mi mumbaikar

In the big cosmopolitan city of Mumbai, my locality is a microcosm, a small sample of what the city at large stands for and entails. One of my first thoughts after coming to Mumbai was how easy it was to integrate into the city and its lifestyle. Despite Shiv Sena bandhs, loud exhortations about 'immigrants' and the growing stronger by the day 'Marathi manoos' stand, my faith in the city's fundamental pluralism is unchanged.

But that faith suffered a serious dent recently. Overnight, nearly every shop in my locality has undergone a transformation. Hastily painted cloth banners or signboards or strategically inserted words in the original signboard proclaim shops' names in Devnagri script, ostensibly to say that the shop does have a Marathi signboard. Never mind that people haven't bothered with translation; the speed with which the change occurred meant that the Marathi language had to make do with transliteration from English to Devnagri.

When you've invested lakhs of rupees in setting up a business and spend most of your living hours in growing it and make it profitable, it's fairly understandable that you don't want a bunch of hooligans swooping down to attack and loot your enterprise. Principles and culture don't come into it--it's all a matter of saving your life and belongings.

And that's where politics of the 'danda' scores. Common people are vulnerable, because their livelihoods often depend on the very resources that are attacked by politicians and their supporters in the name of community or religion or culture.

If it's a matter of a mere signboard change, most traders would willingly oblige. Consumers wouldn't care much about that signboard, most of them find it a blind spot after the first few visits anyway. Most languages, including Marathi and English, don't lose or gain; they're too powerful on their own to even suffer the slightest scratch. MNS and Raj Thackeray gain a few column centimeters of print space and a couple of airtime hours; some lawkeepers get a chance to earn their wages; some people are disgusted, while I guess some do feel that it's a victory for the 'Marathi manoos'.

At the end of the day, all that I feel is a bad taste in the mouth and a frown in the mind. Not enough to anger, nowhere near enough to galvanize into action. Just a mental shrug and a sinking thought of where all of this will end.

dilli ka badalta roop

Maybe because I traveled more in this trip, I saw much that has changed in Delhi from even six months ago. Many of those changes may have been building for a while and are manifested now.

• The much-maligned and much-cursed BRT corridoor has made life tough for private vehicle-owners and auto-rickshaw drivers, but pedestrians have never had it better. The traffic flow is much more organized and crossing the road is a breeze; many roads have the prized commodity that was non-existent earlier: pavements that cyclists do not encroach upon, since they have a separate lane to themselves.
• The new buses (Tata Marcopolo) that run in these corridoors are a dream. The ride is smooth; the bus design is good; the journey is as fast as it can be in a bus; and people don't crowd the doors. The only thing is that the buses seemed poorly ventilated, due to the strange positioning of the windows.
• The one thing that Delhi had and Mumbai didn't--precious green cover--is fast depleting. The coming of the Metro sounded the death-knell for lakhs of trees; the regret was palpable in the voices of whoever I had this discussion with, but there was also a resignation to the march of progress.
• Was I lucky, was I so used to it that I didn't notice, or do auto-rickshaw drivers in Delhi throw less attitude at you now? I also figured that the fare calculation is done as follows: average fare to destination rounded to the next high figure + markup of Rs. 10. If the chap wasn't interested in going, he didn't haggle any more, but shook his head firmly. Strangely though, I did not encounter as many refusals this time as I have done in the past.
• The gap between Mumbai's and Delhi's night-life seems to be reducing. While roads in Delhi used to be dead by 8 pm earlier, I saw a fair amount of traffic, bright lights and activity even past midnight on a Saturday night.
• Traffic jams, the bane of Mumbai, are multiplying alarmingly in Delhi, despite the fact that Delhi has larger, wider and better roads. Unless it's an emergency, the office hours need to be avoided like the plague.
• The mall culture has asserted itself with a vengeance. No less than three of these giants stand shoulder-to-shoulder in Saket (more trees destroyed), on a stretch of road that was otherwise desolate at night and only slightly busy in the day. A by-product is that the older PVR Saket bears a has-been look, even on weekends. I am told that M.G. Road in Gurgaon is known as the Mall Road now, because it is infested with shopping malls of every colour and flavour.
• If Mumbai has Navi Mumbai, Delhi has Gurgaon--a suburb with vast, uninhabited spaces that could take the huge overflow of aspirants who want to make it big in the city. For those who knew Gurgaon for the DLF 'ship building' and 32nd Milestone, it's bizarre and even scary to see the colonies of swank offices with their glass and concrete exteriors, the high-rises that house all those for whom Delhi has become unaffordable, and the frantic pace at which construction activity is still on. While Gurgaon promises a certain lifestyle, I was also told that housing in that suburb is also becoming unaffordable with skyrocketing property prices. Plus, problems of finding parking, increasing traffic jams, and power and water shortages are rearing their heads. In short, Gurgaon's becoming as overcrowded as Delhi.
• Now for some things that haven't changed. Connaught Place retains its essence, though several stores have shut down and new ones have taken their place. I spotted three Coffee Day outlets this time, which is two more than last time. The emporia on Baba Kharak Singh Marg are the same, right down to the attitude of the employees who work there; and the guys at Khadi still firmly believe that they're doing you a favour by billing your products and packing them. Janpath is much the same, as is Depaul's cold coffee (Thank God for that!). Dilli Haat is the same; shoppers in Delhi's markets are still a pushing, shoving lot; and auto-rickshaw drivers still love to pass a comment or two to relieve the boredom of their existence. The golgappas are the same, though I couldn't indulge as much as I'd have liked to; Hot Choc Fudge at Nirula's is sinful as ever; and filter coffee at Saravana Bhavan and Sagar Ratna is still a taste of heaven. There, I'm looking forward to the next trip already!
• Nothing about the biggest addition to Delhi--the Metro--you'd notice. A Metro journey is on my wish-list for next time, so I'll reserve comment till then.

