Sometimes annoying, sometimes endearing and a little quirky- Presenting to you the "Maximum City" (Mumbai Series Part 1)

Sitting by the window on the eleventh floor of my client's office, I stare out at the panoramic view. In front of me stretches out a thin strip of beach behind an even thinner row of trees. It is the world famous Chowpatty. This beach is a strange one. At the first glance you can make out more cars than people. There are even a few cranes (of the mechanical variety, and not of the avian type) dotting the beach. Following this, there is an expansive sea which looks grey even in bright sunlight. Along one side of the sea stand some of the tallest buildings in India. Arnav sitting next to me informs me that that area is Malabar Hills. The monthly rent of a 2 BHK (Bedroom-Hall-Kitchen for the uninitiated) flat there is apparently upwards of 1.5 lakh. That same line of skyscraper extend to my right to become an old respectable residential area. Beyond that you can see the clutter and chaos of the famed slums. This is Mumbai.

Mumbai has always had a place of prominence in my life, though mostly sub-consciously. This, I think, is absolutely understandable when you take into account that the strongest love in my life is for cinema. And in India you cannot be a lover of cinema without a special place Hindi movies (I am not talking of connoisseurs or pseudo intellectuals claiming to love only their Bergmans, Rays and Kurosawas). So along with my obsessive love for Hindi 'picture', grew my association with this city. Strangely enough, till my 24th birthday, the number of nights I would have spent in Mumbai was less than 10. The number of visits was 4.

Even in my final year at business school, when I knew my future city of residence would be either Gurgaon or Mumbai, I had always taken for granted that I would move to Gurgaon. All my day dreams of starting work, having a new apartment, having a car were painted around the dusty landscape of Gurgaon. Mumbai had not even entered the extreme edge of the radar. So when I got a call in early February asking for preferences, I was extremely taken aback when I asked for Mumbai. Although I claim to be a non-believer in such things, it almost seemed like this was destined and some outlandish powers were at work. And that is how I moved to Mumbai.

Everything post that kind of fell in place. I connected with one of my closest school friends who was in Mumbai and was on the lookout for a potential flatmate. We joined forces and decided to share accommodation. My sister got admitted to a college in Mumbai. A lot of my greatest friends from business school were also posted to Mumbai. And my other best friend from school also was in Mumbai doing her PhD. To top it all, I realised that I like rains (a Mumbai specialty, though my personal experiences are from Kolkata) more than the cold (a Delhi feature, and one of its best in my opinion). And so Mumbai became my home. 

Mumbai is a strange city. You have sky scrapers, the world's largest slums and some of the oldest colonies all rolled into one. You have Rolls Royce and Porsche plying the street running parallel to the train tracks for local trains, the favoured means of travel for millions of Mumbaikars every day. The street outside the house of India's richest man is wide enough to accommodate only 2 cars. The potholes under the wheels of a CEOs Bentley are of the size of craters on the moon. The crowd outside an actor's house for just a glimpse far exceeds that for a demonstration. And yet it all seems to tie in together somewhere, somehow. And that's how I got engulfed within the city too.

Now let me be clear that my relationship with Mumbai has been far from smooth. I was super impressed at how all taxis and autos went at meter rates and never asked for a penny more (if you are a resident of Bangalore or Delhi you will share my surprise). The drivers were courteous and helpful even. They had infinite patience on crowded roads and road-rage was not very common. But at the same time, they could be infuriating in their refusal to go. I mean, sometimes, they just refuse to go! And usually it has nothing to do with the destination. I have come across cab drivers reading newspapers or chatting with each other but not willing to move. I have seen empty autos that will whiz past at great speeds even as you flail your arms frantically in a bid to make him stop. I have experienced cabs willing to go only if I take a certain route. So this is the first peculiarity that I noticed about Mumbai's public transportation.

