Mumbai's 'spirit' is just the icing on a cake that is rotting
Last Friday, a technical fault near Thakurli station on Mumbai's Central line sparked violence on the local train network. At Diva station, crowds resorted to stone pelting and "rail roko". Order was restored subsequently but amidst the self-immolation of a Pakistani boat near Porbandar, the news did not receive as much attention as it deserved.
Anyone who has lived in Mumbai - and I count myself among its once-residents - will salute its "spirit". In the monsoons, when streets are flooded and trains stop working, private cars fill themselves up with strangers going north, which, in Mumbai, could mean any place beyond Andheri. During natural or manmade calamities, everyone pitches in as a true Mumbaikar, overlooking differences of caste and creed, to work in tandem. Every once in a while, though, the famed patience of the Mumbaikar snaps and the media goes to town in the aftermath.
The real question is: why don't Mumbaikars protest more often? The Mumbai "spirit" is the icing on a cake that is rotting due to a number of social and cultural factors. For starters, the city, as is well documented, is reeling from poor infrastructure. During the monsoons, the entire city is wet, watery, washed out. It just doesn't stop raining. Everywhere is damp and dirty. Piles of garbage. Mountains of filth. It's surprising how even long-time Mumbaikars have learnt to turn a blind eye to the muck around.
It's worth conjecturing if they now see Mumbai as a money-making machine which must bear the brunt of never-ending crowds. Several hundred thousands come to Mumbai every year. They spread out in its sprawling slums, its dizzying high-rises, its gentrified chawls. They occupy every last inch - I was, until recently, a member of "they" - unless there is no space left.
Then the concept of space itself morphs into something unlivable, shrunken, almost hostile. And so on the cycle repeats. There is a real danger that the city will give in under the pressure of its numbers. That would be an unmitigated tragedy, and not because it is India's financial capital. To first timers, Mumbai offers a vision of India that they have never come across in their own towns and cities. Things charge ahead at an unseen momentum, and there is nothing that can't be had for the right price.
My own experience of living there over two years was an exercise in articulating my changing affections for the city. Wherever I had lived before, I was a traveller. There was something better, grander to look forward to. But Mumbai, it seemed final. It was impossible, even in the city's popular imagination, to consider anything more imposing than Mumbai. Sure, you could find cleaner places and more genteel quarters but you could not match the intensity of lived experience that Mumbai offers.
When I was growing up in Gwalior, the question of finding one's place in the world, both literally and otherwise, was immaterial. The Gwalior of my childhood was a world absolute in itself, and if someone had told me I would live there forever, with my mother and father and sister, I would have been perfectly happy.
In Delhi, where I worked, I still lived with my family. I was happy, or so I think now, a sort of happiness that was unaware of the world and survived on its own blood. It was too unreal, I am certain.
Lucknow, where I went to get an MBA, was different. I knew I would leave in two years and that gave the experience a certain thrill. Also, I was free. I felt free like I had never felt because I had finally come into my own. I took my time negotiating this new openness and stepped on a number of mines before I discovered stable ground.
Mumbai arrived at the end of this chain. By then I seemed to have experienced everything that my adolescent self hungered for, if not always to salubrious effects. In Mumbai, I was my own person again. I negotiated life afresh. The local train took me everywhere, and riding it, I always felt I was on the cusp of some momentous discovery. On some days, I went to office dressed in a T-shirt and jeans and looked different from the hordes of men of my age who were dressed in formals and worked proper jobs in Mahalaxmi or Worli or Church Street. Occasionally, when I too wore formals it made me feel subdued and official.
The city's duelling nature - a less-worn-out cliché would be hard to find - impacted the way I looked at myself. I was caught between thinking of myself as an avant garde writer who would someday pen passionate treatises on gay identity on the one hand, and on the other, the cool, calm, collected soul going to and returning from office in his neat formal wear, rubbing shoulders with other men - family people going home to their wives and children and late-night TV.
Around me politics mirrored life, or so it seemed on the surface. Raj Thackeray's demagoguery rose even as the BJP's control of the state under Modi's stewardship was still a distant goal. I was told that Marathi speakers blame outsiders for spoiling the culture of the city. But I never faced any discrimination. Again, this was because I was middle-class, or so I was informed. A Sikh taxi driver told me how Sikhs were never targeted by Raj Thackeray because they had a culture of upright living. I realised that it was perfectly normal to harbour such views in Mumbai. Even as its residents repressed their myriad biases, the city itself ran to the beat of a perfect clock.
I am not in Mumbai anymore, and frankly, I am glad. I am happy not to have to negotiate the crazy rush-hour traffic or the interminable distances. But Mumbai as a state of mind refuses to leave me. The moment I feel I am settling into anything specific, I experience a familiar terror that Mumbai had kept at bay. The idea that I would lead a life ossified in its stability and goodness and cuteness is horrific to me. As long as I was there Mumbai refused to resolve this dilemma for me. It gave me the space to work these questions. It allowed me the luxury to believe that I could continue to be a traveller, and that the city would be my guide, never letting me rest or stand still.