Mr. Piketty, this is Bombay calling …

Ever noticed how things change so drastically in an area that is one lane removed or a kilometer on either side from the most marquee addresses of Bombay?! If you haven’t, I would suggest that you think of this next time you’re in the vicinity of Cuffe Parade, Marine Drive, Malabar Hill, Worli Seaface etc.

Large, beautiful bungalows turn into ugly, matchbox sized slums. Bejeweled and adorned people turn into exhausted day — to — day survivors. Glorious sea views turn into unbearable sea stink. iPhones and iPads turn into the newest cheapest — yet — power packed — but — unreliable electronic devices. Plush cabs hailed by the power of the Internet turn into rundown kaali — peelis and the proverbial sardines — in — a — tin — box local trains. Haute Couture turns into gaudy aping of what passes for fashion in Bollywood. Obese kids turn into malnutritioned ones. Independent, post modern women turn into Dazed and Confused girls. Individuals with their own Wikipedia entries collectively turn into the Hoi Polloi. Extravagant celebrations involving esoteric forms of alcohol enjoyed by connoisseurs amidst music with deep meanings turn into ramshackle arrangements involving alcohol that is affordable given the day of the month guzzled by escapists who shake themselves like they’ve been overcome by unholy spirits to the tunes of low brow noise which pretends to be music. In essence, eternal hope turns into hoping against hope. But somehow, like manna from heaven, hope survives.

This is, of course, generalization garnished generously with exaggeration. There are enough exceptions to the rules mentioned above; but they are just that, exceptions. Such rags — to — riches stories become quiz questions and part of the folklore of the city. But what seldom gets captured is the stark, unimaginably high economic inequality that exists within the same pin code. It would require a sociologist plus anthropologist to adequately capture the social inequality that exists — the social inequality that is sometimes a cause of the economic inequality and an effect of it at other times. But the economic inequality pokes you in the eye, punches you in the gut, kicks you in the nuts, and trips you while you plan to run ahead with GDP numbers. Of course, you fall down but till now, the fall has miraculously not been hard enough to obstruct your pipe dreams.

This isn’t to say you are unaware of what happens around you every millisecond. The fact that awareness is there to a great degree makes the wounds deeper. This awareness comes through reading the best scholars in the country and the world on the issues of Millennium Development Goals in the costliest newspapers and magazines that you can get. The scholars themselves went to institutions which are subsidized by the taxpayers’ monies — including the taxpayer who is one lane removed and does not get the undeserved tax sops that his neighbors get. This awareness comes through watching plays and discussing them over sumptuous continental cuisine at a nicely lit restaurant after paying exorbitant amount of money for each theatre seat in the toniest areas of the city, areas which have the same pin code as the addresses mentioned above, a fact in which there is no iota of coincidence. This awareness comes through independent films that are screened at global film festivals and are then released to the intelligentsia after adequate censoring to obfuscate the truth so that the viewers can sink deeply into their plush seats while sipping overpriced cappuccino and sigh at the collective failure of the machinery and the people. This awareness comes through poverty tours conducted from behind the windows of air-conditioned SUVs whenever a trip is organized to one of the factories in a large industrial empire or to the ancestral home where the family owns farm land till as far as the eyes can see. This awareness comes through reading books on the subject which are actually published by the same entities which have held the world’s knowledge hostage, thus plugging the hole through which could trickle the most potent tool to transform the lives of the very subjects about whom these books are written. Is there an Aaron Swartz amidst us, if I may ask most respectfully?

Scholars. Plays. Coffee. Transformation. Censorship. Films. Newspapers. Magazines. Books. Taxes. Intelligentsia. Tours. Millennium Development Goals.

Privilege. Sigh. Let’s call it Selective Blindness, shall we?

And what’s more — the gap just keeps widening. The Gini coefficient (a measure to express inequality) keeps going further off the charts. The archetypical Orwellian drama keeps at it. It might take generations to build the ivory towers of wealth with the bricks of privilege and the masonry of identity but once that bit is taken care of at an opportune location, multiple generations live off so extravagantly off the notional rent such that the laws simply cease to apply to them. It’s like a Fibonacci Spiral which would have been beautiful had it not been so brutal — every high rise has an ecosystem of low rises which only exist to support the former; and once enough number of low rises have come up, you’ll find without exception that the opportunity is suddenly ripe for another one of those unimaginatively named portrayals of opulence.

Calls for revolution among the have nots are met with charges of sedition, not derision anymore. The judicial system holds their balls while challenging them to speak the truth in sparsely populated court rooms in low profile, nondescript cases. Of course, they speak everything but the truth for the instantly unbearable pain that one goes through when one’s balls are twisted into a knot is discouragement enough. The government machinery flatters to deceive. The social machinery collects lots of funds at the annual fund raising ball but where does it all go, no one knows. The political machinery sings Summer of ’69 at election time and slips into The Sounds of Silence between two successive throws of the balloted dice (or, diced ballot?). The billionaires keep throwing crumbs of charity to them while systematically ensuring that the flow of opportunities to them resembles closely the flow of water from a BMC tap — irregular, insufficient, and insolent. The journalists keep filing away stories after stories that gloss over their misery. The builders keep encroaching on their lands, thanks in no small part due to their bed sharing habits with the powers that be, and then enlist their blood, sweat, and tears to build Towers of Babel. Ends are being met; means are being decimated to the sidelines.

Their “bouncebackability” of the city’s marginalized people is lauded every time a mishap of colossal proportions happens due to the silly mistakes of the haves. That maybe they have no other option but to continue struggling as if nothing happened… this idea doesn’t seem to cross anyone’s minds. The aphorism given to the city — the land of opportunities — coolly brushes under the carpet the ignominy suffered in the shadows of underemployment.

Security guards at ATMs, delivery boys for unicorn startups, drivers for taxi hailing apps, office assistants for major corporate entities — do these men wonder if this is what they were actually meant to do? How do these men treat the women in their families? What are their priorities? Is their agency still theirs or has it been lost to ranting specialists like yours truly?

Flyovers come above flyovers, metro rail follows monorail, public transportation still wilts away under the tremendous pressure, cars of different shapes and sizes and hues just keep adding up like someone is giving them away for free. The violence of consumption just doesn’t seem to end but the perpetrators of this violence have their windows rolled up as they listen to Bob Marley crooning about the Rastafarian way to fight the class fight in a land far removed from everyday reality. When you don’t see what you don’t want to see, you are affected by selective blindness.

They say the local train of Bombay is the great equalizer. Of course, it manages to equalize, nay, compress the identities and the incomes of the 99% into one Virar bound train. The remaining 1% scoff at the trains as they look at them through binoculars fitted with rose tinted glasses. Here they probably manage to see what’s in front of them due to the omnipresence of the local but choose not to see through it. Selective interpretation too, then?

Do we need a JNU, a Kanhaiya, an Umar Khalid in Bombay too? Do we need an #OccupyDalalStreet movement? We probably do but I am sorry, them prospective participants send word that they are much more busy surviving to stop and confirm their participation. The other set, the hypocrites, didn’t see the invitation coming. Let’s postpone all this till the romantic / hell raising rains come … after which all our sins will be washed away. But make no mistake, the sewers are brimming. We’ll probably see what happens when an entire city throws up.

“Hello! Is that Mr. Piketty? Allô, Monsieur! Would you mind very much if I ask you to speak to an audience full of hypocrites, selectively blind and selectively interpreting people in our conference on income inequality at this plush hotel in South Mumbai? As an added bonus, I will take you to a tour of Dharavi and a ride in the local train in the opposite side during non — peak hours. Will you please come?”