I love Mumbai-it rocks!

train to Vashi

I visited Mumbai after decades, hey, don’t go guessing my age, there are better things to do.

I fell in love with city.

Mumbai is rocking late at night. Thanks to the sea breeze that cools the most heated soul and asks them to stroll down Marine Drive to enjoy nature’s gift, away from cramped tenements and trains full of teeming travellers. It is the sea that makes the trade-off between industry and space bearable.

Mumbai is spiced curry at its best. Thanks to a cooked cauldron of cultures that sits a fair, plump Bohri Muslim in an embroidered black burqa who reads a quick magazine next to a multi-nose pinned, necklaced, Maharashtrian with crooked teeth, a big bindi, and weathered skin listening to music with a hands-free to her ear— on a train seat from Bandra to V.T. station. Thanks to the cafes like Mondegar that line Colaba Causeway where “because I am worth it” women wear low waisted, very blue jeans and drink beer late at night to the sound of Western folk music, even as the black and yellow out-dated Fiat cabs with stuffy, blue velvet seats and the red ‘Best’ buses ply the streets outside. Mumbai offers you cheap vada paos and bhel on Marine Drive and the mouth-watering, though high priced fruits at Breach Candy that can make the most satiated mouths drool. It has ‘cutting’ chai that you can have ‘dhai-dhai’ (fast) before you catch that train to somewhere, since Mumbai has a train service that everyone travels by. So when the heavens sing their megh malhar and the rains pour, its no-show at the offices, and everyone has to understand, because the trains cannot run from Borivali and Andheri to Tardoe or elsewhere when the homes and tracks are wet and inundated. Here, the language has its own mix, where the ‘darlings’ heard at Cusrow Baug are interspersed with the ‘kai ko’ sounds of Matunga, and the cauldron continues to spice up its curry.

Mumbai is mannered. Polite men move their arms out of the way so that women in a hurry do not collide with them, an ability of manners sorely lacking in the aggressive north [where women are taken head- on and have to themselves steer clear if they want to, regardless of high heels, shopping bags, screeching kids in arms and usually excessive weight]. Those catching a bus have to stand in a serpentine line that is not straight like a Chinaman’s pigtail, but is more like a ‘z’ at the end of which you may board the bus, one after the other, please. There is no pushing or pulling here. I did not know this, and played by the aggressive rules of Delhi, getting ahead and putting one foot on the waiting bus, waiting to be pushed in by the others, when a voice behind me asked me to get to the end of the queue. What queue? I looked around and, of course, in my hurry to catch the bus I had not spotted the people standing in line patiently in the heat of the mid-day sun. My face red and a stupid smile on my face for apology, I went and stood at the end like a punished student who speaks out of turn. But this kind of well-mannered queue-ism is unheard of in Delhi for sure.

Mumbai has a Fashion Street —a far cry from the high-end Champs Elysees of Paris, but one that may definitely be compared to the Janpath of Delhi for cheap clothes, footwear, bags etc. Most goods can be bargained for and the prices brought down to half the quoted strength. Yes, I have tried it and it works. So you make up with quantity when you are not looking for exceptional quality, and the bargaining also lifts your spirits because you believe you have emerged a victor after a blood-thirsty battle of prices. And then you suddenly feel exhausted with all that energy spent in haggling, and move to the Jehangir Art Gallery for a pint of beer in artistically ethnic surroundings to lift your spirits once again. The Jehangir Art Gallery has been there for donkey’s ears, because I had visited it decades ago as well. A kind of nostalgia gripped me and I was surprised, because it had not happened to me in other places at all.

Another surprise. Mumbai has a highly developed sense of community and environment consciousness. Well-heeled gentlemen take the train to their offices instead of a cab or a private car. There are several reasons for this. One, they reach their offices faster. Two, Mumbai people are, despite their wealth, careful with their money. This can be because they still belong to the old school of thought that if you have it, don’t flaunt it. The most baffling reason for a person like me from Delhi is their community and environment consciousness. The rich will take the train because they do not want to add to the city’s pollution or create traffic jams. They also do not believe that by taking the train they are coming down the social ladder in any way. Many of them also don’t run their air-conditioners unless absolutely necessary, saving on power costs of course, but also because of the increased awareness regarding CFC.

