasive case that my illustrious neighbour and his teammates are all sunbathing in Tahiti and some leaden-footed impostors are actually on the field). His absence, however, doesn’t stop the people who walk or drive (most often the wrong way) into our lane to gawk at his home, take photographs of themselves standing in front of it, even … … well, it’s like this and it really happened. A few days ago, I return from a trip into town to find a young couple that’s walked up to the entrance to Sachin Tendulkar’s home. They exchange a few words with the security guard in the doorway, he shakes his head with a smile, there are a few more words said, then the guard stiffens solemnly, then the young man steps backwards, yanks out his cellphone and takes a picture of the guard. This really happened, I swear. I mean, if this couple is anywhere near as shutter-happy as I am, they probably have hundreds of vacation pictures. I imagine them sitting down to go over them, some months from now. They coo over the romantic pose in Hanging Gardens. They marvel at the sunlit shot of Mahalaxmi’s Dhobi Ghat. They gasp at the sweeping majesty of the Sealink. Then they stop short. “A security guard?” she asks him. “Why’d you take this one?” “No clue,” he replies. “D’you remember where we took it?” “No clue,” she replies. “You were drinking again, weren’t you? OK, that’s it, I’m calling off the engagement!” Hypothetical, of course. But when we are as obsessed with celebrities as, in their absence, to get the men who guard their homes to pose for our cameras, hypothetical has a way of turning real. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against security guards and this one is smart and friendly and well why shouldn’t he have his photo taken? But when I see this happen, I know: in this city, we venerate celebrity no end. In this city, we are indeed that obsessed. [caption id=“attachment_195864” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“What goes through the mind of these guys who arrive to gawk at Tendulkar’s home? AFP Photo”] [/caption] What goes through the mind of these guys who arrive to gawk at Tendulkar’s home? Or these other minds: the tennis nut who finds Leander Paes hitting on the next court, so he stops Paes mid-rally, grabs his hand and says, “You know, my uncle-twice-removed-from-his-apartment used to play with your dad at the Calcutta Club!” (I swear this really happened too, apart from the twice-removed bit). The fan who sees Preity Zinta at the airport, gets his whole noisy brood to stand in dumbstruck unsmiling silence around her, takes a phone-photo of them all and promptly dispatches it to one of those dismal “I spotted a celebrity” web features. What’s driving their cars, then? It might be amusing and no more, all this. Except that the adulation extends in other, more annoying directions too. Sometime in December, one of those infernal teams of municipal road-digger-uppers turned up in our   neighbourhood. They dug a trench on Tendulkar’s side of the road, one on our side. To connect them, they dug a shallower trench that stretched across the road. It actually extended through the door which the selfsame security guard watches, into Tendulkar’s premises. Mud and mounds on the road, as also in the compound. Within a few days, working expertly and efficiently, these guys had finished what they came to do. Outside Tendulkar’s home and in his compound, working expertly and efficiently, they filled in the trenches. So much so, it’s no longer possible to divine that there had been digging there only recently. On that side, the road surface looks near-pristine. On our side, on the other hand … the large holes remained for weeks. Then one day they were filled with stones big and small. Several stones, some the size of salad bowls, were also just left lying around. So our side of the road is one long sequence of rubble that makes walking there difficult, parking a pain, and attracts dogs desperate to unload. To our Municipality, an absent Little Master deserves a job completed to perfection. The rest of us, no. Still, it’s election time in a few weeks. I’ll remember. Though of course, last week the digger-uppers finally completed the job. They covered the stones with, get this, a thin layer of grey powder. Yes. The desperate dogs? They still unload. DD left Bombay for 17 years to study computer science and, once done with that, work. Since he got back, he’s been trying to make up for lost time in many different ways. These days he writes for his daily zunka-bhakar. He lives in Bombay with his wife, their two children, and two cats. You can follow him on Twitter at @DeathEndsFun ). He blogs at Death Ends Fun.