Mumbai Encounters #2

The Koli Village at Mahim.

   As I make my way towards the Koli village, the sounds of crows screeching grows louder. The village is hidden by coconut trees and fishing boats. Random bits of broken boats, tackles and orange tarpaulin lie around. The village is tightly clustered, like the chawls in the city, and is very clean. I still can’t see the coast – no horizon in sight!

In the village, it’s hard to tell when you are on the street, and when you are in someone’s porch. It all flows together. I stop sensing the shapes of the houses. They seem like an amorphous mass, through which the streets have been carved.

   The village is thin and long, stretching along the coast, all the way up to the estuary of the Mithi River to the north. That is the border of Mahim and Bandra, the bridge that you have to cross to get to Kalanagar junction. I lose my way, and ask a little boy to help me out. “Do you know where the river is?” The little boy, Kuldeep, looks at me blankly. He turns to Pratap, whose father is a fisherman. “You mean the bada gutter?” No, no, it’s a river, I insist. Suddenly, Kuldeep’s eyes light up. “Oh, the river! That river is after Bandra uncle! See here” – and he draws a map on the sand with a stick. I see him drawing the bridge between his village and Bandra, I realize they have no idea that the bridge crosses over a river. To them, it is just a large gutter.

The end of the Koli village, just before Kalanagar junction

I ask if there is a school in the village. ”Yes, yes, it’s a small school, Marathi medium. Come uncle, I’ll take you there!”

“Do you study there?”

“No uncle, I go to school in Bandra. St. Anthony’s. You know St. Anthony’s?” As I stand there talking, I realize that I've begun to attract attention. A little group of kids have gathered, and are  eager to show me around. I agree to let them escort me to the local school. An old grandmother looks at me with alarm and suspicion. The boys’ names are Kuldeep, Pratap, Neel and Bharat.

Bharat soon runs away, because the other boys are making fun of him. “He’s called Chakko, because he sips loudly when he drinks water from a bottle!” laughs Pratap, as he leads me through narrow passages between houses. 

   Neel, 3^rd Standard in Wellington school (English medium, he adds pointedly) tells me excitedly about a gift he got for his birthday. He’s so tiny, that I have to stoop as I walk to listen to him.

“My daddy got me a hot wheels car for my birthday! My mother said: wake up, wake up, daddy has a surprise for you! I wanted to see it, but mummy wouldn’t let me! First go take a bath, she said. So I quickly took a bath! But then she said, we have to go to the mandir, so that also I did like a good boy. But then she said...” and on and on.

   We finally reach the little school, back on the main road. I’ve come to realize that very few kids in the Koli village actually study there – none of these boys do. I don’t know what to think about that, but it is heartening to know that they all go to school. Most of their parents want their kids to learn English, and make it a point to send them to English medium convent schools nearby. I spend a few more minutes chatting with the kids about what their parents do, what their school is like, and what their favourite cartoons are. As I say goodbye to them, I wonder what their futures will be like.

Trash along the banks of the Mithi river where it merges with Mahim Creek 

The Mithi river: Near it's mouth, the Mithi merges with the Mahim creek as it makes its way to the sea. As I walk past the estuary, I can see why the kids in the village didn't call it a river. There is nothing river-like about it. From the bridge, I can see the estuary opening up, the Reclamation and Land’s End to the right. The massive junction rises in front of me, and all around there is endless traffic, constant movement.

Construction rubble, dying mangroves, and open defecation along the river's banks

There is no way to walk along the banks of the river, unless you’re willing to trek past rubble, construction debris, men defecating and mangroves dying. What if there was a bicycle path along the river’s edge, and you could ride down all the way from the source – from Vihar Lake inside the National Park? What a fantasy!

Through Bandra:

Endless traffic along Linking road in Bandra

I somehow manage the mad dash across Kalanagar signal, against the relentless traffic, and soon find myself on Linking road, cutting through Bandra and connecting the Northern suburbs. It is one of the busiest roads in the city, especially during rush hour.

    Along Linking road, past the Old Masjid (150 years old, according to the chacha who fed me watermelon), before the station, is a row of little shops, where they do woodcarving. They make and sell elegant picture frames, decorative pieces, ornate stools and chessboards – all out of teak.

Sultanbhai, proprietor of one of the shops, is from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, and so are all the other craftsmen. Sultanbhai tells me that the first immigrants brought the craft from their hometown and set up shop about 25 years ago. Now there are many shops, and more people arrive everyday, looking to make a living. They live in rickety makeshift structures that stretch out from behind the shops. These seep into the slums across the tracks in Bandra East, so different from the West. From Linking road, I turn into a little street parallel to Turner, towards the park. I’ve been here many times, but it was all so long ago. About three years back, I was in Mumbai for my internship, and many good evenings were spent roaming aimlessly in this old neighbourhood.

Along the way, I stopped at a shop where I met Karan, and quickly made a sketch!

