Me Mumbaikar, Yeah!

I don't usually do this. In fact, I have never done this before.

I am going to quote one of these ubiquitous forwards that I keep getting in my email box now and then. They range from the inane to the insane - Nigerian generals who wish to bequeath untold wealth on me, email chains, 'heart wrenching' fund raising stories and of course, those that are keenly interested in boosting my performance in extra-curricular activities.

This one, however, actually moved me. And it has to do with this survey of RD which states that Mumbai is a rude city.

So here goes...

Rude city? You bet, says Mumbaikar Jerry Pinto in defence of a metropolis too busy to mind its manners but always ready to help when trouble comes Reader's Digest, which interests itself in these things, tells us that Mumbai is the rudest city in the world. This is also the magazine that carried a story saying that global warming might be good for us.

I swear, they did this in May, when my cousins in Nagpur were reporting that the city was burning up at 52 degrees centigrade.

I come not to praise Mumbai, however. I come to ask whether the Reader's Digest editors really mean it when they say that New York is the politest city in the world? What is it to be polite? In London, a terribly polite city by my experience, a young woman refused to lend her scarf to be used as a tourniquet when a man was stabbed on the bus. He bled to death. I am sure, the young woman said, "I'm sorry but it's an expensive scarf." The person who asked for the scarf probably said, "Right. Cheers." Meanwhile, the blood pulsed on from the dying man's neck.

In Mumbai, my mother once was forced to go to a public hospital with a torn-up leg. In front of her, the poor waited in the way that the poor wait, endlessly, patiently, quietly. When she joined the line, they all assessed their need, assessed hers and stepped out of the way wordlessly. She went to the top of the line, protesting quietly all the way. She did not bleed to death. Perhaps, she even forgot to thank all those people. Perhaps, they did not expect to be thanked.

But since no one seems to have bothered about definitions, let's dump them too. Perhaps it is polite to be a city like New York where all the shop assistants say thank you and please and the doormen are ready to open the door for you but there are 55,000 violent crimes a year. And that represents a 10-year low. Perhaps Mumbai with its 122 murders in six months must be significantly ruder but less lethal.

But are we rude?



Sudhir Mishra, Filmmaker

" My dominant image for Mumbai. I'm standing outside Mahalaxmi railway station, it starts to rain. A man comes out with an umbrella and starts to walk away. He notices another man getting wet, he pauses, and in an unspoken way invites him under the umbrella. Then they see me, and I get under as well. That's Bombay. Three men sharing an umbrella, all getting wet. There's less space under the umbrella now - too many people, too little infrastructure, but people are still sharing it. "


Yes, we are rude. We are almost always rude. Cities are always rude. We are the only city in the country. Delhi is a bunch of villages held together by the politics of power and some nice roads. Chennai is a self-satisfied town which wants to be known for its culture. Bangalore looked like it might well grow up to be a city but now that it's got the opportunity to do it, it's choking itself to death. Calcutta had its moment of glory in the 19th century when they built lots of mansions and factories and set up the kind of intellectual atmosphere of a Cambridge debating society. Then they lost it, the Bangla babus and settled into making funny kurtas for their men to wear and selling Bankuda horses to the rest of the country.

Yes, we are rude. We don't have time for that. We're too busy dragging the rest of you into some semblance of wealth. We're too busy earning the money that runs the country. We're too busy paying for the Delhi and Kolkata Metros. We're too busy earning the money to pay the 75 percent of the income tax paid by the country. In Kolkata, they don't earn money. In Bangalore, they know how to hide it cyberwise. In Delhi, everyone's a farmer with agricultural income that's tax free.


Sarayu Srivastava, Writer

"I think of Mumbai as a very cold but sensuous woman - it all depends on how you warm her up. In this city every kindness begets more kindness. Delhi's eyes literally undress you. Mumbai sees you first as a person then a woman. People do tend to keep their distance here, but if you try and do something nice, a sudden sensitive humanness peeps out. It's hardship city - it gets by on humour."

Land-starved Mumbai? The 14 million of us, we dream of the kind of space that young couples have in Delhi. We'd like a barsati too. We won't get it. But we'll work hard at it. The shop assistant who doesn't thank you probably goes home to his 'side business' and puts in another two or three hours. This could be anything from making papads to selling insurance to giving private tuition. It leaves him with very little time or inclination to say thank you.

But when trouble comes, he will do what he can. In the cataclysmic floods of last year, the average person did what the government could not. They threw open their homes. They left the security of dry land and waded into the water to rescue children. They formed human chains to take people off the buses. They made tea and snacks and gave it to people. Contrast that to the way Americans behaved when Hurricane Katrina struck. People went on the rampage. They shot at each other, even at their rescuers. They assaulted each other. They looted abandoned homes. In Mumbai, no violence was reported. No violence happened. Ask me, I walked home. Ask my sister, she walked home too. Together, we covered a distance of 30 kilometres that day and we only saw people helping each other, people offering support and solidarity.


Milind Deora, Politician

" My idea of Bombay? A waiter serving in the Taj - during the day he might be serving Bill Gates and he'll carry himself with aplomb, be as cosmopolitan as anyone. At night he'll be taking the train to Dharavi, return to his slum, put on his lungi and baniyan, help his old parents, help wash dishes, and watch TV. You can be everything at the same time in Bombay. It's like that old Sinatra song - if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. "


One of the most compelling images in Suketu Mehta's essay which Naresh Fernandes and I included in our anthology, Bombay Meri Jaan: Writings on Mumbai (Penguin India, 2003) ... but read on:

If you are late for work in Bombay, and reach the station just as the train
is leaving the platform, you can run up to the packed compartments and you
will find many hands stretching out to grab you on board, unfolding outward
from the train like petals. As you run alongside you will be picked up, and
some tiny space will be made for your feet on the edge of the open doorway.
The rest is up to you; you will probably have to hang on the door frame with
your fingertips, being careful not to lean out too far lest you get
decapitated by a pole placed too close to the tracks. But consider what has
happened. Your fellow passengers, already packed tighter than cattle are
legally allowed to be, their shirts already drenched in sweat in the badly
ventilated compartment, having stood like this for hours, retain an empathy
for you, know that you boss might yell at you or cut your pay if you miss
this train, and will make space where none exists, to take one more person
with them. And at the moment of contact, they do not know if the hand that
is reaching theirs belongs to a Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Brahmin or
untouchable or whether you were born in the city or arrived only this
morning or whether you live in Malabar Hill or Jogeshwari; whether you are
from Bombay or Mumbai or New York. All they know is that you're trying to
get to the city of gold, and that's enough. Come on board, they say. We'll
adjust.

...............

I hope Reader's Digest is listening.