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.