I stepped out of the bus and barely missed stepping on a child sleeping on the footpath. Later on I came to know that I had got down on the national highway. This was the first time I was setting my feet on the business capital of India. The eight percent growing, the new global power, India. They say Mumbai accounts for more than forty percent business happening in India. It surely seems like that. The rents and the property prices are insanely high. Maybe this is the reason so many people can’t afford homes and have to sleep on roads. I was going towards Sakinaka Junction. The International Airport is near this place and I could not find a single street where there were people sleeping on the roads. I cannot recall a single traffic signal where we stopped and there were no beggars. I have earlier seen beggars at signals in Delhi, but not in such a large numbers and in so dire conditions. And the kids have been trained so well to make such a desperate and helpless face that I felt like crying. No wonder Slumdog Millionaire was based in Mumbai. I once disapproved of Slumdog Millionaire’s depiction of Mumbai, but I now see it for real.
There are people sleeping on streets like animals. A dog was sleeping besides a man with a pot belly with his banyan lifted up. I thought the only difference between the two was a piece of blue and black stripped loongi wrapped around the man’s waist. Though both seemed to be pretty much content. Come the rains and these people would be seen like earthworms in a paddy field. I can’t imagine what it would be like in the case of another deluge. There is one thing I can’t stop thinking. If there is so much money in this city and there are so many rich then how can they let the city have such a face? That brings me to another conclusion, Mumbaikars do not care about others, and the people are boastful of their attitude of “Live and Let Live”. And this is really what I see. Everyone’s busy with their life so much that no one cares what someone else is doing. There are people who travel with me in lifts and when I pass a smile they don’t even smile back. Everyone’s just rushing towards where they are going. The streets the trains and the buses are filled with people and everybody seem to be in a hurry. First they are in a hurry to reach their workplace and then they are anxious to get back home. And on Sundays the streets are empty. People don’t enjoy a holiday here. They relax at home. This is what I call animal like. Feed yourself and when your stomach is full, sleep. I will share the experiences with the local trains in some other post. Those are so special that they deserve a separate post and the animal analogy will become even clearer.
How can people let this keep on happening? There’s foul smell everywhere. They said south Mumbai is great that is really a cool city, but it stinks there too. There are constructions of flyovers and metro track and seems to construction seems to continuing forever. If you go and ask anyone, there’s an unequivocal voice, “the government is to be blamed”. Who has elected the government, the people of Mumbai themselves; hold on, sorry, the people of Mumbai do not vote. Last general elections saw only 30 percent of Mumbai’s registered voters voting and I guess 10 percent of them would be the film stars who were urging everybody to vote, let alone the thousands of unregistered voters.
They say that people start liking Mumbai after staying for a few days. I hope that is true. For the present I do not want to hurt anybody’s feelings. If I have hurt somebody... then go fuck off.
