This week, I’m watching: Mumbai High – the Musical

… and I urge you to do the same, if you’re at all interested in India, or education, or musicals, or how other people live; or even if none of those things float your boat but you’re at a loose end and can get access to the BBC iPlayer for the next month or so.

This one hour film,  recently shown on BBC4 as part of their wonderful India season (click on the “India” tag in the cloud to

(c) BBC

the right of this post on the main blog site for my previous posts about India) tells the story of five children from the Mumbai slum of Dharavi – their backgrounds, homes, families, hopes and dreams (Raj wants to be a doctor, Mary wants to play football with David Beckham). It’s shot using a standard documentary format but is also interspersed with Bollywood/Glee style musical numbers where the children and their teachers sing, in multiple languages, and dance.

I once wrote that India, my favourite country in the world,  finds a new way to uplift you and yet break your heart every day – and this beautiful, moving, funny, emotional film encapsulates that.

Do watch it if you can – and let me know if it speaks to you the way it speaks to me.

Here’s a clip of Iffat, aged 12, telling us how she can speak six languages and gets 100% in all her subjects at school:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p032h0d3

“Advice” on how to ask for a raise at work …

… the Summer’s Eve way.

The text of this advert is, I think, self-explanatory,  but do read on to the comments below it on this website – genius.

And then?

Remind yourself,  via a quick glance at your calendar,  that we are in fact in 2010.

World Cup fever …

I guess it’s my week for writing about contraception.

Following on from my earlier blog about the Pill,  I was amused to receive a press release from none other than Britain’s major (something like £1 of every £8 spent in the shops of the UK is spent here) supermarket chain, Tesco.

They have leapt onto the World Cup bandwagon with alacrity and are urging us to “Lie Back and Think of England” with this cut price condom offer, “Won Sixty-Six”,  which they “hope will be a winner”.

Oh yes.  And there’s more:

“The excitement won’t stop after England finish their matches so we’re doing our bit to help it go through the night.

We chose the £1.66 price [for a pack of condoms] because we want to restore England supporters’ pride and help them to remember it is possible to go all the way, as we did when we won the World Cup back in 66.”

OK, then!

Moving on from contraception,  but still on the football theme (isn’t everything this week?),  the admirable pinkstinks campaign team have come up with an alternative take on the usual WAGS (“Wives and Girlfriends”) acronym with this alternative and amusing WAGS logo, available on t-shirts and tote bags.

Check out their fund-raising shop here.

“Girl or Boy, Small Family is Joy”

My lovely Goan taxi driver, Satish,  is now so on-board with the type of people related images which interest me when we’re out and about that he often spots them first (usually because I’ve got my eyes clamped shut) when we’re bombing along – and then screeches to a halt.

“Cleo Madam! Good picture for you here!”

And here’s one such example,  spotted earlier this week. It’s part of a nationwide campaign to persuade families of the value of having baby girls, in an attempt to reduce family sizes and prevent gender selective abortion or post-natal infanticide.  

The fine in question is huge: it represents c. £1400, which in a society where a working man can earn and raise a family on £40 per month,  is an almost unimaginable sum.

I’d love to know what statistics, if any,  exist to indicate the success of this campaign;  Satish tells me it’s been running for quite some time.