Bombay south by north

In Bombay it is South versus North; Us versus Them. I stay at Churchgate in south Bombay and live my life within a 4 km radius.

In Bombay it is South versus North; Us versus Them. I stay at Churchgate in south Bombay and live my life within a 4 km radius. There is no need to step out of this bubble except when I go to the airport or take the highway out of town. Everything I need is in or around south Bombay. The courts are here. The theatres are here. The clubs are here. The ocean is here. Marine Drive is here. The best doctors, best hospitals, best hotels, best restaurants, are here.

For many years I used to go to a lovely little bookshop at Bandra called ‘Lotus’. It had the best books in town and a wonderful manager who introduced me to some great authors. I combined that with lunch at a lovely fish restaurant called Saiba, which did a devastating fried Bombay duck. But the suburbanites didn’t know a good thing when they had it. Three years ago, Lotus shut shop and my tenuous connection with the burbs ended.

I also went occasionally to Prithvi Theatre at Juhu to watch plays till I was overwhelmed by the traffic and realised that in any event most of the plays eventually came south. So I continued living in my comfortable southern acre and taking great pride in it.

Recently I went to visit a friend at the Asian Heart Institute at the Bandra-Kurla complex. It was my first trip to this complex although it has been around for at least five years. I was really impressed. It was full of steel and glass buildings swankily designed. Broad roads. It didn’t seem to be part of Bombay. It seemed another world. It suddenly struck me that the centre of gravity had shifted to the suburbs when I wasn’t looking and this was a process which could only accelerate — actually south Bombay had become the new suburb. Serves you right I told myself — all your braggadocio about south Bombay has met its comeuppance. When the Bandra-Worli sea link starts some time next year, with its promised travelling time of seven minutes, the slight advantage that we have in south Bombay will also be gone. I realised that almost overnight south Bombay had become passé.

I have now made a promise to myself to spend more time in the north.