Mumbai

I survived – another visit to Mumbai. I haven’t come to grips with the city, and I don’t want to. The city is a veritable book of synonyms for the word ‘ostentation’ - of poverty, need, tunnel vision, selfishness.

As the plane makes its approach to land it flies over islands of sky-rises surrounded by slums. In weathers other than the monsoon the rooftops of these little hutments are weighed down by a dull brown of dust. In the monsoon these are covered with fresh blue tarpaulins, actually TV shows that herald monsoons with updates on Mumbai Municipality’s ability to cope with the coming showers by their efforts to remove the last year’s sewage could change to a study of the change in colors of roofs.

Seeing it now, just like any other jungle, Mumbai changes colours for each season.

On Saturday I walked round Nariman Point on work, it was lunch time and therefore was hungry, there wasn’t a single roadside eatery in that area. Mumbai’s street food (ex. Vada pav) is its only endearing quality. A literal buffet of cuisines has been shut down in attempt to keep the city clean and healthy.

Those who got the decision were the rich and ex officials of the municipality – people who never eat in such places. Instead of providing garbage collection facilities for these eateries and safe drinking water they chose the easy way out – take away a source of income and food.

I had the opportunity to meet a very interesting person in Mumbai. Ashok Datar is an urban transport specialist who is trying to promote car pooling as a method to solve the growing problems of traffic congestion and resultant pollution. His idea of car pooling uses the internet and the mobile phone to bring people going in the same direction together. He made a brilliant observation about the growing number of cars he said that the poor are subsidizing the car owners. His argument is that the car owners do not have to pay for parking almost everywhere in the city and the space occupied by a car is same that of a small dwelling in a slum. That space occupied used by the car should be given to the poor or the car owners should be made to pay for it.

One of my colleagues went to shop in Mumbai and immediately fell in love with the city. Okay it wasn’t only the shopping, the sea had something to do with it too. But that’s the whole question how many can actually enjoy the sea, how many can actually enjoy the shopping. Mumbai is a city that provides people with goggles that darkens the glaring reality of inequality.