The city of Mumbai has always amused me in most ways. It is a national amusement most times but it holds a special place in my head. Might be because of Bollywood, might be because the city is associated with dreams coming true. Might be because it stands a definition of a city – a large concrete structure with multiple small concrete, steel and biological structures coexisting with each other without the concepts of time, fate and speed breakers. Cities don’t stop running in my head, and if that is the case, Mumbai is some ultra stamina megazord that has lived through the testaments of time for idk how many years now.
It has been excessively romanticised by the entirety of the nation. Bling life was born here. Fashion was propogated like religion and so was paparazzi culture. It was as through the West found India through this city culturally(The Gateway of India, metaphorically), and there’s no fighting that. Music and Shahrukh Khan were being celebrated, wherever we go, they didn’t call this the land of Bollywood for nothing. And so does romance. There are people making out in every nook and corner of flat spaces with the sea peeking on to them, irrespective of age, sex and time. Time. Yes. It doesn’t exist.
The last time I came to this blessed place was in 10th std with a nerd quiz group and Ranjani ma’am, my school’s quiz club incharge teacher. A literal godsend. It was almost a perfect Mumbai trip. The train stopped at CST where our train into the city started. We studied quizbooks in the evenings and I tried the Bombay Pani Puri (which was a revelation. The pani does not leakthrough the pores of the puri to make a mess!!) It was the birthplace of the Franky and a Vada Pav yet I was the most excited on us getting mac and cheese in the hotel buffet for the finals. We went to the Gateway of India and saw the Taj opposite to it which is one of the most memorable sights of my school life outside school. I was lucky. (Didn’t know how much until 9 years later) but I knew I was atleast to some parts. In these 9 years, after hitting travel puberty with so many hills, streets and restaurants and what not explored, Mumbai was a blank space which just waited for a long time to be filled. In between, there was OK Kanmani (An extremely fuckall movie with 2 tamil people roaming around apparently the entire city with no mention of what they earn), a job from Red Bull which if done with much more enigma and drinking habits, would have cut my amusement of this city in half. And a woman, who came into my life I have no idea how but if not for Mumbai, we do not know where 15 percent of our conversations would have been about. From a blank space, it became a little starry dream with glowing lights because we figured we needed something to decorate our nights with. Someday, I would have come here, I don’t know how near that day would have been so, but it would still be with a lot of effort, an impending budget and a little disappointment that doesn’t need to be talked about.
The city, she, has different ideas. Mumbai is named after Mumbadevi, a spirit of Lakshmi, hence she’s a she. And also because the best things in the world are women. It’s definitely a she. Coming back to cricket. She had very different ideas. She called me out here off the blue to watch her live her day vicariously, dance to the tunes of the horns of probably the highest vehicle loads I’ve seen, and sprawl in an April sun. The gig was to watch your cricket team play from a studio, while creating content for them in your language, appear on national OTT and you get paid for it (much more than what my hospital ever gave me) and to fly in and out of this city starting the next 15 days or so. They had me at the first point. And here I am sitting in Bandra Bandstand writing about how she is (and will be) from my eyes.
I have a decent eyesight. Nothing much wrong with it. Talking from a very neutral point of view, everybody who saw Bombay like I did (Still a void, nobody could romanticise shit like me anyways) was fooled. Bombay was named by the Portugese in the 1500s and 500 years later, the city blasts into a new level every morning. First of all, they didn’t call it the most densely populated cities of the world for nothing. I terribly underestimated the volume and the space that is required to accomodate this volume. I think the Maharashtra govt too did because there are people living in every space they could find trying to make a livelihood with every living we could see. Roads, Sea, Flyovers, Beaches, even Metro Pillars had people with a stove to cook, hands to eat and exactly 5.5 ft of space to sleep in beneath them as long as it offers shade from the sun. We in Chennai say something very dear about the city, Vanthaarai vaazha veikkum Chennai (Those who come to Chennai, she’ll help you reap). Mumbai overdid it. People do every job they could find. My first day in the Suburban railway saw a guy transporting a gate through a train. Another carrying fake awards. There are people in every national monument with a digital camera waiting to take your picture and print it maxi size. It exists. The last time I printed a maxi picture was for a school project. Everybody told them the smartphone has been invented but they didn’t care. The live in 2004 and sometimes, take us into a train of thought that 2004 is not that bad after all. And it’s a parade. If you plan to start a pani puri stall in a street, there are already 3 others on it. For a complete class of people, it is like living in Squid Game except you don’t lose your life in a jiffy. It’s scratching the surface for a living for months or years with all hopes resting on the city’s crowds to uplift you.
