Is the chicken from Korea, or is it cooked Korean style? We were
engrossed in an engaging talk on the Korean chicken they’d served us
at Bombay’s fine dining restaurant, JOSS. And then, suddenly,
Shubham dropped his JAWS. Bewildered. “Hey, there’s a hair in my
chick...Yuk!”
“Could that be straight out of Shehnaz Husain’s beauty parlour?”
someone quipped, looking askance at the herbal chicken that had
found its way to our platters by now.
Fine dining? Ha! I’d leave it to Vir Sanghvi and Vik Doc, unarguably the finest reporters on the restaurant beat, to run a fine-tooth comb over the chic that goes for Bombay’s elite night out joints. For me, Bombay, with all its gloss and glamour, is only a stone’s throw away from Mumbai, merrily dining out at Bade Miyan’s kebab cart in Colaba past midnight. It’s people like us and people like them, you know. Mumbai’s a galaxy apart from Bombay. And you can see that scrawled all over. En route downtown from the airport. From the huge urban sprawl that goes for Dharavi to the sky-kissing concrete towers of Nariman Point. Half the city — some 6 million of them — lives in slums, in one and two- storeyed tin shacks by the wayside among buffaloes and pigs and chicken that probably make it to gourmet tables night after night. And they call the city the face of modern India. Delhi’s history. For years, on my periodic trips to the city, I’ve never quite appreciated what’s it that makes Bombay. The suburban trains where you get shoved in and shoved out by human waves at a station of your calling. Or the peephole disco that goes by the name of Red Light where you, well, get shoved in and shoved out by human waves to the music of your calling.
Bombay’s a city where dreams get real, said a Mumbai old-timer by the time we were halfway through with our ice cream from, aha, Iceland, I guess. And God bless Bombay Times for that! Because the nightmare never gets reported. Unless, of course, the monsters of the night get co-opted by the Page 3 sorts. People like us, you know... Hold up your Mumbai Mirror to that.
Or, till murky slum waters gush into designer homes with the first flush of monsoon showers ... Which is why for the past five months my colleague, Nandini Raghavendra, having lost all to last July’s fury — and my heart goes out to her — is making do with the top floor pad in Churchgate that’s also the company guest house. The other 6 million didn’t have a choice.
Are they complaining?
Don’t know/Can’t say. Better still, couldn’t be bothered less. I wanted to go out and get a feel of Dharavi, up close and personal. But couldn’t find a volunteer in office to escort me in there. “People like us, you know. Us folks don’t go to shanty towns. It’s dangerous.” And that’s what bothers me the most. They are talking of making Mumbai the Shanghai of India. And 6 million lives don’t have a choice. How do you do it right, I wonder.
Some months ago, when Mumbai first got Shanghaied, I put that question to Mike Carter, World Bank’s man in Delhi. “It’s not going to work out that soon, unless you know what to do about people like them,” he said. Carter feels that Johannesburg may work better. Or better still, Bogota. I’ve not been to either of those places, though I’ve been to Shanghai once. And I can report to you first hand why Shanghai won’t work in Mumbai. When they got going rebuilding that city, town planners called in the bulldozers first. And it didn’t matter who got shoved out. That’s the done thing with commie bosses. When they get going, they just gotta go. In Mumbai, on the other hand, every one of those 6 million votes count. Whether it’s corporation elections or Lok Sabha polls. And you just can’t push and shove folks who otherwise don’t matter. Because you think they are dangerous creatures, those people like them. There must be a Jehanabad squatting out there. In Mumbai. Waiting to explode. Any moment. Still, how does it matter? India’s Shining. And Bombay’s decked for the occasion. Which is what gets me hassled.
Come to think of it, 15 years into ground-breaking reforms and another 15 to go before India emerges a superpower. And they haven’t got Mumbai cracking. The roads are all cracked instead. Even through the huge arc of a drive by the bay they call the Queen’s Necklace. Well, to me, feels more like cavities in the Queen’s jaw. I felt them revving up Sue Sen’s car to 120 kmph one night on Marine Drive. And the car went thud-thud-thud!
“Come over to Delhi if you want to get a feel of First World India,” I told the 20-something in office. “We aren’t crammed for space. So, we’ll take you places. Metro’s rocking, the roads are smooth. There’s 360 degrees. And, of course, Elevate! You’ll rock!”
“Delhi, my foot,” she said. “I think I am comfortable in Mumbai. Delhi’s not appropriate for women. The city crawls with leches.” People like them, you know.
My jaws dropped. Bewildered! Me?
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