A Tale of Two Cities

"It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

J K Rowling

From the smooth stone benches of Marine Drive thousands of onlookers watch as the sun sets under an orange and purple sky. Entire families, young couples, street vendors, and tourists all come together to witness the slow, majestic spectacle of the Earth’s rotation. Gentle waves break onto the rocky shoreline below, and across the bay the city lights of Mumbai gradually appear as the dusk grows darker. Behind us, commuters zoom along the avenue, ignoring the natural tranquility amid the urban frenzy. To the South lies Nariman Point, and to the North is Chowpatty Beach. From our comfortable perch between the two, dusk becomes night, and a city of millions assumes its nocturnal activities under a crimson turned dark blue, glimmering sky.

I am standing along the same boulevard that Gregory David Roberts, author of Shantaram, stood many times. While he contemplated his lost past, his uncertain future, love, suicide, and the dynamic nature of humanity, I thought of only of purpose. Home to an estimated 14 million inhabitants from all over India and the world, Mumbai is undoubtedly India’s greatest city. Encompassing palatial new high-rise apartments, overcrowded and filthy slums, global financial institutions, stadiums, malls, markets, universities, and anything else, Mumbai holds its own place as a world class city. I have heard it said by a local of Pune that Mumbai is to Pune what the United States is to Canada, and from my own limited observations his sentiment is true; while Pune is a comfortable, colorful city with a deep cultural and intellectual legacy, Mumbai is everything that India has to offer and more. The size of its population alone is incomprehensible even when compared to the great cities of the West, and in terms of its cosmopolitan ambience Pune is no competition to its gargantuan neighbor.  Gothic Revival and Art Deco style architecture provide subtle reminders of the British Raj, and lend a unique character to a city that simultaneously straddles the 19^th and 21^st centuries. 

My thoughts in that moment were of purpose. After concentrating my academic studies on India, I expected to find Mumbai exhilarating and incredible. To some extent I did. Mumbai ranks as an Alpha city, along with my own beloved Chicago, and it is undeniable that it is an eclectic and profound collage of distinctive cultures, ethnicities, languages, and traditions. Mumbai is home to some of the world’s richest individuals, and is and will continue to be the powerful financial and entertainment center of respective Indian enterprise and culture. Yet, despite all of these remarkable credentials, I was perhaps more divided than anything else in what I saw as an impressive but incomplete city.

The fundamental problem rests entirely within myself. Having studied Mumbai and India from the other side of the world for the past year, the city that I constructed in my mind was an idyllic and heavily romanticized conceptualization of the urban metropolis. Such ideas were reinforced through the brilliant and lyrical writing of Gregory David Roberts, whose own words are far more eloquent and captivating than mine. Though I suspected some delusions of grandeur within his enthralling novel, his flowing descriptions and entrancing prose gave Mumbai the status of an earthly paradise, and the city that I had constructed became even more surreal.

This is not to assert contempt for Mumbai-it is a wonderful city. But having now walked through the streets of Fort and Colaba and observed firsthand the real essence of life in Mumbai, the idealized portraits of this city are lost to the pages of a novel, and the photographs that I have taken, which represent the real Mumbai, are indeed worth a thousand words.  Though not my intention to sound pretentious, I have not, generally speaking, found Indian cities to be beautiful. It is the people who define India, and their daily activities that give India her pulse. All of that which is Mumbai is carried in the essence of her people, those 14 million souls who perform their daily tasks like an orchestra performing a symphony. I now find myself re-examining my commitment to India, specifically when to include it in my life repertoire of places in which I may someday reside.  Regardless, my maiden voyage through southern Mumbai was a satisfying endeavor, and one that answered no small number of important questions.

On to a lighter subject matter. Our visit to Mumbai began last Wednesday, when we boarded a 7:15 train to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, a station that is named after the Maharathra Emperor who valiantly fought against the Mughals and after whom my Blogger ego is named. We arrived in time for a lunch at a Parsi restaurant that turned into a two-hour affair. We proceeded onto the Mumbai residence of Mohandas Gandhi, which now functions as a museum, and arrived back at the hotel for two back-to-back sessions, the first with a prominent Mumbaiker journalist and the second with an Indian architect. Both women focused primarily on the Dharavi slum, which we then visited the next day.

The slum visit was not at all what I expected (photos will be uploaded to a later entry). Prepared for heartbreaking scenes of abject poverty and beggars ready to pounce on camera-wielding tourists, I was confronted with well-maintained, colorful bungalows that were densely but comfortably arranged. The entire slum was laid out in a well-planned manner, and the bungalows themselves usually had clean, shiny tile floors. Children in the slum spoke Basic English, and although some of the residents seemed genuinely surprised at 24 white and 3 brown US students wandering through their complex, at no instances did beggars approach us. We met with the head of the Dharavi slum at one of the local primary schools for a brief but informative question and answer session, in which he scoffed at the initiatives of the central government to provide universal, quality access to education, proudly cited the community advances in healthcare, and expressed his enjoyment and hope in having such discussions with foreign students interested in one day working toward a solution.

After Dharavi we paused for a quick lunch and then visited the Bombay High Court. We sat in on several cases, though it was difficult to hear exactly what was being contested. One of these sessions was presided over by the chief justice, and in the late afternoon we had another Q&A session with two of the members of the High Court. The following day, we spent the morning at St. Xavier’s College, in which we interacted with the students. Our focus was on students who are visually challenged, and we were able to witness the methods by which students with varying levels of visual impairment compensate for such inabilities. Our program concluded with a visit to the Currency Museum, which was about as interesting as it sounds.

Although our schedule was over, the majority of students opted to remain in Mumbai for the weekend. For those of us who stayed, we spent two happy days exploring Colaba and soaking in the sunsets along Marine Drive. Many of them expressed regret that our program was not located in Mumbai, a sentiment that I share, to some extent. For those unfamiliar with either city, Pune is much quieter and less populated. Despite its smaller size and population, roads in Pune are busier than those of Mumbai, as Mumbai is a much better planned city. This has the effect of making such tasks as crossing the street a challenge, which was not the case in Mumbai. Pollution in both cities is a problem, though I have read that it is actually worse in Pune.

There is no comparison between the two cities. I have spoken to many Indians who prefer Pune to Mumbai, but such comparison would be akin to comparing Boston to New York City. Mumbai is far more cosmopolitan, and in addition to its inclusion of the whole of India it also boasts a museum area in Colaba that even features a collection of European art (a component that boosts its score in the opinion of Chhatrapati Lukeji). Could I live there? Yes. But would I? And if so, for what period of time? These questions are yet unanswered.