Bombay-returned

I don’t get to visit Mumbai very often but each trip creates a unique set of memories and triggers different forms of nostalgia.

A friend lent me his car for a drive from Nariman Point towards the north and introduced his driver as “Prabhu”. Eager to practice my rusty Marathi, I started chatting with Prabhu in that language and we happily carried on for about half the journey. Then his phone rang and the ring tone was a Tamil song. When I asked him how that happened to be the case, he told me he was a Tamilian! And we spent the next half of the journey chatting in Tamil.

Another friend was complaining that she could not at all get along with her boss. When I asked her why, she merely said, “Arre, woh Dilli ka aadmi hai.” And just stopped, in the manner of one who regarded that sentence to be self-explanatory. Though I could guess what she meant, out of impish curiosity, I asked her to elaborate. She went on, “Hamesha bolta rehta hai ki usne yeh kharida, voh kharida. Kuchh char ya paanch karod ka ghar liya. Liya hoga, lekin apne ko usse kya matlab? Usko maloom hai kya apni Mumbai mein ek chhoti kholi ka bhi kya bhav hota hai?” Nothing could have been more typically representative of Bombay than that sentiment and the language. Only the need to maintain lady-like decorum even necessitated the use of so many words. If my interlocutor had been male, he would simply have said, “Woh _______ hai.” Many non-Mumbaikars just don’t get it. There is no point in flaunting one’s wealth in an attempt to create an impression. True Mumbaikars just don’t give a damn. The only way to get their respect is to earn it, by demonstrating more than ordinary competence in one’s work.

I could still see a few men walking around in safari-suits. Many years ago, it was a big source of amusement for many of us “young professionals”. There was one broker who used to visit our office in a brown safari-suit which my colleagues used to refer to as a “supari-suit”. I too laughed along until I saw a photograph in a magazine of that broker carrying a body of someone, dead or wounded in the 1993 blasts in the Stock Exchange, towards an ambulance. The blood on his suit made it look even browner. It must have been around then that I stopped judging people on the basis of their sartorial tastes.

Bombay is a city of distances. Going from one place to another requires an effort. And motivation. Getting together with a group of old friends is always a wonderful experience. It is even more special in Mumbai where people have to congregate from different corners of the place. I was fortunate that many of my friends made that effort and I got to see them.

I was initially quite relieved to note that my hotel was just across the road from my office. Then, I felt rather sheepish when one friend told me that his eighty-four year old father, who had not yet retired, still travelled by bus to get to his place of work and another mentioned that his father, who is in his seventies, still goes to work by train and then by bus, six days of the week, from Dahisar to Ballard Estate. Travel is such an integral part of life in the city that anyone who lives there gets used to it. And they wouldn’t trade it for anything else. Many people even have “train friends” – buddies they travel with on the same local every day and, in some cases, play cards with on the journey. That’s another amazing sight. A briefcase with rubber-bands around it forms an improvised table and cards that are played are inserted under the rubber-bands to keep them in place. Some commuters even travel for one or two stations in the opposite direction on a train that is going to turn around, so that they can assure themselves of a place to sit.

One evening, I had gone to towards the south for dinner at a friend’s place and took a black and yellow Premier Padmini taxi back to my hotel. It was almost like riding a ‘Victoria’, given the abundance of newer and sleeker automobiles on the roads. But it was great fun.

There’s hardly anything that I have not done in that city where I have spent nearly half my life. Yet, playing golf over there was a first time experience! Many thanks to Mr. A, who is a long-suffering reader of this blog, for organizing that.

I am often asked which part of India I belong to and that’s a hard question for me to answer. I am ethnically a Tamilian, who has lived most of his years in India in Bombay (and left before it officially became Mumbai) and now has family connections only in Bangalore. However, there is no doubt as to what I am at heart.

Ich bin ein Mumbaikar.

And, even when said in German, that statement doesn’t sound the least bit incongruous.