The spirit of Bombay

At the end of June, as Bombay anxiously scanned the skies for evidence of the monsoons, the metropolis was drenched by a cloudburst of self-righteous indignation. Evidently irked by a survey by the US-based Reader's Digest on urban etiquette that placed Bombay at the very bottom of a 36-city stack, the city's bold and beautiful mounted an enthusiastic defence of the metropolis.."You realise this is only on the surface and people here have a heart," a prominent advertising-filmmaker named Prahlad Kakkar pronounced. His exasperation was echoed by actor Makarand Deshpande, who told journalists, "Mumbai has heart and soul, and those who think otherwise lack it.".The battle was even taken global by my friend Suketu Mehta. In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, he quoted a lyrical, locomotive allegory from his wonderful book, Maximum City:.If you are late for work in Mumbai and reach the station just as the train is leaving the platform, don't despair. You can run up to the packed compartments and find many hands unfolding like petals to pull you on board … They know that your boss might yell at you or cut your pay if you miss this train … Come on board, they say. We'll adjust..Mehta's enthusiasm can perhaps be attributed to the fact that he hasn't lived in Bombay for at least six years, since he finished researching Maximum City. While there is much to be admired about the bovine way in which we allow ourselves to be packed into the local train each morning (about 4700 of us in each nine-coach train meant for just 1700), it is evident to anyone who actually travels by train that our capacity to adjust has been worn very thin..Not so long ago, a man clinging to the footboard of a moving local train was pushed to his death by fellow passengers in a scuffle about space. It was an unusually violent conclusion to the sort of disputes that break out at rush hour every day, when passengers on trains bound for the furthest stops blockade the exit against those doing short trips. Those who live closer to the Churchgate and Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus starting points pay the price for taking up precious space in the trains traveling to the end of the line instead of taking shorter-haul trains, and are taught a lesson by being allowed to alight only several stops after their destinations..As for those hands reaching out, many of my women friends think they are actually like octopus tentacles. They may unfold like petals as the train leaves the station, but as it pulls into a stop, they most often dart out to grope women on the platform..The others who have taken it upon themselves to protect Bombay so passionately from the insults do not even have Mehta's state of expatriation for an excuse. Both Kakkar and Deshpande imply that even if Bombay does not do the little things, like hold doors open for the people behind us or say 'thank you' to strangers who have afforded us random acts of kindness, we have actually got the big things right. After the bomb blasts of 11 July, we were reassured by the sight of thousands helping out to offer aid to strangers. But that's human nature: adversity brings out the best of everyone. Bombay's problem is that we've failed to show such generosity and engagement with our neighbours in times of normalcy..That's exemplified in the debate about Bombay's civility. Etiquette, after all, is a measure of our sensitivity to people around us, and Bombay barely has any. Many visitors are shocked by how little we care for the small courtesies: most working days, we do not make way for ambulances in traffic, we honk at old people crossing the street, and it sure as hell isn't in our DNA to say thanks..Bending backwards.Still, it would be possible to ignore the relatively insignificant acts of rudeness if India's commercial capital was really doing the important things correctly. But it is impossible to believe that a city with real heart would allow 60 percent of its residents (that's more than seven million people) to live in slums. If India's most affluent city really had a soul, it would not countenance the inequalities that allow children in the shanties to grow up malnourished. In mid-June, 31 of 41 children surveyed in a slum in Bhandup, in northeastern Bombay, were found to have inadequate levels of nutrition..If we really were sensitive to the people around us, we would be demanding that the government restore subsidies to public hospitals rather than ensuring that we all have place to park our cars. In March, residents of the posh Walkeshwar area physically attacked policemen towing away cars from a no-parking zone. "Each household has three to four cars and parking is already an issue in this city," one resident plaintively told journalists. "Where do we go?".Early in July, Bombay ground to a halt for three days after a relatively small