City of Hope

Enough has been said and written about this glorious city that I have chosen to call home. If you haven’t lived in Bombay, you might even think these are exaggerated claims. You might just dismiss it off as media hype when you hear about the now famous spirit of Bombay and the so called Bombay culture. What can after all lie beneath that sheath of pollution, traffic snarls, teeming slums and prohibitive living expenses? I have seen many a young white collar executive throw away  a prospective career after a less than brief affair with the local trains and cramped living spaces of Bombay, taking refuge in the comfort of safer havens like Bangalore and Hyderabad.

 At the same time, I am amazed at the trainloads of people who descend on this city every day from hinterlands all over the country, their life possession clutched compactly in the crook of their arm, armed with little else but hopes in their hearts. Legend has it that if there is one thing a person can be sure of in this city, it is the comfort that he will never go to sleep hungry at the end of the day.

I see this hope on the face of every Mumbaikar as I travel to work every day, come rain or sunshine, night or day, joy or sorrow.

Today the rain gods were mercilessly wrecking havoc on the city, but for the Mumbaikar, it is business as usual...

I see a hopeful salesman on a motorbike, his crisp ‘salesmanly’ attire covered from head to toe in a transparent two piece rain suit, a gear custom made for the two wheeler bound Indian male. It makes him oblivious to the lashing rain and the rage of passing 4 wheelers.

I see a beefy lad as he hangs onto the footboard of a bus, his t-shirt tight enough to show off multiple packs, his colored hair gelled and styled after the latest Bollywood heartthrob, a serpent tattoo adding more menace to his already menacing looking bicep. I wonder what he does for a living…a bouncer at the upmarket night club in town, a celebrity’s personal trainer perhaps, or maybe a personal bodyguard to one of Mumbai’s glitterati…I don’t know… but I know see hope as he hangs in there, a hope for an easy day at work.

I see an aspiring model/starlet, as she hops out of a local train and into a taxi, guarding her painstakingly put together ensemble of clothes, shoes, make up and accessories from the slush and rubble around. If the yellow in her stilettos and skirt scream for attention, the city doesn’t seem to notice. Its a city where everyone is chasing his dream, with no time to stop and stare!

I see an old man, straight out of an insurance ad, running…folding his umbrella as he runs, hoping to catch the bus that is rumbling at the traffic signal. Will he or won’t he make it… I crane my neck….I forget to breathe for a precious few seconds…the driver sees him just as the signal changes… I do a high five with myself as the old man makes it inside safely.

I see countless others…all of whom make my own problems in this city seem insignificant.

I see those people whose fortunes depend on the sales pitch they make in the 30 seconds it takes for the signal to change from red to green, as they hawk anything from cheap Chinese toys one day to the Indian tri colour the next and mobile phone accessories the third.

I see the woman who travels 30 kms by train, getting ready to set up her plastic knick-knacks stall outside the station gates.

I see those roadside salons where shaving services are provided under makeshift plastic roofs. I think this is one city where, if there is anyone willing to offer a service, however bizarre, there is someone out there waiting to avail that service. The service provider and the receiver go about their business out in the open, with utmost ease and comfort.

Then there are those numerous shacks along the highway, made of tin, wood scraps and every other conceivable material, homes with one room, shared by 5 people and their ubiquitous dog and chicken.  I see these people cook and clean, bathe and wash, fight and make up all out in the open, and wonder how they manage to do all of this with their dignity still so intact.

It is a city that gives me hope every time I step out…hope in hardwork, hope in honesty, hope in the dignity of labour and hope that my hour long journey each day will teach me something new about life and the people around me.

Maid in Mumbai

In all the years she spent with us, P could never see what the fuss was about this city, variously referred to as ‘maximum city’, ‘city that never sleeps’ or ‘city of a million dreams’. She was after all a Chennai girl and a reluctant immigrant to Mumbai when she first came to work for us. 'People here don’t speak Tamil, how can it be a great place’ summed up her attitude to any city outside Tamil Nadu.

First thoughts

Her first reaction to Mumbai after stepping off the train at CST was not very different from that of any first time visitor to the city– where are the all these people going and why are they in such a hurry. Dirt, squalor and a sea of strangers was not exactly a welcoming sight, I guess. The two hour long drive to the suburbs where we lived took us past slums, gleaming skyscrapers, more slums, 5 star hotels, plush residential towers and then, more slums. We even pass the largest slum in Asia (if you know Mumbai you’ll understand that no statistic about the city can be modest, everything has to be prefixed with biggest, most, longest and so on).

A home with a view

We live on the 27th floor of a high rise in a posh suburb, far from the city, with a view of the lake for which we have paid a handsome sum. Only now, the view is a mere glimpse, that can be had only from a demarcated 10inchX10inch spot in the living room, provided we crane our necks at a 45% angle to get past the new high rise in front. P is amused that we pay a premium to get this high from where everything looks like an ant, we can’t call out to vendors from our doorway at will, and it takes longer to get in and out. And it is not as if you escape the mosquitoes at this height - she has already seen a few buzzing about. ‘Did they take the elevator with us?’ she asks in her own inimitable, wry style, something we get used to in time.

‘In Madras, people pay a premium for a ground floor flat which comes with a small garden.’ I knew right at that moment, this was only the beginning of the Mumbai-Madras comparison saga.

Food and culture
She looks at us as if we are traitors who have sold our souls to the enemy when we eat rotis instead of sambar and curd rice for dinner. She doesn’t buy the fact that for even ‘Madrasis’ in Madras have switched to rotis for one meal on health grounds. As for her, P made it clear that neither would she eat rotis nor would she learn to make them while she was here.

Over time P had mastered the art of communicating in sign language with the milkman, dhobi and driver. She had even managed to teach the cleaning lady a few words in Tamil, but not a word of Hindi had entered her system yet. She was a great source of entertainment for friends and visitors who called on us. She always assumed they knew Tamil because they were our friends and unleashed a barrage of greetings on them in fluid Tamil. Anyone who knew even a smattering of Tamil got to sample P’s extra special filter kaapi.

Bollywood
I remember the day Shah Rukh Khan came to our building for an ad-film shoot. There was an air of nervous excitement about the entire building. Everyone from the security guard to the grandmother with arthritis and the blackberry thumbing honcho was dressed in his/her Sunday best, hoping for a photo or at least an autograph opportunity with the superstar. After all, it was not every day that the badshah of bollywood paid a visit to a leafy, peaceful suburb.

If there was only one person in the midst of all this action who was truly unmoved – it was P. In Madras, between the movie stars and the movie-star-turned-politicians, there is enough going on for the average Tamilian to give Bollywood the cold shoulder.

P’s reaction to Bollywood’s undisputed superstar was thus :

‘he’s not dark (=not good looking), he doesn’t have a moustache (=disgusting),he is dressed in jeans and t-shirt like normal people (=hardly the garb befitting a superstar)    'What sort of superstar is he? Give me a Thalaiavar (Rajinikanth for the uninitiated) any day' she says with a shrug and gets back to her chores on the 27th floor, completely unimpressed.

It took a while for me to realise how culturally alien Mumbai was to P. We could have well been living in Papua New Guinea for all she cared. To her it would be just another place that was not Madras.

I realised I had taken P out of Madras, but hadn’t succeeded in taking the Madras out of P. She’s gone now, while all I can do is hope and pray that I find someone half as well-meaning and endearing, to fill the huge void left by her.