Despite the rains that pelt it announced and add to the dirt, squalor and stench as you wait for the train, clutching hard onto an umbrella and wondering why you are visiting it when you can be in a dry place called Delhi, you know that Mumbai charms you with her downpour of more than mere rain, its how her heart throbs in the midst of it all.

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Rohtang Pass & Beyond

Rohtang Pass, (51 kms. from Manali) and situated as it is 13051 feet above sea level, should be dangerous, quiet, forsaken.

I believed it would be covered with ice that shimmers and shines in the direct rays of the sun, and the wind is the only sound that one hears for miles around as one contemplates the harsh beauty of nature.

I had not reckoned with commercialization, whose far-reaching slick fingers insidiously glide and choke all that is untouched and far away, even the high mountains that stand beautiful and bold against the sky.

As I climbed the treacherous mountainside, albeit by car, the sight of a few cars ahead and a couple of them behind (some of them foolishly honking their existence) should have given me warning enough of what lay ahead. I was so happy to be in the mountains that I ignored the vehicles, their fumes, and their insistent noise.

I also ignored the rows upon rows of little wooden shacks and tents which displayed fur lined coats, caps, capes, and galoshes that posed as snow-shoes, for hire. I should have sat up and taken notice that so many locals were running shops which hired woolen garments. They were obviously catering to the needs of many unprepared and gullible city slickers from the plains.

By the time I reached Rohtang Pass, I could well have been in the centre of Chandni Chowk in Delhi, or New Market in Kolkotta.

It is the middle of June, peak season, and there is a veritable trade fair here. Delhi businessmen and their pink-rouged and high-heeled wives laden with the latest heavy gold sets don their coats and galoshes and stumble hand in hand in the muddy snow. So do Bengali Babus and their brethren, giving their children yak rides and snow slides while trying to keep their fur coats from sliding off. Handsome hulks from Haryana who believe money speaks everywhere, strut around, as do pretty young things from Chandigarh who giggle and scream with delight as they snowball each other. There are food and chips and cold drinks stalls, and an avalanche of humanity trying to find its space in the sun and snow as they eat, drink and make merry. Photos are clicked by the dozen, to show family back home that they have ‘been there, done that’.

One quick look at all this from the confines of my car, and I decided to cross the pass as fast as possible, but found myself caught in the mother of all traffic jams. There were cars of various makes and sizes, Qualis, Cielo, Tata Safari, Scorpio, Maruti, et al, inching their way out ahead of me, and more cars behind me. They ate up the narrow driving path between huge ice boulders. Also take into consideration the humanity weaving its way through this traffic, and other cars trying to find parking space to spill out the people who have come to enjoy the cold splendor of Rohtang Pass, and you can get an idea of what was happening around me. Not very different from the traffic jams in any Indian metropolis, but at least the roads are wide there! However, people behaved here as though they were in the city, expecting the environment to make the adjustments.

And it has no choice but to accept becoming dirty and polluted with litter and diesel smoke. Even the snow bows down before the human being, and has changed its colour from pristine white to a dirty brown. The snowfall here is formed from rains that bring the city soot with them.

It took me two and half-hours of bonnet to bonnet driving to get out of this two and a half kilometer stretch called the Rohtang Pass. I felt cheated, for I had not traversed steep mountain sides just to become spectator to a bustling, thriving commercial centre on the top of the mountains. Luckily, this pass is the last destination of all those vacationers who holiday in Manali to watch colour television in their hotel rooms and eat Strawberry Softy at the Manali Mall. They return from here, happy to have done this too!

I could not rejoice with them. They were unaware of the havoc they were wrecking, or did not care. Saddened, I continued my journey to the other side of the pass.

The beauty there of the untouched glaciers, multi-hued mountain sides, sheer rocks that shone black and gold and green in the intense sunlight, told me that the hand of commercialization has not crept this far. I sat on a mountain side and drunk in the view, the tensions of the past few hours dissolving right there.

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P.S. I experienced this in 2002, felt the need to put it online now. Things must have worsened, or maybe I am just being pessimistic about humanity.