The next bump in my relationship with Mumbai has to be its traffic. Two hours on a regular basis just to reach home cannot be a very pleasant experience. And that too when the distance is less than 20 km. That's like 10 kmph. And this is not taking into account the days when it takes 3 hours. And this behaviour on the part of Mumbai leads you to devise interesting travelling strategies- insist on leaving at 5 and finishing the rest of the work at home, if work has kept you till 8 then loiter around longer till around 9-9.30 because roads tend to empty out a bit by then, be on good terms with people leaving near your office so you can drop in and spend the night on a particularly bad day (the corollary to this is carrying a spare set of clothes in your bag), be great friends with colleagues with cars because face it it's always better to wait out a snarl in the comforts of an air conditioned car with good company rather than alone in a taxi and finally the golden rule, be open to the idea of going back to the office and spending the night. The one essential that one has to have to live through these snarls is a sense of humour. Either that or truckloads of money to be able to afford a flat right next door to office and then hope your client site will not be at the other end of town.

But in spite of these hiccoughs, there's a lot to Mumbai to make you smile. Like the panorama from the ceiling length window of my bedroom on the 11th floor. I know some say its only factories. But at night, when the lights come on, it becomes like one of those magical areas and the fire on the chimneys looks like a fire in pitch darkness. And during a particularly rainy day when vision is limited, it feels like being in a mystical land straight out of history books. Or let's say when you take a walk by the beach at 2 am in the morning. There has to be something interesting about that. Or about the infinite nightlife. Or about having Randeep Hooda sitting on the next table to you in a cafe shop. Or being able to sit for six straight hours in Jehangir Art Gallery's coffee shop and spending only a couple of hundred bucks. Or going to watch a play in one of Mumbai's many theatres. Or just spending a lazy afternoon at home with a book or a friend and staring out into nothing with the background music of the rain.

While I know the ride will be rocky, all I can say is that it is one to be looked forward to. Like someone said about something else: Love it or hate it, you cannot ignore it. As the afternoon sun becomes way too strong, I am compelled to draw the blinds across the window. In a moment the view is gone. Yet it is not easy to leave the city behind just with the drawing of the blinds as a cacophony combining the sound of horns, telephones, hawkers and local trains waft in. The city continues to make its presence felt.

P.S.: The reference to Mumbai as the "Maximum City" has been taken from Suketu Mehta's book about the city by the same name. As an aside, the book is a delightful read.

The first meeting and getting to know you - How I met Mumbai for the first time, and then the second, third and fourth (Mumbai Series Part 2)

With some free time at hand and the blog having been untouched for months, I decided to write a blog post. While starting to write, coming across a topic was fairly easy. While there have been many new events in my life in the last 3 months, the one that came as my biggest surprise was the city I came to live in. Now, I am by no means a frog in the well (direct translation of Kupamanduk: a fro that lives his whole life in a well and considers the well as the extent of the universe). I have stayed for extended periods in three metros in India - growing up in Kolkata, graduation in Delhi and the post-graduation in Bangalore) - and visited a lot more cities across the world - New York, Paris, Singapore to name just a few - in fact even Mumbai. But nothing had prepared me for this city. But if I said that this was my first visit to Mumbai, I would be very far from the truth. I had, in fact, been to this city on four previous occasions (not counting the one time I came for house hunting since that is an extension of the permanent move). And it is those four times that I want to talk about here.

My first visit to Mumbai happened when I was still in school. My father had a conference in Mumbai and all of us (being Mom, my sister and I), came with him for a short trip. We stayed in the convenience of Grand Hyatt (my dad's conference venue and my first and only five-star stay during school) and while my dad attended his conference, the three of us moved around the city and acted exactly as tourists do. We went to Gateway of India and took a ferry to the Elephanta caves, then drove along the queen's necklace at dusk, went shopping to Colaba Causeway and Bandra Linking Road and had Gola on Juhu Chowpatty. At the end of the visit I felt like I had met the city, but was barely even introduced to it. Like the many people you meet at a friend's party and say hi to. You may even share a dance during the night. But the next day, along with the hangover, the image of the faces and mostly even the names fade from memory. I had touched base with Mumbai. But barely.

