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Mumbai versus Bombay

Like India, Mumbai has split itself wide open. We had India versus Bharat. Now you have Mumbai versus Bombay. With both sides pretending the other does not exist.

India talks of globalisation and e-commerce. A national highway costing millions of crores that will link Kanyakumari to Kashmir. Bharat pleads for drinking water and minimum wages that can keep its millions above the poverty line. India boasts of dollar billionaires and shining technology talent that developed nations are so keen to lure away, while Bharat is still struggling to give its children a minimum basic education and healthcare to ensure that they do not die from malaria or malnutrition.

While Indian women win beauty pageants against the brightest and most glamorous in the world, the women of Bharat walk 10 kilometres every day to fetch fuel and water to cook meagre meals for their husbands and rickety children.

What is worse than the divide is the fact that it grows every day. Even as more and more Indians buy cars and colour TVs and cellular phones, the people of Bharat are finding it increasingly difficult to find themselves even the humblest jobs. They are ready to build roads or clean public toilets but even these jobs are difficult to get. It is a miracle that the two nations co-exist within the same geographical boundaries without a civil war. It is a miracle that Bharat does not send its sad-eyed and desperate children to bomb and destroy monuments of modern India.

The same is true for Mumbai. We say that Bombay contributes 40 per cent of India's taxes. We boast that it is modern India's only cosmopolitan city where the streets are paved, like Dick Whittington's London, with gold. We are proud that the world's diamond trade is headquartered here. That the largest number of movies are made here. That square feet for square feet, its prime real estate is as expensive as Paris or Tokyo. But the truth remains that Bombay cannot exist without Mumbai. Mumbai provides Bombay its lifeline, its workforce. If you hurt Mumbai, Bombay dies.

It was in this context that I mentioned G R Khairnar in a recent column. Only to have Bombaywallahs jump on me. For they thought I was knocking their favourite cocktail party icon. What did I say? That Khairnar is a honest, fiercely committed if somewhat foolish and vainglorious officer of the State who does not look beyond compulsions of his job to see the pain and anguish that he causes to the poorest of the poor, whose homes he so callously breaks down in the rains, whose pushcarts he seizes, whose tiny little pavement stalls he vandalises in pursuit of his duty as well as I may dare say, fame and glory. In a city where it is tough to make a livelihood and even tougher to find a shelter over one's head, it is a mean act to follow. It also ends up criminalising the poor.

Bombay was equally outraged when I suggested a citizens' initiative to restore the Gateway of India. It was not the Gateway that I was talking about. My concern was conservation at large. To protect the city's heritage we cannot keep importing Baccharat crystals to hang. We cannot convert every public monument into a hoarding so that corporates can peddle wares there for a pittance in the name of restoration. So I proposed an initiative where the humblest citizen can share in the responsibility and the cost. Bombaywallahs were outraged. How dare one knock the Banque Nationale de Paris? How dare one doubt the intentions of The Taj Hotel?

That is exactly the problem. Anything said in defence of Mumbai angers Bombay. We live in the same city and yet refuse to see each other's point of view. Bombay complains about inadequate parking space. Mumbai does not even have pavements to walk on. For Bombay, hawkers are a nuisance. For Mumbai it is just another means of livelihood. The same words mean different things to Mumbai and Bombay.

Mumbai makes Satya and Vaastav a hit. Bombay makes Dil To Paagal Hai and Taal a hit. Mumbai is anxious to make its two ends meet. Bombay parties till the wee hours of the morning and complains why night clubs are shut down at 2 in the morning. Police harassment has an entirely different connotation for the two. For Mumbai, it means violation of human rights. For Bombay, it means indiscriminate parking tickets.

It is not easy to bridge the two cultures. Mumbai will pursue its own agonising destiny. Bombay will continue to grow and flourish and prosper, despite its callousness. It will continue to hire cheap labour from Mumbai to slog for them and provide them essential services. Yet it will bitch about growing slums and increasing crime, not realising that they are as responsible for them. But the truth is Bombay, despite its enormous wealth, can never realise its true potential unless it involves Mumbai in its future.

Therein lies the challenge before us.

Mumbai must give up its rancour. It must look at the future with hope, not look back in anger. Bombay must learn to realise that it cannot wish away Mumbai and hope to survive on its arrogance and riches. In their coming together lies the future of this great city.

Pritish Nandy

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