The spirit of Mumbai

There are two kinds of people who talk about this phenomenon:
1) Those who run this country/state/city, or are supposed to. This sect believes that showering praises on the undying spirit of Mumbai gives them cause to test that spirit some more, and absolves them of all responsibility;
2) Defensive Mumbaikars or Mumbai-ites, especially when in heated conversation (read the 'I'm superior' argument) with Dilli-valas or Delhiites.

The spirit of Mumbai is the flavour of the season when drains overflow, uncleared garbage and dead rats compete for space on the roads, the Western Express Highway becomes negotiable by boat, and people spend their days throwing rain water out of their houses. The average Mumbai resident is as capable of a drunken brawl as his North Indian or any Indian counterpart, but somehow, the state of the city doesn't raise any tempers. Year after year, people die of dengue and malaria; year after year, officegoers take pleasure in relating 'stranded in the rain' stories. Flooding, water logging, houses being submerged... these aren't inconveniences any more, they're part of the Mumbai folklore, of what people have to go through to survive in this city.

Is this much-famed spirit just another name for sheer indifference? Or is it that the people of this city pleasure their struggles with the monsoon? Does it add to their self-esteem to have braved another rain, to have vanquished, perhaps, the only opponent they can vanquish? Is this some warped superiority complex that says, "Hey, look what I have to go through to just reach to work and back, look what I have to fight to live?" Or, is it a stoic resignation, a fatalist shrug of the shoulders, as eking out an existence and chasing dreams leaves space for nothing else?

saawan ko aane do...

In the middle of the much-awaited monsoon, parts of the country are wishing the rain clouds away, while in other parts, hopeful eyes gaze at the blue skies. There's something about the weather that always makes it a hot topic for conversation, whether you meet someone for the first time, renew contact with a long-lost friend, greet your spouse in the morning, or chat up a prospective partner. The weather is in nobody's control, yet everyone has an opinion on it. And the wisdom of the ages sprouts anew in the human mind, when the year's first rain showers the earth.

From the met department to the predictor family of astro, numero, and tarot, everyone is into second-guessing what the clouds have in mind. And once the monsoon's gameplan is clear, news channels move in for the kill. You can sense the announcer's exultation when the reporter hits paydirt--flooding in Milan Subway. The excitement is palpable, when citizens of this wet, wet city badmouth the BMC on camera. Channels feel they've earned their ad revenue the day the tracks get flooded, trains stop, commuters are stranded, and the country can see this live 24x7. As long as the monsoon arrives, and as long as this country has politicians, the news channels are assured of breaking news for at least three months of the year.

Despite the saas-bahu melodrama that the monsoon has been reduced to, there's still some untouched beauty left there. The fury, the unpredictability, and the sheer joy that rain falling on earth evokes is almost indescribable.

In Delhi, like everything else, the rain arrives with a lot of shosha. Dusty winds churn dead leaves and roadside garbage, the sky is thunderously angry and lightning flashes threateningly, until the rain begins, cooling tempers and bringing relief from the never-ending heat. In Mumbai, the rain arrives with the matter-of-factness of a crowded local train. Dark, heavy clouds move in from the horizon, gather mass, and empty their load. If you aren't smart enough to jump for cover in time, you're drenched, and before you know it, the sun is out. I had a ringside view of this at Marine Drive. Two women, deep in conversation, didn't bother to move, because they knew the futility of it. College kids took the opportunity of getting a good drench. Lovey-dovey twosomes... well, they continued with what they usually do at Marine Drive. Everyone grinned at each other, deriving pleasure from predicament. The tea-coffee and bhutta vendors peddled their wares with more confidence.

Of course, if you watch the news carefully, these images will flash too, along with the ones that satiate the morbid appetites of the nation. Like everything else in life, the monsoon too has two sides.