Bom Bom !

I hail from the capital, New Delhi as we all know it, the NCR as I sometimes call it (with one eyebrow slightly raised above the other). And I don’t claim that it’s something I’m ‘proud’ of, as that doesn’t make much sense. I moved to the place when I was six and a half years old, my father took up a job there, and coming to the big city was hardly a conscious decision on my part.

But having spent more than twelve adolescent years in and around the place, I have obviously developed feelings for it which can be labelled loosely as affection. I would be the first to concede that it has no inherent culture, not much greenery and natural beauty to boast of, and that it’s the country’s most unsafe city with its alarming crime rate, but it’s where I grew up and each joint and locality has memories attached to it, holds special significance.

So when I, a staunch ‘Delhi-ite’(don’t ask me to pronounce it !), hear someone go ga-ga over Bombay, ‘the financial capital of India’, the land of Bollywood, of the beautiful Nariman Point and Juhu Beach, my first reaction is to give him the I-couldn’t-care-less look, make a few nervous movements here and there and move out of the room saying that whatever it is, however grand the ‘necklace’ might be, it may have a thousand Hanging Gardens, but Bombay can never be what Delhi is, what the NCR is(the eyebrow is in action again).

But, as it turned out to be, when I went to the port city for the first time two years ago, to that ‘great, ruined metropolis’, I found my baseless defence melting away. For there in front of my eyes was a city which offered everything, which was a world to itself, a world of the beautiful and the ugly, of fire and ice, of the rich and the poor, and of everything that lies in between.

In Bombay, just as you get out of the air-conditioned comforts of the airport, you are confronted suddenly with something totally different. There are no towers, no buildings, nothing to suggest that you are now in one of India’s metropolitan cities. Just small, dirty-looking houses and slums, people sleeping on the pavements, some even on the road, inside temporary roadside tents and below the flyovers. People everywhere; much more than the city can afford. You are reminded suddenly of all you have read and seen in movies about Bombay over the years. Bombay is the city to which more and more people flock in every year, in search of a job, of food, shelter and security. They come from everywhere: some with hopes of getting into the film industry and many others with no clear objective at all. They live on the footpath, struggling to make ends meet, because even if the city wishes to, it can’t adopt them. Not anymore. The contrast is startling; on the right are high-rise apartments, on the left you have people sleeping amidst their own shit and piss.

The same contrast is written all over the city. For every Malabar Hill, there are a hundred Jogeshwaris, for every Infinity, there are a hundred Crawford Markets, for every Amitabh Bachchan, there are a million wanna-bes who keep trying unsuccessfully every day, settle down on the sidewalks, or in the slums. This violent collage of modern existence is exhilarating, when not disturbing. Bombay is, as Suketu Mehta describes it, the ‘Maximum City’.

And tell me, which city could present you with such amazing sights, as the one I witnessed sitting at the Hilton, of the people below walking along the seacoast, of families with the children holding colourful balloons, of couples strolling hand in hand, admiring the water, of old men, out for their evening walk, gossiping away like teenagers. That view, I remember distinctly, developed a sudden, violent urge within me to leave the air-conditioned restaurant, to leave my five-star coffee half-drunk, to get up from the heavily cushioned chair I was sitting on, to run down and do what those people were doing, talk and watch the sea.

All very romantic, you say, what about the problems, the horror of living in a city like Bombay? What about the floods you have there every monsoon, when the city breaks down, submerged up to the neck? What about the problem of living space, Abhinav? Have you forgotten how you and your cousin went running around Bombay looking for a flat to take shelter in, when you had given the poor chap a sudden visit last year? And have you also forgotten how wretched you felt at Crawford Market that day, with the rain belting down, and a million stall-keepers shouting in your ear? Remember how you swore that you’ll never set foot on this blasted piece of land again?

And I will nod, I will say yes, and then I will tell you that it is not the only thing that matters, that there is a certain kind of beauty the eyes cannot see, which only the heart can feel, that there is something beyond logic, something about the city which sucks you in, however clichéd it might sound, it is the city’s history, its dynamics, its spirit.

So would you be surprised, if I tell you that given the chance, when I grow up and have a job to call my own, I would like to have an apartment flat near Nariman Point, facing the sea, and that I would love to make weekend trips into the old city, uncovering secrets yet hidden about the ‘great, ruined metropolis’?

P.S. :

I call it Bombay, not Mumbai, and I have my reasons:

1) First and foremost, I am not a Shiv Sainik, nor wish to become one in the coming time.

2) Naming the city on the basis of it being a port, or a bay, sounds more logical than naming it after some goddess called Mumba Devi.

3) And yes, to bring out the hidden sentimentalist in me, Bombay sounds romantic; has been its name for quite a long period of time. Names, like places and people, have histories behind them, and the past cannot be erased all of a sudden by a bill passed in the parliament.