A City In Daze

I spent easily the best part of my life in Bombay—21 years to be exact. Everything I am today is because of Bombay. When I lived there and read about communal riots in other parts of the country, my friends and I said, "It could never happen here." But it did. Again. And again. The much-prized cosmopolitanism of Bombay is under sustained and ferocious attack. The conventional wisdom is to heap all the blame at the door of Shri Balasaheb Thackeray. True, he is a malignant force, but he is not the only one. The people of Mumbai, alas, have become progressively indifferent and cynical. Sure, the stock exchange, Zaveri Bazaar and Taj Hotel bounced back; nevertheless, a permanent damage has been inflicted. Next time too the city will bounce back—but it will take longer.

Bombay turned into 'the city of gold' principally because it was immigrant-driven. It became the Big Apple of India courtesy its citizenry which was alert, ambitious, civic-minded and pan-Bombay. God help you if you cut down a tree or ran over a pigeon, the Parsi ladies would be upon you in a second. In the last 10 years in particular, each time I go to Bombay I come back slightly depressed. There is anxiety and apprehension written on the faces of Mumbaikars; they are forever waiting for the next calamity. And most distressing: those who loved the city with a passion and fought to preserve its unique ethos have retreated. A version of I-am-alright-Jack has taken over.

Moral: if you keep pounding the "indomitable spirit" of a city, it becomes, to coin a word, "domitable".