A Bay of Contradictions

Every Sunday evening, as the sun makes its way towards the horizon, splashing the skies with a wine-coloured hue, I immerse myself in a book and the world around me goes about with its usual business. Afternoon has passed, but the evening is not yet upon us in its full glory. The city seems to be waking up from its slumber and is perched on the edge of something exciting. The microcosm of life unfolds on the promenade behind my back. Hyper-active kids chasing each other, shouts of warning coming from their guardians, fitness enthusiasts staring straight ahead with mute determination and couples and groups lost within their own clique of stories, gossip and laughter.

A voice breaks the cognitive rapport with my book that I had fought so hard to establish. “What are you reading?”. I turned to the source of inquiry. He seemed to be a guy in his early 30s who had just finished with his evening run and was cooling himself off. Tiny, little drops of perspiration plastered the flailing, thin hair to his scalp. Donning a white polo shirt, blue shorts and some sort of a contraption that snugly fit around both his knees, he seemed to be the kind of person who took his fitness seriously. As he shifted into a more comfortable demeanour, I noticed the plastic-encased iPod strapped to his biceps using a Velcro harness. The monsoons seem to bring about an increase in people’s compassion for their gadgets along with the humidity levels.

“Oh, it’s a book on Ramanujan — the Indian mathematician. The Man Who Knew Infinity”, I said as I flipped the front cover so that it faces him.

“Ah! There is a movie based on this as well, I guess. You could have saved yourself some time”, came the reply.

“I probably won’t end up watching the movie. I thought I might as well give this a read”

“Not a movie enthusiast, eh?”

I forced a laugh hoping he would deduce the answer from my non-verbal cues. I prefer not to indulge strangers into details of my dismal movie watching record when I am talking to them for the first time, especially the ones I’ve known for literally 20 seconds.

“So, you work here?”, I asked him and then immediately regretted my desperation to fill in awkward silences. Small talk has never been my forte.

“I work in Mumbai and live in Bombay”, the guy mused.

I looked at him and was rather taken aback to hear the depth of the ocean reflect in his voice. “There is something about rivers and seas that stirs the poet within you”,he added rather apologetically. “What about you? What’s your story?”

I told him my “story” — where I grew up, where I went to study and how I ended up in Bombay. There was a brief pause after I stopped speaking during which both of us watched a couple experiment with all permutations of camera poses and orientations, some of which involved hanging precariously over the edge.

“The sheer infinity of the oceans helps me contemplate.”

“What are you contemplating right now?”. His question made me realise that I had articulated my thoughts out loud. The sea works it’s magic in mysterious ways. I tore my gaze away from the vast expanse of blue-grey and turned to face him. I could sense a hint of genuine interest on his behalf.

“Well, it’s the age-old question. Why is Mumbai so revered? What makes this city so like-able?”

“And what have you come up with so far?”

“I think that it is really difficult to hold an objective conversation on this topic. Man will forever tilt in favour of the land that he feels the most attached to. For every person, there will always be a place that is above criticism. And logic remains shrouded when you view things from a pedestal of elitism.”

“Go on. I have a feeling this leads up to something”, he urged me with a certain degree of infectious enthusiasm. And on I went.

“Take real-estate, for example. Finding a space for yourself, that little expanse of land that you can claim as your own is a challenge that diminishes commas in your bank balance. You know you have serious problems when the airport not only stands in the middle of the city, but also rubs shoulders with the slums. Keeping children and dogs from scaling airport walls isn’t the most optimal utilisation of C.I.S.F. personnel when there are more serious things in an international airport that could go wrong.”

“Ah! real-estate. Attack your opponent where he’s the weakest.”, he quipped and both of us shared a laugh.

“You say that the city is short of space. Couldn’t agree with you more. The ever-increasing influx of people scavenge the city to claim the last remaining expanse of land. Free space is burnt down faster than a splinter with its end on fire. But Mumbai always manages to magically conjure up unfettered space for the dreams of the poor and ambitions of the rich.”, he added with the flair of an artist applying the concluding touches to his canvas.

“Not only real-estate, man. There is so much more. Each jerk on the road reminds you of the infrastructure crumbling under the expectations of its populace. The horns blaring from the smoke-spewing vehicles at every signal spell out an eulogy of discipline and order. Life hangs on the edge here and you have to only set foot on the Virar-Churchgate local to grasp the truth behind this phrase! And don’t even get me started on the weather. The city drowns itself in it’s annual barrage every monsoon and the roads become as suffocating as the air. A respite from the monotony of heat eludes the city. It’s hot for 8 months and hot and humid for the remaining 4. As a resident of the north, I often times miss the winds of winter biting my skin. Call me a cynic, but this city has bitten off more than it can chew.”

