Kerala Feeds: <<=M=H=O=>> Scarred, scared and tired Mumbai dying ....WATCH AAMCHI MUMBAI...exclusive on MHO

Scarred,

scared

& tired

Mumbai dying

On that fateful morning

as the Mumbai police made preparations to arrest

Bal Thackeray,

the shops began to close one by one.

By noon offices and schools had emptied

and taximen were urging one another to get off the roads.

What kind of metropolis is it that shuts down in an instant?

What kind of people are we that we would throw away

an indefinite number of man hours without a whimper?

The answer is a scarred city,

a scared city, a tired city.

As a student I once took part in a poster painting

competition on the subject

`Bombay Dying'.

The pictures we drew all had more or less

the same themes:

rotting slums,

grey smoke,

packed trains etc.

Ten years on things haven't changed.

Some findings in a recent study indicate

that air and noise pollution

are well above tolerable levels.

Seventy-five per cent of women in slums complain

of weakness and anemia,

50-60 of chronic gastro enteritis.

Fifty-five per cent of the city lives in slums;

25 per cent in dilapidated chawls;

over two million have no sanitation facilities.

Water supply is low;

the sewerage system is inadequate and outdated.

If the city is still

`alive'

it is only due to the spirit of its citizens

(remember the hoarding that

claimed a 99 per cent attendance

in offices the day after the bomb blasts?).

Signs are,

however, that the Mumbaikar's

famed resilience is at breaking point.

The average city-dweller is tired.

Tired

of the long commute

and trains that don't arrive on time

(an exhaustion that burst into a furious

assault on railway property

across the city some years ago).

Tired

of poor housing,

of leaking roofs and

the awareness that

at anytime the walls could come crashing down.

Tired

of the muddy water

that drips out of his taps.

Tired

of the strikes and the obstructions.

Tired

of corruption

-- the hostile policeman,

the greedy slumlord.

Tired

of the competition and the

high cost of living.

Tired

of fear.

There is an image

that had become prominent on the streets in 1998.

It was a childish outline

of a human figure splattered on the ground.

Inside the figure

was a number you could call to report threats

by the underworld.

In the November of 1998 it was a useful number to have.

For the underworld,

it seemed, could strike anytime, anywhere.

If citizens did not react vociferously

it was perhaps partly

because they had got accustomed to sudden

and arbitrary bursts of terror.

The riots of December 1992,

the terrifying events of January 1993

and the bomb blasts weeks later.

Memories of those harrowing times

when the city's fabled cosmopolitanism

vanished in a blaze and bombs ripped through

its spine are still lurking beneath the surface

ready to push the panic button

(`Oh no, not again!')

at the slightest crackle in the wind.

And yet another legacy of those times

is the fact that nobody got punished.

Not the leaders,

not the arsonists,

not the murderers.

So much for justice!

Over the last decade,

old-time residents in the narrow lanes

of the city's gangster-infested B ward

and

in the suburb of Bandra have seen buildings

with thin walls and plate glass windows

sprout up overnight next to their homes

blocking their access to light and air.

In other places tracts of open land have been

usurped by anti-social elements.

Complaining or resisting can be fatal.

Ranesh Kini was killed.

Even Khairnar was suspended,

symbolising the frustration of the middle class.

The sense of quiet desperation

has been deepened by the growing scale of the city.

More and more people today

(almost 70 per cent of the population)

live outside the island city.

If the 1993 riots underscored the division of the city

along communal lines,

the tendency towards decentralisation

has created a host of suburbs -

- semi-rural outposts for the most part bristling with

cowsheds,

temples and rows of signboards

advertising doctors with dubious degrees

though an attempt at gentification is being made

with the emergence of upscale housing complexe and clubs.

With the growth of these self-sufficient enclaves,

many with their own newspaper editions and citizens groups,

the idea of Mumbai

has become less clear, more amorphous.

In the old Mumbai too

a sweeping change has taken place in the mindset.

The last few years

have underscored universal trends:

the shift from manufacturing to service;

the growing significance of the financial sector

and increased prosperity

(personal tax collections are up again,

43 per cent over last year).

The city

has always drawn the opportunist,

the fortune seeker.

Its disparities of wealth and poverty

have always been decried.

And

everybody who has heard the

Johnny Walker song knows that in Mumbai life is a bitch.

The thing about life in Mumbai

was that it had a certain sang froid.

Perhaps because there were so many sailing

in the same dream boat it engendered

a sense of sharing.

A visitor from the US wrote

about the protective hands that circled him

as he teetered on the footboard of a local train.

The Mumbaikar's

ambitions have always been tempered

with a certain amount of generosity

and openness, qualities that came from

a knowledge that everyone had a chance.

To that extent Mumbai had a touch of the`tapori' -

- the cocky streetside dreamer.

Today that sense

of irreverence has abated.

Wealth -

- the making,

the inheritance and the flamboyant spending of,

is being celebrated like never before.

And greed stands alone

in all its competitive ugliness.

Art,

ideas seem to have

little space in this new dispensation.

The vibrant feminist movement

of the eighties has been silenced

as have the leftists and the students' organisations.

Protest

has become the preserve of the fascist.

In August 1998,

BJP workers vandalised

a hospital following the death of a leader

from gunshot wounds.

Congress workers disrupted a play

for being anti-Gandhi.

The Shiv Sena's depredations against artists,

including Hussain,

have been well documented.

But

when a group of artists

sought support from a gathering of the city's

elite they received a cold reception.

The problem with Mumbai

is that the `tapori' has become a `bhai'.

For anyone unfamiliar with Mumbai lingo,

the `bhai' is a generic term

for a criminal with status.

He is the man who can give orders,

collect a few followers,

flash notes at a beer bar.

The difference between a

`tapori' and a `bhai'

is that the latter has a position to maintain.

And

it is that difference

which makes the `bhai' servile.

He is quick to ally himself

with the rising star.

He is careful not to cause offence.

He is willing to accommodate -- at any price.

So it is perhaps

why the majority of us do not object. Or question.

When the name of our city changes.

When public money is spent in haste.

When people issue threats.

We try and come to terms with the situation.

Make a `samjhauta', do a `mandvali'.

After all,

`khali fukat kaiko takleef modne ka'?

Blurb.

And yet another legacy

of those times is the fact

that nobody got punished.

Not the leaders,

not the arsonists,

not the murderers.

So much for justice!

--
Sriram Savarkar
Hinduism is more a way of life than a method of worship.
Dharmo Rakshati Rakshithaha
If you protect Dharma, Dharma will in turn protect you

__._,_.___

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