Hasta Lavista Bombay (and what you stood for)

I leave Bombay in a week to set up life in a new country, and around the same time that I am getting nostalgic about places and people in particular and about the city in general, I have also come to the conclusion that much of what Bombay has stood for in the popular imagination is changing. And so when I say good-bye to Bombay next Tuesday it will not just be to a place, but to a concept that is quickly and systematically being murdered.

With more and more incidents of women's molestation coming to light and with an increasing intolerance of outsiders, Bombay is losing the cosmopolitan, progressive tag it always had. People came here from all over India to make their fortunes. A Nat Geo programme said Bombay is both the New York and the Hollywood of India. So true - with the stock market and the film industry headquartered here, it is where India's global heart beats today.

And the buck just keeps passing on and on. When a woman was cut into three pieces by a train last week at Dadar station no one agreed to take her to the hospital. The station said it was police responsibility. Police said it was the railways'. Ultimately 3 coolies wheeled the body on a goods cart to the Sion Hospital 5 km away. All this as the woman's son helplessly watched his mother's body lie there.
When women were groped and their clothes torn at Juhu after the new year's party, the Shiv Sena said, 'these were outsiders.' Today, news channels showed footage of Maharashtrians on the rampage, against North Indians. I watched a man carefully pick-up 2 sealed packets of paapdi from a stall, tuck them under his arm, and then knock down the chaat vendor's cart. Someone even committed the heresy of trying to attack the house of the original UP bhaiyya in Bombay - Amitabh Bachchan! Raj Thackeray said 'They were not from my party.' Tomorrow, his party workers do something wrong he will say 'It was not me.'

How long can we keep constructing an 'other' to blame for all that is wrong with a place. How comfortable. How convenient. But don't people realise that Bombay's world identity also comes from these 'others'? And where does one draw the line between 'us' and 'them'? Tomorrow Christians in Bandra might say that they won't allow Muslims from Mahim to come into Bandra as they are spoiling our 'culture'. People from Nariman Point will say that they don't want people coming in from the suburbs and taking away their jobs. What sort of boundaries will we draw when there is nothing left to divide further?

As the world becomes a smaller place, our minds are getting smaller too. There is nowhere left to run. The daughter of a Bengali from UP and a Bengali from Delhi, married to a Bengali who grew up in Dhanbad, where does that leave me? If tomorrow Dubai tells me to go back to where I belong, where will I go? If I come to Bombay will they send me to Delhi? If I go to Delhi will they send me to Calcutta? If I go to Calcutta will they disown me?

And while we talk of blaming the invisible other, here's the first poem that taught me about passing the buck:

Mr Nobody

I know a funny little man,
As quiet as a mouse,
Who does the mischief that is done
In everybody's house!

There's no one ever sees his face,
And yet we all agree
That every plate we break was cracked
By Mr. Nobody.

'Tis he who always tears our books,
Who leaves the door ajar,
He pulls the buttons from our shirts,
And scatters pins afar;

That squeaking door will always squeak,
For, prithee, don't you see,
We leave the oiling to be done
By Mr. Nobody.

He puts damp wood upon the fire,
That kettles cannot boil;
His are the feet that bring in mud,
And all the carpets soiled.

The papers always are mislaid,
Who had them last but he?
There's no one tosses them about
But Mr. Nobody.

The finger marks upon the door
By none of us are made;
We never leave the blinds unclosed,
To let the curtains fade.

The ink we never spill;
the boots that lying round you see
Are not our boots -- they all belong
To Mr. Nobody.


Each of us is a Nobody. As is everyone else. So Nobody is Everybody. And Everybody is Nobody.