SoBo to slums
Just like a million other people who come to this city in search of work, opportunity, prospects and in most cases, life, I was no exception and this city accommodated me as well as it did for 1.2 crore other people. 1.2 crore people in an area of around 600 square kms which is more populated than 173 countries in the world. This place is where the highest number of individuals are messed together in a single spot in the world and if you ask me the word that comes to my mind to define my experience here — it should be ‘chaos’.
You see and experience chaos on a daily basis and the city is managing to survive, be up and running, and welcome people despite the chaos. Most of them don’t complain about the chaos, they just get used to it and embrace it. They even have a phrase for it — ‘Spirit of Mumbai’. I am still trying to understand the meaning of it.
A cab driver who came to Bombay 36 years back said this to me about the city, ‘You work anywhere in the world to become an ocean from a drop but how much ever you work here, you can’t go beyond a glass of water’. This made a lot of sense because the influx to the city on a daily basis is overwhelming and the fierceness of the competition, even for something as basic as survival is going nowhere but up. Even an average middle class lifestyle in Mumbai is below acceptable levels. Despite that people from all over the country throng this city everyday in search of fame, power or money. I have always wondered what is it about Mumbai that makes it so infectiously attractive to so many people in India. According to me, there are 3 major things which Mumbai will teach you. Or teaches you better. Adaptability, patience and speed.
Moving in to any new city has its own hassles but moving in to a city where private space is a huge luxury comes with more hassles. That’s when adaptability kicks in. What would have upset you in the first year hardly troubles you in the second. In Mumbai, it would be privileged cribbing if sharing a room with just one another is called adapting. If the population density is 73000 per square mile, if someone is sharing a room with just one, somewhere someone else is sharing it with five more. Talking to people in Mumbai, each one had very distinct, eccentric opinions. Opinions may differ but this quality of accommodating everyone remains constant. There’s this beautiful quote from a book I recently read. The contact referred here is the hand that comes out to help you board a running 8AM local train so that you catch up with the pace of others.
“And at the moment of contact, they do not know if the hand that is reaching for theirs belongs to a Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Brahmin or untouchable or whether you were born in this city or arrived only this morning or whether you live in Malabar Hill or New York or Jogeshwari; whether you’re from Bombay or Mumbai or New York. All they know is that you’re trying to get to the city of gold, and that’s enough. Come on board, they say. We’ll adjust.”
There’s this one peculiar quality that is specific to people here. Most of them know their daily train timings, platform numbers, train tracks to the last minute. That’s because if they miss their 8:15 local, they have to cross the bridge and take the slow 8:19 local in another platform which is more crowded. Stopping to think is not an option, the pace of the city consumes almost everyone. From auto-walas to top executives, everyone is there to make money without wasting any time. Once your desire to make money stops, you should leave by the next train.
Be it economic or social, the inequality is very stark. There are two very different economic or social space sharing this geographic entity and the gap seems to be widening with time. In the below picture taken by me, the above part is my workplace and the below place is 4 kms from there.
The disparity is so blatantly visible that it’s disturbing at times. Building collapses, fires and frequent floods owing to mismanaged infrastructure are some uncertain things affecting people everyday. One must also acknowledge the fact that Mumbai is very safe for women and lower middle classes. For every negative about the city, there is one positive that compensates it. In my head, this binary continues to persist. This city has its own problems, but is trying to fight it.
Politics, power and prostitution. Finance, fashion and the film world. SoBo, slums and Sachin. This place has a lot of live stories adjusting in this small dense mass of land.
I am all-destroying death
And the origin of things that are yet to be
I am the gambling of rogues
the splendor of the splendid
- Maximum City, Bombay Lost and Found, Suketu Mehta
Originally published at http://mumblingmadrasi.wordpress.com on July 8, 2018.