    
   
   Everything seems so familiar, but this experience is also so disconnected from my past memories. I am too distracted by what I am seeing right now, to feel any nostalgia. There is something about being here, in the present – that intense immediacy that a memory can’t have. Everything pulses with life! Julio Cortazar, the acclaimed Argentine writer, claims in one of his short stories that ‘now’ is a lie. You can’t really catch it can you? All you can do is keep running, with your hands outstretched, your fingertips always brushing against it. It is a powerful image, one that I find myself pondering over as I walk down these familiar streets. It is hard to think of the past when you’re running behind the ‘now’. Somehow today, the past seems to matter very little, and my memories of the place are rather detached, as if everything that I’d experienced on these streets had happened to someone else.

   There is such a variety of people around me – I walk past a thousand conversations in a multitude of languages – someone haggling with an autowallah, middle class families with kids orbiting the mummy-daddy nucleus in haphazard fashion, boys with spiked hair, tattoos and surfing shorts playing cricket, businessmen in expensive cars, with their noses down and voices low, women in fashionable clothes discussing a new movie release, the endless sound of traffic and birds chirping. All this in a whirl, and I begin to understand what it means to look at a place again with fresh eyes. We may walk down these simple human wonders everyday of our lives - but after a while, we simply stop looking. I walk past a familiar tea stall, and notice, for the first time, the ingenious means by which the chaiwallah has set up the makeshift roof, under which I have stood countless times - and it makes me happy somehow, to know that my eyes are open again.

Mumbai Encounters #1

   

This is the first in a series of experiential narratives of a city, which I like to call an encounter. An encounter is a fragment of the urban experience, which I simply observed and documented. Each ‘encounter’ was just a walk through a certain part of the city. All these walks followed a fairly spontaneous route, though sometimes I had a specific destination to reach. Apart from that, I essentially became an urban explorer, looking for experiences and understandings of the city in its various places. My documentation was in the form of sketches, conversations and narratives. It was over the course of these explorations that I realized the complexity and diversity of places that construct the city and feed the collective imagination. The first city that I consciously 'encountered' was Mumbai. The following is a diary excerpt dated 5/4/2014:

   I have arrived at Mahim chowpatty by accident, or good fortune perhaps, because when I first set out from the railway station, I didn’t know where I was going. Across from Mahim church, I see poles of bamboo sticking up into the sky in profusion, and I decide to go and explore. As I walk on the sand, I realize that these large structures blocking the view of the sea are bamboo warehouses. I am so close to the coast, but I haven’t even got a glimpse of it yet. I finally emerge, between tempo trucks and lorries, and onto the chowpatty. There are kids playing cricket, and nobody notices as I make my way towards the shoreline.

    My nostrils are filled with the sharp smell of fish drying, and the woody acrid smell of bamboo being cut. A little further down I see some tetrapods strewn about, incongruous on the sand. Perhaps the strangest sight is the ruin of a black stone bastion right by sea’s edge. This is all that remains of the old Mahim fort, crumbling against the waves, and completely engulfed by dwellings. Along the horizon, the sea link stretches, obscured by the Mumbai haze. I click pictures. But apparently, you aren’t allowed to take pictures of the Sea Link, as I find out a few moments later. “Oi” someone calls out – it’s a police man, from a little police chowki that I just notice – No pictures of the Sea Link, he tells me, because it is a symbol of Mumbai pride, and hence a likely terrorist target. I have to explain to him where I am from and what I am doing. Constable Vaidya is suspicious of course – and is telling me excitedly, and incoherently, that my actions could get me in big trouble. I get a sense of what he is saying, but don’t really understand him.

    As I struggle to explain what I’m doing there, he suddenly squints and asks me, “South Indian?” I nod hesitantly, and suddenly things get easier, because Vaidya thinks South Indians are unlikely to be a threat. He then invites me over to the chowki for some chai, and I promptly oblige. The constable, I soon find out, is actually laidback, soft-spoken and polite. He works a 12-hour shift daily. From 8 am to 8 pm, he sits in his place, watching the sea, making sure kids from the nearby slum don’t get too close to the water, and watching out for individuals like myself, who might be a threat to national security. He is a Koli and lives nearby – In fact, Vaidya has lived in Mahim all his life. “Over there if you can see, that’s the Koli village. The original village of Mahim.” He points. The village stretches along the coast just to the south of the chowpatty. I can see colourful fishing boats, with nets and tackles kept out to dry. “I don’t live there anymore,” he tells me, “but it’s where my heart is.”Vaidya’s constant companion at the chowki is Syed, who has so far been observing me keenly without saying a word.

