Mumbai dying

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 Water supply is low; the sewerage system is inadequate and outdated.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 alive8217; 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 Mumbaikar8217;s famed resilience is at breaking point. The average city-dweller is tired. Tired of the long commute and trains that don8217;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 city8217;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!8217; 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 city8217;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 complexes 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 Mumbaikar8217;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 students8217; 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 Sena8217;s depredations against artists, including Hussain, have been well documented. But when a group of artists sought support from a gathering of the city8217;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?