Learning to Live in and Love Mumbai
Essay
by Shivani Dogra
NPR.org, July 1, 2008 · In March 2003, I arrived in Mumbai with all my worldly possessions: two suitcases and a box full of books. I had been hired on very short notice for a job that started in just two days. I hadn't arranged a place to stay as yet. This was a big mistake, as I was to discover later.
It was my first visit to the city. I had stayed in or visited nearly all the major cities in India, but none of them prepared me for this one. Mumbai is unlike any other. That day I remember vividly, for the hot, heavy air; for that smell of sweat and fish; for the gray, large, serious buildings that rose all around me; and for the constant rush of the mass of humanity that I was surrounded by.
Unlike other Indian cities where a woman all alone with her bags would have attracted a glance or a comment, here I was not an object of curiosity, perhaps because everyone seemed so busy or at some point they'd been where I was then.
India is a densely populated country but, even as an Indian, never do you feel the effects of overpopulation as you do in Mumbai. Evidence of this is best seen on the local trains. The trains are often called the lifelines of Mumbai because most of the city's residents take them to work and back. They carry an estimated 7 million passengers each day. I gave up taking the train after a month of struggling to avoid getting all but smothered. They're almost always jammed full of people at rush hour, some even plastered to the roof. I chose a slower, less practical but more civil mode of transport, the bus. They're neat, clean and better than any other state-run bus transport system in the country.
For the first two months of my stay in Mumbai, I was of two minds whether to continue staying there or to move out. It is way too crowded and noisy, the filth and squalor that surrounded me was depressing, and the search for a room that was larger than the chicken coops that I'd been shown was proving to be a nightmare. And other than a gray seafront, there isn't much in terms of green open spaces in which to get away from it all.
Then out of sheer luck I was offered a room at an aunt's flat in the posh locality of Pali Hill, home to many Bollywood stars. The area was relatively quiet and not very far from the sea. Amongst those fancy high-rises, the poverty that was so visible in most of Mumbai was almost absent. This was the land of flashy cars and fancy dog salons. Some of the city's most fashionable nightclubs were just round the corner. It was a part of Mumbai that I had never seen before and had only heard of. I saw why it was so easy for people to forget they shared their city with some of the world's poorest people.
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