Everybody's Mumbai

The skyline at Nariman Point, Mumbai. - PAUL NORONHA

Mumbai is not meant to be a tourist's city. The capital of Maharashtra offers hope to the vast numbers of migrants who flock to it in search of a fortune.

SALMAN RUSHDIE, in an interview to Whole Earth Editorial Board Member Vijaya Nagarajan in Berkeley, United States, some years ago, spoke of `his Bombay'. An excerpt from the interview is worth reproducing as it captures the essence of the ambivalent feelings that even the most diehard Bombayite or Mumbaikar has for this city. Rushdie's observations also bring out a vital aspect of Bombay - that it changes but yet remains the same.

Vijaya Nagarajan: You were born in Bombay and raised there until you were a "part" teenager, and then went to England. Would you say a little bit about what that Bombay of the 1950s was like?

Salman Rushdie: The Bombay of that period, of the fifties and the first half of the sixties, was a city going through a kind of golden age. There's a worrying sense that one has about the place that you're a child in, that may be you're infusing it with a kind of retrospective golden glow of childhood. But I don't think I am, because people of an older generation than I - of my parents' generation and so on - all say this. It certainly felt like that, like a kind of enchanted zone, at the time. It was a wonderful, exciting, vibrant city to grow up in. And I fell in love with it then and forever... .

So my city was Bombay, and one of the things that interests me now is that when you grow up in a city, you believe it to be eternal. You believe that the city was always there and always will be there. It seems to be a very solid thing. Whereas, in fact, now that I know more it's plain that the city that I grew up in was a very new city. Actually the neighbourhoods where I grew up were in some cases only fifteen or twenty years old.... They aged rapidly because everything in India goes to hell very fast. So they looked kind of dreadful and ancient, but they were actually very new. Twenty years later, they were all knocked down again and the city was replaced by a kind of contemporary high-rise city that you would see if you now went to Bombay.

When I was growing up in Bombay, there wasn't a single skyscraper in town. In fact, I remember the first skyscraper being built on Malabar Hill; the people in the city used to contemptuously refer to it as Matchbox House because it looked like a giant matchbox standing on its side. We all told each other that it would never catch on. One of the many things about which we were wrong.

What I feel now about that city is that it was actually a demonstration of how transient things are, that the apparent solidity of the city was a complete illusion. It was very new and it didn't last long. I think that's true not only of the physical fabric of the city but also of the spirit of the city. One of the things that people in Bombay used to pride themselves on was a sort of openheartedness and tolerance.... [Here Rushdie speaks of the communal elements that have crept into the city's fabric.] So that Bombay, the tolerant, openhearted, secularised Bombay, has gone.

And I think this [new] Bombay is still interesting, it's still a great capital, it's still a huge buzzing metropolis - it hasn't lost that.

So what is it about Mumbai that attracts and repels at the same time? The city is a conundrum, almost schizophrenic in the many faces it has - each to be revealed depending on the individual's frame of mind. Like the fabled snake that ate its own tail, the energy of the city - its most attractive feature - sometimes consumes the city itself. For the newcomer the city can be overwhelming and bewildering. Spoken of with an almost magical reverence, a sort of dreamland destination, there is a sense of puzzlement when the visitor actually arrives here; a sort of Dick Whittington feeling that the streets are not actually paved with gold or that every second person is not a film actor or whatever else was the imagined Mumbai of the visitor. For the tourist a Mumbai memory may be nerve-jangling - a cacophony of noise, heat, humidity, pollution, touts and more noise. But for those who linger and let the city get under their skin there is really no other place they would rather be.

If this sounds fatuous just ask Mohammed, the Kozhikode-born fish-seller at Nariman Point, or Surve, the second-generation mill worker's son from the Konkan district who sells Konkan delicacies near Churchgate, where they would rather raise their families. Their answer, an assured "Mumbai", would be echoed by the Yadavs, Tiwaris, Patels, Guptas, Singhs, Murthys and any other name that represents the thousands of migrants from other States that go up to make this city of 17 million people.

Mumbai is not meant to be a tourist's city. Its roots as a commercial centre persist to this day but the cosmopolitan composition integral to trade simultaneously gave rise to an amazing culture - a blend of philanthropy, art, tolerance, acceptance... in short, a liberal outlook. This possibly is the `spirit' that everyone refers to. With its slums, urban poor and obvious examples of income disparity, Mumbai may come across as heartless but despite this warts-and-all sort of attitude that the city almost flaunts there is an undeniable soul and sophistication. There is a grand swirl in its architecture, industry, and in the relentless energy of its streets and people. And to experience this takes a while.

Undeniably changing and yet remaining much the same, the city continues to offer hope to the vast numbers who flock to it knowing they will get a daily wage if not the fortunes that Mumbai gave its early settlers.