MY MUMBAI VISIT

It is after a fairly good gap of time that I had visited Mumbai. During the Time I was employed, I had plenty of opportunities to visit the city and get kicked by the sheer vibrancy that Mumbai (then Bombay) has to offer.

Mumbai is called the financial capital of India. Mumbaikar takes pride in calling the city as Shanghai of India. Mumbai city never sleeps and runs all time. Like it is said in the old Akbar Khan Movie, Hadsa, ‘Yahan roz roz kahi mod mod par hota hai koi na koi hadsa’ (At all times, somewhere, some incident happens). Mumbai has the good, the bad and the ugly in it. And above everything, Mumbai has Bollywood. The dream factories churn out hundreds of movies and TV serials every year with songs, dances and big melodrama in each. People get their nirvana by seeing from outside the homes of the Bachans, Kapoors, Chopras and the Khans (there are so many of them, all claiming to be King Khans!)

I went to visit Mumbai with my family. I told them that I am taking them to the largest yet the most industrious city in the country. My pep talk to them included comparisons such as ‘if you had not seen Mumbai, you had not seen India’, ‘before you see any mega polis, you must see Mumbai’ etc. I believe this really set up higher expectations!

I do not know whether there was expectation mismatch or there is true degeneration in Mumbai, we were not very impressed by what we saw. After seeing the city from the top and from the sides, my daughter said that all the apartments of Mumbai come with a free slum view. Very true indeed! Earlier, it was sea view! From time immemorial, there are chawls and the shanties in Mumbai. All are still there, growing big. Nothing had improved, really.

When you are in Mumbai, you spend maximum time for traveling. Time flies inside the buses, trains and the taxis. On a worse day, one could see morning, noon and the evening of the day, sitting in a taxi at Western (or Eastern) Express Highway of Mumbai. The wise men said, enjoy the journey. How true when you are in Mumbai! (particularly when you don’t have any other option). More than half your life in Mumbai would be wastefully spent on travel.

We spent a day for Mumbai Darshan. We did book in the top end Volvo bus run by Neeta travels (we were advised that they are the best). We chose a Sunday for the darshan so that we could avoid the traffic and see more. I must say it was very disappointing. The bus had a guide who was insincere and lazy. Though it was full of outsiders (including Chinese & westerners), he went on with his low tone in Hindi on a mic that was defective. He never accompanied us to the monuments to tell us its history. Thank God, I knew little bit on Mumbai and that saved the day for me, with my children.

During my interactions with a variety of mumbaikars, whether he is shopkeeper or a driver, an officer or a doctor, I saw a level of impersonality in everyone. And a level of insincerity too. Their body language tells that they are here to make a living and are not concerned with anything else. Whether it is a service or a product, it is delivered in an uninvolved style in Mumbai. Not serious. Not very concerned. The attitude is ‘theek hai, lelo na to phuto (OK, take it or leave it)’ like. Mad world it is, nobody has time for anything.

There are thousands of people everywhere. As soon as the sun rises, people come out of their foxholes. Every place, every road, every junction is a sea of people. If you would you like to see worthless lives all around, come to Mumbai. There are plenty of them. In fact, the majority of the sixteen million of them - the official population figure of Mumbai.

We squeezed in a day to travel to Pune, primarily to see OSHO’s ashram, and that is another story. On the way to Pune, sitting in the bus, a view that I had seen at Nerul, will everlastingly stay in my memory, that of an old (very old, wrinkled) woman cleaning her utensils in the black dark open sewage water that flows through in front of her hutment. That says it all, about the life and its worth!

It is true that Mumbai is the place in India that offers the best opportunity, for money to be made and to make dreams come true. Huge conglomerates are headquartered here. The big corporations, the banks, the stock exchanges, the ports, the bollywood, all are there to help make your day. However, there is plenty of scope for improvement for Mumbai, in everything it has. At present, Mumbai is nowhere near the city that it is compared with (Shanghai), For that to happen, Mumbai has miles to go and of course, that requires a big change in attitude too.