[nukkad] MUMBAI AND RAINS...

["Husain K Jagmag" <>]

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 Good health is just the slowest, most lingering way of dying.
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Lots of people ask me why i love bombay to a fault ... and 
frankly i have no one answer to that question...why ???... 
inspite of all the dirt, grime, crowds, corruption, mess..i 
really cant say ... then i came across this article ... 
forwarded by a friend ... and it struck a chord... it 
captures my sentiments beautifully into words ..what 
can i say ??  heres ONE of the reasons why.... 
 
....part 1 of my answer to all those who might have 
wondered or asked me at some time or other about my 
so called obsession with Bombay..
 
Peace,
Husain.
 
P.S : everytime i go back to bombay (from bangalore ..which 
is pretty much the ideal city comparitively ... where i 
currently am), for about 20 - 30 minutes... i grapple with the 
same questions mentioned in the article below and after 
about 45 minutes... i unerringly reach the same conclusion 
reached by Ratna in the article below ... 
 
P.P.S : careful, its a bit lengthy.... 

-----Original Message-----
From: Abhishek Haritas 
I , er... love Mumbai? 

 
By: Ratna Rajaiah
August 19,2002 

Udhaar maangkar sharminda mat karna." On a Mumbai cabbie's dashboard. 
Absence, they say, makes the heart go fonder. And I was ready to fall 
in love with Mumbai all over again, coming back to it after a long gap. 
On the flight, I twitched excitedly at the thought of Mumbai in the rains. 
(I know, I know. Imagine being all a-twitter about a city ankle-deep in 
urine-laced slush and being stuck in a traffic jam for two hours inside 
an airless bus/train gagging on the smell of rotting damp and fresh 
sweat. But you see, that's the other thing with absence - it has the 
habit of airbrushing away all traces of nasty, smelly reality. 

Anyway, as I stepped into my first puddle of freshly squishy, tastefully 
greasy-grey-dung coloured Mumbai-in-the-rains, I thought happily 
to myself, "I love Mumbai!" The enchantment persisted through 
another 30 minutes in a peak hour traffic jam that shrieked and 
screamed and vomited thick, black, nasty insults of exhaust fumes at 
me. I choked, stared misty-eyed into the mud-caked exhaust pipe 
of a truck six inches away from my cheek and persisted, "I love Mumbai!"

Till I hit the Andheri flyover and my first rude awakening. Many things 
happened together. It started to pour, the traffic immediately slowed to 
about 8mm/hour and we were on a flyover that had turned into 
something that would've made the Chambal valley seem like - to 
borrow from dear Laloo - Hema Malini's cheeks. As my auto navigated 
in and out of each sludge-filled moon-crater, deftly defying death, 
other potholes and vehicles/pedestrians with a death wish; as I felt 
my neck to check if my head was still on it, in a rare lull in that 
mind-numbing cacophony, when I could actually think, 
I wondered, "I love Mumbai?"

I went to sleep that night, half-asphyxiated, my bones still rattling 
with the aftershocks but telling myself it will all be okay the next morning.
(I don't really know why - maybe I thought there was a Pothole Fairy,
not to mention an Exhaust Fumes Fairy, a Road Hog Fairy, a Garbage Fairy...)

Alas. It seemed that all the Fairies had taken VRS and settled down in Malibu.
The city, it seemed, had turned into one giant, deafening, hideous 24-hour 
traffic jam, snarled over a million slush-filled potholes, suffocating inside a 
perennially damp, grey, noxious, suicidally depressing dankness. And just to 
MUMBAIbreak the monotony, the city authorities had thoughtfully posted 
gigantic piles of wet, stinking garbage in which crows and stray dogs 
gamboled with equal abandon. (The flies only coming out to play in between 
showers.)   

Mumbai, it seemed, had become almost impossible to love and I was ready 
to hate it. But...

What I had forgotten was this. That I was back in a city where, in spite 
of it all, you could get your telephone reconnected in five hours flat. (I did.) 
Where people still patiently stood in orderly queues. And where, at the wave 
of an exhausted hand, in the most vicious traffic jam, through the most 
wretched, bone-drenching rain, at any time of the morning, noon or night 
you could find a Mumbai autorickshaw. Willing to take you anywhere. 
(Except maybe Malibu.) 

The next three days, I travelled the length and breadth of the Western 
suburbs in an autorickshaw. Often in pouring rain or in the disgusting 
aftermath of it. And not once did I come across an autorickshaw driver 
who wasn't anything but unfailingly polite, cheerful and who wielded his 
auto with the breathtaking dexterity of an ice skater. Or one who wouldn't 
take me through anything but the correct or the shortest route. Or one 
who asked for a paisa more than what was due by the meter. (The one 
who did asked with such artless charm that I had to pay.) Or one 
who wouldn't wait while I vanished to bank, shop, visit and even pick 
up a meal. Or one who wasn't sure that I would come back. And finally,
not one who wasn't willing to chat about politics, corruption (yes, the 
same thing) his farm/family back home in Ballia/Basti/Barabanki and... 
his aching back.

And then I saw the cheeky, resilient, unbreakable spirit of Mumbai once 
again. No matter how tiny the gap or how crushing the crowd, no matter 
how hard and cruel the rain or how impossible it seemed to get from 
Amboli to Bandra in 15 minutes at the morning hell-hour, he always 
wriggled past, always getting through, getting by and never saying die.

Can you find anything anywhere in the world to top that? 
And I fell in love with Mumbai all over again. 


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