Constable Vaidya relaxing at the chowki 

    I ask Vaidya about the village. What really is life like for a Koli fisherman? “I wouldn’t know, I’m not one. But very few Kolis actually depend on fishing anymore, because it’s hard work, and doesn’t pay much.” Despite the loss of their traditional occupation, numerous Koli families prefer to live in these villages along the coast. “It feels good to be part of my community – even if am not a fisherman. Here we build our own houses and can live in harmony.” Vaidya goes on to explain how people build houses in the village. This is how much land one needs to build a house there – he gestures with his hands – an area of about 80 sq.ft, two rooms, one on top of the other. “That’s more than enough,” he says with a smile.

  

    By now, Syed has also warmed up to me, and they spend a long time trying to convince some local blokes sitting nearby to bring me chai, because I am their guest! Vaidya doesn’t drink chai. Syed smokes beedis. The afternoon sun is harsh, and I’m thankful to the constable for inviting me inside.

“This area has changed a lot over the years” Vaidya tells me. He points to the grey, smoky flats, across from the chowpatty. More and more fishermen are moving into flats like that, leaving their huts by the shore for Government allotted housing. We talk about the bamboo warehouses, which Vaidya tells me are illegal encroachments on Government land. The first one popped up in the 90s, and since then new warehouses have kept coming up, slowly eating up the little open space that remains at the chowpatty. I wonder if there will be space left for kids to play cricket a few years from now.

Constable Vaidya soon leaves us to meet the inspector at the local station, and I’m left alone with Syed. The man had kept relatively quiet during my conversation with the constable, preferring to nod thoughtfully every once in a while. But now as I sit and start to ask him questions, Syed opens up – he starts narrating stories of his life, and punctuates his sentences with pithy advice, revealing his rough, deep-seated wisdom – of the sort that can only be gained through experience. When there’s a lull in the conversation, Syed pauses to watch the kids playing cricket a little distance away. After a few minutes of reflection, he turns to me, and says,

    “Everything a human being learns, he learns from other human beings. What would he know about religion, or cricket, if there weren’t people around to tell him? Look at these kids playing. They play with such energy because they’ve learnt – they’ve watched the greats play on TV, and want to be just like them. If they had never watched a match on TV, you think they’d play with such fervour? Yes, everything we learn from others. In Mumbai, some people learn only evil things from others, because that’s all they see around them. They learn to believe that getting ahead is the most important thing, even if it means putting others down. Wanting to run ahead all the time – no pausing, no looking back. That is the disease of this city”

    
Syed pauses thoughtfully, and then sings a line from ‘Mumbai meri jaan’. I ask him about his family. He is one of six kids, he tells me – three boys and three girls, born to a poor family in Andheri. He moved out because he wanted to lead his own life, and wanted to see what he could make of himself. He lived on the streets for a long time, until about four years ago, when he got a job bringing chai for the policemen posted at the newly built Mahim Chowpatty chowki (A number of new police checkposts were built along the coast for surveillance, after the 2006 terror attacks)

He says he is happy where he is. “If you are deep in the jungle, and you need to take a shit, do you worry about water, or soap? No, you pick up a leaf or stone, clean up the best you can, and keep moving. Kaam toh chalaneka na?” And so he lived, eating when he could find food, and bathing in the sea, and roaming from place to place, until he found the chowki. “If you talk with repect, and prove to be trustworthy, you can manage here. In this big, bad city, honest people are rare and valuable. Also, I’m good timepass, no?”

Syed, the storyteller and philosopher

    A woman comes over with an old copy of the Quran, in a box. Syed runs over to her, speaks a few words and then takes the box from her hands. He walks into the sea, and when he is about waist deep in the water, he flings the box into the waves. He then walks calmly back to the chowki, dripping, pausing only to refuse money that the woman offers him.

He sits down and lights a beedi. I ask him about what just happened. It seemed curious to me that a holy book should be thrown into the sea like that. “Arre, it is like Visarjan. You know how they sink the Ganesh statues? That was a copy of the Holy Quran. Usko thanda karna tha ”

I don’t quite understand what he means by ‘thanda karna’.

“Well, the Book protects the house, no? Absorbs all the bad energies in it. After a few years you have to take the Book to the sea, to wash away those energies. That is thanda karna”

Syed sucks on his beedi. “Anyway, it’s only a belief…that book…we call it the Quran, you call it the Gita, Christians call it the Bible. It’s all the same book really, just like how we’re all the same really, whatever we like to call ourselves.

Tell me, do you know why they really put the Holy Book in the sea? Why we do Ganesh Visarjan?”

I wait for a reply.

“Because the sea – that’s where we all came from, and that’s where we’ll go, once our life here is done. Nothing in this world is permanent, not even that which we call holy. Nowadays, people have forgotten this truth, and they do these rituals blindly”

His wisdom leaves me feeling a bit overwhelmed. I sit for a few minutes in silence, watching the sun glint off the Sea link’s cables. Syed lights another beedi. I finally close my sketchbook, and get up to take my leave – my time here is over, I realize, and it’s time for me to move on – to the next place.