And it’s extremely sad to see that for most of them, it cannot happen. It is not ‘doesn’t happen’. It is ‘cannot happen’. Because the rich poor gap is at its all time best in this city. Fighting through a middle class really is a different ball game in today’s world but in this city, I don’t think it exists. A man has to toil his life savings to either live as a rich man or the society puts him at a different place with a different status. Mumbai is geographically divided by the class of the people it could host and that, by far is the worst thing that could happen to the evolution of this city. Did it make their lives easier. Or more difficult? Honestly, I don’t know. But the worse part is that they also don’t know. Because an average Mumbaikar doesn’t have time to think about this as he would have done more work in this city instead of wailing over the same. Time is money they say. If that is the same for the city, 24 hours isn’t enough for anybody here. It is popular belief that Mumbai’s nightlife is one of the most bullish in India taking on any place’s night culture of the world. But if you ponder in deeply, it is because people get time only after 12 am in the night. The turfs are full. Restaurants are buzzing. Traffic is atrocius, just like the rest of the time of the day. So and so that people are scared to buy a car, because of the city traffic. I’ve never seen this anywhere.
And the same night life causes double the number of jobs for the working class here. The shops are open 24 hours. And people live in their work, irrespective of a clock dictating their life. They don’t live lavish lives. A man doing that in any other city, I feel has a chance to grow into something else. Here, their time is good enough to just merely survive by the bills. The people who grew by a Mumbai migration have their own Hall of Fame. Right from Ambani to Shahrukh Khan. It had its time. This happening in today’s Mumbai is a miracle of its own. Just a miracle, not impossible. The place celebrates South Indian food. Because half of its educated working class is from the down south. The other north is from up north with a little of Bengal. The quintessential Mumbaikar right now is not working in Mumbai anymore. He knows the theory.
The sweaty western line stops at Churchgate. You get down to the Wankhede floodlights to your right and a very lonely piece of green in the city – The Oval Maidan. They celebrate cricket honestly to its fullest glory. Behind the Wankhede is the Marine drive strip where people watch the sun set among the Mumbai skyline and do everything else but strip. The meals scene is real and the open sky above them is proof. A walk and a bhai selling Pani Puri and Rustom and Co ice cream later, there will still be people chilling. 24 hours of the day. At the same time, behind the Oval Maidan, the entire area is a UNESCO Heritage site for safeguarding their history. Props to them for real because this is all done until 2 areas later without commercialising it. And at the middle of it lies the museum and art gallery like the world was built around it. The Irani and Persian Restaurants still smell of old wood and mosaic before mutton. The summer had the street corners with sugarcane juice and aamras with a vada pav (a Marathi breakfast?). There’s an old cinema theatre every street playing a Govinda or Dev Anand movie and I don’t think anybody told them Youtube is real. Everything happens by the roadside. If there’s a small space between 2 shops that needs a compound being built, there’s a little shop there too.
And then among the same roads, there exists the Gateway and the Taj opposite to it which is truly remarkable. Something with cities along the coast with a seafacing landmark. My first days had me going through the sea link by sunset with O Saya from Slumdog Millionaire playing in my head. It felt like home to the music that was made. Actually, to many such art pieces, Mumbai is their birthplace. It is like us going to the hospital we are born, or to go back to the school in which we studied. It hits different and I don’t think I could describe it well enough. The pubs were wilding, there’s alcohol available with water in every restaurant. The women dress party to walk on the roads or it might me just my eyes. (Good eyes) Pav Bhaji was available for 30 bucks and also for 200 bucks (Sardar Pav Bhaji, Tardeo. Oh my my the butter.) and both tasted the same! What I’m trying to say is that, it is a place for everybody in all moods. Rich people on a budget, Middle class people who wanna sprawl, People who wanna buy original limited edition apparel that you won’t get anywhere in the country, people who wanna buy their fakes which can’t even be identified as fake, just one street away. People who want to find niches of history in pockets around Byculla and Girgaon. People who live for the future who just want to go souther and souther into the city. People who wanna pray (Haji Ali, irrespective of religion. My greatest evening of Mumbai came here). People who don’t ever wanna pray for the rest of their lives. People who wanna run around alone, People who wanna hook up, People who wanna find somebody who wants to run away from the city as much as them. You name it, the city has something to represent them. It is a woke man’s dream and a nightmare at the same time.
For in, going back to where I started. Mumbai runs. Like a marathon. But it is what its people make of it. The city is built from the ruins of great men and women who kept it running so that the rest of the nation can slow down a little. And it rests upon the Mumbaikar to keep up the culture. It is one of the only places in the country to be broad enough to accomodate not just the people but their lives also. It is 2 different things. And Mumbadevi is a god with a big heart. She doesn’t say no. No is a very real word. Doesn’t suit the city of dreams no?
The Life of Vishnu Aravind 