My rant was followed by another momentary pause, longer than the previous one. A delicate breeze blew into our faces. In the distance, I witnessed the waves crash into to the rocks below. A group of people who had ventured too close to the waters were soaked in it’s saline foam. The wind carried their squeals of disgust as I imagined their faces contorting into scowls. The water at the shores of Marine Drive is obnoxiously filthy.

The guy cleared his throat and I snapped back from my reverie. “What are your views?”, I asked handing him the gears of the conversation. He took a rather long time before he opened his mouth.

“I like to view Mumbai as a prism.”. An emphatic pause followed as I looked on intently. There was something really captivating about his countenance. I was hooked.

“A prism that splits your gaze into alternating visions of the opulence of the rich and the frugality of the poor, of Victorian facades and the dilapidated walls of a chawl. The arms of the ocean entering into the city at each bay divides the land into two — a dichotomy between the timeless and the time-bound, the universal and the particular. Bombay and Mumbai”.

“The sea has definitely brought forth the poet in you!”. I sat there, amazed.

He didn’t seem to hear me and continued. “When you look around, you seek the grim faces lit by fluorescent screens inside shining cars, but my eyes are fixed on the brown, freckled and dust-caked laugh of the boy selling strawberries by the road. The cacophony on the streets and the quiet, sophisticated humdrum inside rooftop cafes are interleaved and stitched together to weave the fabric of time and space. When I look around, I see a confluence of saffron and green, and black and yellow where mankind’s penchant for the veneration of the theatrical art is matched only by the exaltation of their heroes.”.

His thoughts were intercepted by a man advertising his wares in a crude nasal voice. We made our purchases and the flow resumed. Each of his words now hit my face laden with the fragrance of crushed peanuts.

“Egos are pinned down by the realisation that each passer-by is living a life as vivid and complex as your own, that the stragglers of yesterday are the heroes of today’s act. When I travel inside a packed compartment, a momentary glimpse into the screen of my neighbour is a single frame of an elaborate movie. I have found passageways to thousands of similar lives that I never knew existed. This realisation is the root of a Mumbaikar’s tenacity to persevere.”

He stopped. The words seemed to have taken a greater toll on him than the run.

“Wow! That was eloquent. You see, just like you, authors, poets and artists have relentlessly poured out their endless fascination for Mumbai. There are tons of literature that romanticise life here. All I’m saying is that we are turning a deaf ear to the city’s desperate pleas of help.”

“Absolutely! I am not denying a single argument that you put forth. At this scale, there is naught but doom for the city.” His face lit up momentarily, as if an idea that just crossed his mind. “Hey! You aren’t one of the guys from Humans of Bombay, are you?”, he asked with an expectant smile on his face.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but no. Although I wish I knew them. Why do you ask?”, I threw him a puzzled look.

“Because, both sides of this story needs to reach people.”

“But, there is hardly any story here!”

“Well, what are stories if not conversations decorated with context”, he said and stood up to leave.

Neither of us exchanged names or contact details. We were just the two of us in our own skins — a cynic and an optimist, a pragmatist and a dreamer, an engineer and a poet. Our paths had crossed because of a stroke of serendipity and we both knew that we would probably never get a chance to meet again. There are rarely any second encounters in this city. You appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

I took a sip from my bottle and washed down the lingering after-taste of optimism that the conversation left behind. I realised that this was precisely the reason why the inhabitants of Bombay endured. Why, albeit so many problems, the city has found nothing but awe in my heart. Like jilted lovers unable to find closure, the people keep coming back. Ready to be let down again one more time with the self-imposed acceptance that there can be no passion without pain. Civic problems were merely the eccentricities that adorned the rock-star on stage, making him more like-able amid his fans. Complaints, cribbing, tantrums, adulation and reminiscence— the wheel of emotions shall twirl a thousands time over. Ad infinitum.

As the sun saunters and disappears into the horizon, a velvet dusk envelops the city. The hues of the sky whisper a beautiful warning. But, darkness has never been the enemy. The city embraces the night with the same philanthropic spirit that it nurtures the fortunate and the helpless because it knows that dawn will usher a new hope for the city where your spirit will break into a thousand dances every single day.