My second visit was in my final year of college. I was here for an interview at TIFR (I know it's a surprise given that continuing with Chemistry was never in my scheme of things, but it's called keeping options open) with Srinivas (I know it's an even bigger surprise for those who knew me during that phase). As different as possible from my first visit, we were put up in a working women's hostel in Bandra. The two of us were students on a short budget. So every morning we made our pilgrimage to Colaba on BEST buses (Srini and I had a fear for local trains bordering on paranoia). Food was frequently roadside. In 3 days we had had more Bhel Puri, Vada Pav and Gola than the number of potholes on Mumbai roads. And we saw the city on foot. Mind you, we didn't do the usual sightseeing routine. Rather we walked. The February weather was perfect to walk about without much strain. Srini was also an avid photographer (and I am sure he still is) and so we walked the streets of south Bombay with its old Portuguese architecture and quaint charms. We went to St. Xavier's college where I had a friend studying and did an extended tour. We also went to the Chowpatty, walked along marine drive, went to Juhu Chowpatty, bought 7 pairs for Oshos (a pair of slipper-like footwear made of jute with a brightly coloured velvet strap and border, and all the seven pairs were not for me but rather for my entire gang of girl friends in college) and generally walked the interesting cobbled streets of Bandra. That time I saw Mumbai for what it is. I walked through the slums and walked past the high rises. I sat on the rocks bordering the sea on the TIFR campus, which was a beautiful oasis of green at the southernmost point of Mumbai's concrete jungle, and lapped in the beauty. I ate at dingy restaurants and seedy hotels. And yet, I felt like I had finally touched the pulse of Mumbai, even if it was for a second. It was like Mumbai and I had had our first meaningful conversation.

The third time I came to Mumbai was in just after my first term at business school, for the finale of the Johnson and Johnson Case Study Competition, which my team of four had managed to crack. It was a moment of glory for us. We were flown in for the competition and were put up in Dadar in the hotel attached to the Institute of Hotel Management. Of course the greater part of the day was spent in the confines of the boardroom at J&J as we made the presentations of our life. And we had flights to catch early next morning. But that trip introduced me to a totally new aspect of Mumbai, one I had heard a lot about but had not witnessed before, in fact barely witnessed anywhere. It was the famed Mumbai nightlife. The evening started, I remember, with me, Kartik and Isha going over to Leopold's. Leopold's was always a dream. And once there, it was another dream to order their long tube of beer (it's an alternative to the pitcher only more interesting. It almost looks like a gigantic test tube, which to this Chemistry graduate seemed like a hilarious method to serve beer). What we hadn't factored in then was that the fourth member of our group wouldn't join us there and Isha was a teetotaler and was to leave pretty early. So, the onus fell on Kartik and me to glug down the beer and in record time too. Those days, I was not a great beer drinker, and so let's just say that the beer had a greater effect on me than beer is supposed to have or would have now. But of course, Kartik was far from satisfied. So we made our way from Colaba to Juhu in a taxi to a bar and cafe with a pool table and very late hours, where Birla was waiting for us. It's a different thing that I don't remember the name of the place at all. But it was that night I learnt the basics of how to play pool. I also had some amazing chocolate mousse cake. Finally, well past midnight (would be around 2), we were joined by Isha and the four of us went to Juhu Cowpatty for Chaat and Gola before calling it a day and going back to our hotel for an hour long nap. Oh, and did I mention that we came second in that competition and won around 75K among us? But that was the trip where I was introduced to the lighter side of Mumbai. I had learnt to have fun with the city.

