Mumbai Encounters #3

Walking in the city

How often do you walk in the city? Have you noticed, during your walks - the way in which you move as you make your way? In Indian cities especially, to go for a walk down a busy street is like moving in an endless obstacle course. I noticed that I keep moving in patterns. Hop up onto the pavement, avoid the telephone pole, slide down the kerb, gallop across the street - even as vehicles are whizzing by, weave around the parked cars and bikes, stalls and street vendors.

I am walking through Bandra, perhaps the best known of Mumbai's western suburbs - home to a good cross-section of the city's elite - Bollywood stars, cricketers and businessmen. I walk into bustling Pali market and then along the roads over the hill. Vistas of the hills or the sea, are completely hidden by massive towering structures – fancy fancy apartments, stealing the views for themselves. Bandra is a curious place, because while there is a lot of posh (and it is visible) - it is also a great place to witness crushing  poverty, first hand. Typical of Mumbai - there's a lot of disparity, and it is very visible.

Everywhere I see contrasts – right next to a luxury apartment, fancy enough to have a car elevator, there is a chawl with no drainage or water supply. Pungent greenish sewage collects in a little pool by the roadside. Well, the numerous drivers, maids and nannies in service of the rich and famous have to live somewhere too, don’t they?

Khar Danda:

One great place to witness this disparity - where the transition from sickeningly rich to scruffy working class is rather abrupt - is beautiful Carter Road, a perfect microcosm of the city if there ever was one. As you walk from the South end along the promenade - you will pass the glass towers of the folks who seem to have exclusive sea-view rights, then the spiffy eat-outs at the khao gully junction - and then all of a sudden, all around you are fishermen's houses and the sharp whiff of drying fish that permeates the air. This is Khar Danda, an old fishing village that existed long before any of the glass towers were built, which, together with Chuim village nearby, are the vestiges of an old and laid-back Bandra.

Khar Danda is saffron today. Balasaheb’s face glowers down at me from numerous hoardings. A couple of cars loaded with party flags line the street. Of course, all these are just barely registering in my brain, because Khar Danda explodes in my face – in a frenzy of colour and movement.

 One has to be careful where one walks – to get distracted can be dangerous. More than once, I bumped into someone while studying a store-sign. 

As the last rays of twilight peek out over the rooftops, I lose myself to the place. It’s the most crowded place I’ve been in all day, reminding me of the trains during rush hour – except that everything is constantly moving. I make my way along the main road, resisting the urge to plunge into one of the side gullies and get lost in the labyrinth.

When you reach the end of the settlement along this road, a part of the coast becomes visible – but it isn’t really accessible. A large wall with a gate bar the way, and past the gate I can see rows of warehouses along the coast. But as I stand there, trying to figure out a way past the gate, I begin to sense some sinister vibes. Two men standing by a corner are now watching me suspiciously. I quickly walk back the way I came and ask an old uncle sitting outside a Mandir if there is a way to get to the shore. “Why do you want to go there? There is nothing to see near the shore!” the old man exclaims, alarmed. “Listen, just turn left over here – don’t go towards the coast, nothing to see!”

I decide it would be better to pay heed, but I can’t help but feel a bit cheated by this strange city. How is it that for a city with such a vast coastline, so much of it is hardly accessible, or even visible? How did Mumbai manage to close itself to the sea? Of course it had forgotten its rivers – as I had seen with the Mithi earlier that day. Perhaps the river is forgotten because it is invisible, but then, so are many parts of the coast. I realize then, how important it is for a part of the city to be visible and accessible if it has to become meaningful to the city’s residents. If it is central to their lives and to their imagination of the city, then there is no question of forgetting about the coast, river, nor anything else.

Barred by the coast, I turn and walk cautiously down the narrow side street that the uncle had pointed to. “If you want to get to the main road, then keep turning left – don’t turn into any gullies on the right,” someone warns me as I make my way in. I do as they say, and thank goodness too!

The streets are in places only a couple of feet across – not really streets, just gaps between the houses. Inside there are shops of all kinds – pharmacies, sweet shops, an appliance store. Old Koli grandmothers sit on their doorsteps chatting, TVs are on, women wash vessels on the street – I slip over the wet stone in places. 

Where am I going? I have no clue. The streets double back on themselves, branching out indefinitely, without any sign of dead-ends – It’s helped me lose all sense of direction, and I feel I could keep walking forever. But one thing that truly fascinates me is how close I feel to these people's lives, simply by walking past their homes - their day to day activities are out in the open - their movements and paths entwined with mine - their joys and sorrows, and the mundane of everyday existence, all on display. It's touching, human and fills me with a strange kind of joy. I think for a second about the rich - the poor people cooped up in their million dollar homes - barely even aware of who their neighbours are, always fearful of the home getting robbed - a life far removed from this. Such are the idiosyncrasies of human existence.

Pondering this, I turned left for the umpteenth time - and suddenly found myself back on the main road - full of people, bicycles, trucks carrying fish, and some very fat cats. Standing out here, one could never guess the extent of the settlement stretching out along the coast. The Sun has completely set by now, and I my legs are also giving out. I decide that it's enough walking for one day - a long walk it might've been, but it's given me plenty to think about!

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.