amount of rainfall caused floods across the city – including in such elite neighbourhoods as Breach Candy. The newspapers were filled with the usual feel-good stories about how strangers had helped each other to safety through waist-deep floodwater. They also used the opportunity to bash the Digest survey, one of the criteria for which was whether citizens were likely to help strangers pick up scattered papers. Bombay "doesn't bend to pick up a pile of papers but bends backward to lend a helping hand", proclaimed one article..If only that were cause for reassurance. The floods were a replay of similar events exactly a year ago. On 26 July 2005 an astonishing 37.2 inches of rain pounded down within 24 hours. The downpour left 447 people dead and damaged the homes of tens of thousands of citizens, rich and poor. That deluge brought into focus the years of wilful damage the city had suffered. Politicians and bureaucrats, in their eagerness to appease builders, have completely subverted the city's development plan. Skyscrapers have been sanctioned without considering the ability of the sewage and storm-water drainage to cope. Meanwhile, the 'reclamation' of mangrove swamps reduced the area available for the rainwater to drain..Many suburban areas were flooded because the Mithi River spilled over its banks. A highly polluted channel in central Bombay, the Mithi soon emerged as a symbol of all the misguided development that has been visited upon the city over the last decade. Many members of the middle class piped up to claim that the river channel had been narrowed by the slums that have sprouted along its banks. In reality, it was the government-approved reclamation work that has reduced the Mithi's capacity to carry monsoon water to the sea. The extension of a runway at the airport diverted its course by almost 90 degrees; the hypermodern Bandra Kurla Complex office district squeezed it some more; and the Mithi's mouth has been blocked by the construction of a grandiose Sealink that will carry vehicles across the bay between Bandra and Worli..Faced with a catastrophe of the magnitude of last year's flood, citizens of most other cities would have swarmed unto the streets to demand immediate remedy from the politicians and administrators. But the residents of Bombay were content with passing around SMS messages that thundered about the government's misdeeds. That was slacktivism at its best – and yet another sign of just how unconcerned Bombay's citizens are about our crisis, and how willing we are to point an accusing finger at those less fortunate..Never-say-die.Though those floods should have been a wake-up call, over the last year the city silently acquiesced to two decisions that will only deepen our malaise. In May, the Supreme Court of India ruled that owners of 52 mills in central Bombay could sell their land as they wished, ending a decade-long debate. Activists had pointed out that if a portion of these lands (which form a geographically contiguous 600-acre chunk) were acquired by the state, Bombay would finally have the opportunity to create parks, build broader roads and other infrastructure so as to decongest itself..With this court decision, developers have now received the green light to build skyscrapers throughout central Bombay, with no thought given to the city infrastructure's ability to respond to such pressure. Shortly after, in the middle of June, the government announced plans to allow construction on 5500 acres of salt-pan land – coastal tracts that allow monsoon waters to drain. Neither of these decisions caused as much outrage from the city's elites as did the results of the Reader's Digest survey..Bombay's middle classes have attempted to blame our crisis on political forces beyond our control, but we're working overtime to add to the problems of our already burdened metropolis. We're now the fifth-most polluted city in the world, but the eagerness of the middle classes to buy vehicles (in a city at which traffic moves at 12 km an hour) continues unabated. Bombay adds just over 200 vehicles to its narrow streets every day..During this year's floods, as they did last July, Bombay's beautiful people attributed the city's ability to cope with disasters to "the spirit of the city", which the newspapers have variously described as "indomitable", "never-say-die" and "undying". These are facile formulations that seek to absolve the elites of any real responsibility of fixing things. They seem to believe that the city's capacity to "adjust", as Suketu Mehta puts it, is so infinite, that they do not really have to bother reconsidering the path they have chosen for the rest of us..Even if Bombay's defenders are right in asserting that the premises of the Digest survey are flawed and that we aren't as rude as they say, we'd still be in the running to be declared the most callous, thoughtless city in the world.