But whoever told you that the city was all fun and no work, didn't have his facts correct. I was soon introduced to this in my fourth trip to the city. I came here during my internship between my first and second year at business school. My primary client site was Pune, but for two of the days my team had to work out of Mumbai. As per tradition, the client took care of accommodation. But contrary to tradition, it was not at a swanky hotel but at a service apartment meant only for the top managers with the client. This apartment was on the seventh floor of a building right on Worli sea face, with nothing between the building and the sea but a small private park belonging to the building and a few metres of rocky sea-line. The building was called Samudra Mahal and each apartment was a 3 BHK unit. Each apartment also had 2 associated people for cleaning and cooking. That night I found out that the flat next door had been sold less than two months earlier for Rs. 36 Crores. Now, many of you will say I was short changed by being kept in a service apartment as opposed to a five-star. But since then I have stayed in multiple five-stars in the line of work and I can vouch for it that the hotels just do not match up when it comes to personal touch that apartments can give you. The beds are as comfortable, the view even better and the food completely tailored to your taste and healthy too.  But it is the work that took me completely by surprise. The day started at 8.30 and work never ceased before 11. And in the three days I was in Mumbai I saw that this work ethic extended well beyond just our team. I realised while Mumbai knew how to party, it worked hard too. I had met the worker bee in Mumbai.

While I don't claim to have a full understanding of the city and its working. In fact far from it, I think the city will remain an enigma. I do believe that those first four meetings with Mumbai did open some windows for me. And those visits also served for a first impression that has carried onto my move to the city.

Centuries... Or is it seconds?

I was playing poker tonight, same as almost every night in the last three terms. Painstakingly, over many many games, I made a tidy little profit. Basically I multiplied my buy-in by about 4 times. And then I played one hand, a big hand, and lost all of it in one go. It took me a few minutes to lose all that advantage. I barely broke even.

So what is the point of this diatribe? Well it is simply this, it occurred to me that creation usually takes a lot of time and painstaking effort where as the destruction is often immediate. Now, I am not trying to get all existential here, but it is true, isn't it? I mean, how old is earth? And all it may take is one meteorite strike (albeit a giant one) to annihilate the planet, right? Maybe that is too theoretical. But lets just take any city. It often takes centuries for a city to reach its modern, bustling state. And a nuclear holocaust is all it will take to raze it to the ground.

Forget the big picture. Lets just look at small, everyday things. Last month I was attending a cousin's wedding in Puri. While there, my small nephew started building a sand castle by the beach. Now this boy is just above 4 years old and in true Dennis the Menace style, absolutely impossible to repress. So when he actually sat in one place for half an hour, it was a great relief for all of us. And just when he was putting the finishing touches to his master piece, his one and a half year old brother came and sat down plumb in the middle of the structure. It took a fraction of a second. From creation to destruction in no time at all.

Forget innocent kids, unaware of their actions. We do it everyday. Not too long ago I spent the better part of an afternoon writing a story. I actually considered this story quite good. Now this is when I still used to own a highly unreliable Compaq laptop (nothing wrong with the company, the fault lay entirely with my own technological expertise). Now these were the days when I didn't believe in/understood the importance of back up. Well, one thing led to another, my computer crashed, there was no back ups and no data could be retrieved, and I lost that story (along with many others) in a matter of one rebooting (equating a few minutes).

Not just physical things, this is true for relationships as well. It is strange how once too many times one argument or one issue can ruin long term friendships. Sometimes, a simple move to a different city can ruin something that was once supposed to be permanent. And sometimes, a simple change in the tag- the name of the relationship- can cause the relationship to crumble like a card castle. I am not being a pessimist here. Not all friendships or relationships have to go like that. But it happens more often that we would like to acknowledge.

So anyone who reaches this far will wonder whats the point of this piece. I guess its nothing. Or I guess its just realisation. But what should one learn from it? Do I stop making/creating/building just because it may come down in less than a minute? So I was watching this television show where as part of a competition this guy made a glass pyramid tower using 84 wine glasses. And just when he had completed making the task, the second part of the task required him to pour a bottle of champagne down the tower to create a champagne fountain. And just as he had almost completed pouring the bottle, one small shiver of his hand caused a change in the balance of the champagne being poured out. The entire tower tumbled and almost all glasses were broken. He shrugged his shoulder and moved on to an alternate challenge.That challenge he aced. One never knows, does one?