India: The Bombay I Knew and Loved

The Bombay I knew had clean, quiet, tree-lined suburban streets where on public holidays, we played hockey, football and cricket. If the ball went out in the middle of the street, you ran out to pick it up without a second thought. Today you would get run over in less than a nano-second by some brat driving around in his daddy’s luxury SUV.

In the Bombay I knew, there was no cable TV. Kids were encouraged to come out and play after school. If you didn’t play sports, your peers called you a wimp. There were no fancy gyms. If you wanted to exercise, you sweated it out in your building compound or on the street, just like all the other kids. On afternoons when you had time to spare, you went to “town” to watch Kanga League cricket matches at the Oval Maidan. Today, I do not see kids playing anymore. They are too caught up with computer games and homework, no doubt.

In the Bombay I knew, there was only black and white television, on which you watched “Chhayageet” and Sunil Gavaskar making one of his interminably long test match centuries. “Another innings of dedication, determination and application”, the commentators used to intone. On the way back from school, you stopped by the local paan-waala to listen to the latest cricket score on his handy, nifty transistor radio. You don’t see too many of those anymore either.

In the Bombay I knew, you tuned into Radio Ceylon at night to listen to all the latest American pop hits.

In the Bombay I knew, there were rows and rows of lovely cottages facing the sea. You wondered what it would be like to live in one of them. They are all gone now, replaced by matchbox style high-rise buildings, where you pay the equivalent of a lifetime’s income for a quality of life that is non-existent.

In the Bombay I knew, Bandra Reclamation was one huge field, where kids played all day long in the summertime. Today the place is one giant slum.

On lazy, hot summer days, you went to Bandra Fort to sneak a cigarette or satiate your raging teenage hormones by making out with a girlfriend. In those days, Bandra Fort was almost off-limits. There were rumours of smugglers landing there on dark nights with gold biscuits and counterfeit electronic goods. People said that jackals lurked in the ruins of the fort and howled at night. Today, it is home to a five-star hotel. The smugglers and jackals (if they really existed) are long gone.

In the Bombay I knew, you went to Jude’s Bakery in Bandra early in the morning to buy kadak-pav and ate it with maska, and a cup of hot steaming tea.

In the Bombay I knew, you learnt how to drive in your dad’s old stick-shift 1974 Ambassador car. You had never heard of air-conditioning, automatic transmission, power steering or power windows.

The Bombay I knew was the most diverse, tolerant and cosmopolitan city in India. Nobody asked you where you were from. Nobody called you an “outsider”. At school, nobody asked you your religion, your caste or your ethnic background. Nobody felt superior to you if they belonged to a different community. Nobody laughed at your community’s festivals and customs. All of us were from Bombay, and that was enough.

In the Bombay I knew, you went to Parsi weddings at Khusro Baug, where old Parsi men drank Sosyo raspberry juice, ate caramel custard made in Ratan Tata Institute and quarrelled with waiters about how small the chicken legs on their plate were. Everybody had a great time.

In the Bombay I knew, you spoke either English or “Bambaiyaa Hindi” with your friends. The language, like the city of Bombay, was a melting pot of several different Indian languages. You used words like “raapchik” and “pochaaoed” (the latter was an obscene Bandra special and possibly not in use in the rest of the city). When you saw your friend coming down the street, you yelled “Aey, yer bugger” (another Bandra special).

In the Bombay I knew, you celebrated Diwali with your Hindu friends. During Durga Puja, you pretended to be a good Bengali and went to the Pujo-Baadi in Shivaji Park, mainly to eat the delicious singhadaas and sandesh. On Christmas and New Years’ you went for midnight mass with your Catholic friends (my neighbourhood at the time was predominantly Catholic), partly to check out the pretty young women who attended in hordes. On occasions such as baptisms and funerals of neighbours you knew, you dressed up and went to church. On Christmas Eve, groups of young kids would come and sing Christmas carols below your window. In return, you gave them some money to enjoy themselves.

In the Bombay I knew, there were no expensive nightclubs and discos. Setting up a party was a project. There were no cell phones, and landline phones worked only sometimes. You partied on your friend’s terrace. You hired a stereo and listened to Eddie Grant singing “Electric Avenue” at full volume. You cringed when your friend with poor taste in music suddenly played “Funky Town”.

In the Bombay I knew, you went and bought alcohol from “Aunty’s” on “dry” days. Aunty was a woman who lived in Shirley Rajan village in Bandra, and sold liquor at exorbitant prices to desperate teenagers on “dry days”. She lived on the second floor. You whistled when you got to her building, and her assistant, a little boy, came running up to you. You told him what brand of whisky you wanted and gave him the money. He ran up the stairs and handed over the money to “Aunty” who then proceeded to lower the bottle containing the beverage of your choice in a basket attached to a rope. It was a very smooth operation.

On weekends, you went out for drives with your family and dog to places like Aarey Milk Colony in Goregaon (with the traffic, slums and pollution today, this must seem unimaginable). You ate vada-pav outside Churchgate Station, had a few beers with the freaks at Café Mondegar and ate huge lunches at George’s Restaurant in Fort. If you were in the mood for a steak, you walked down to Wayside Inn on Rampart Row, where doddering elderly waiters with bad attitudes served you the best steaks in Bombay. Wayside Inn is gone and in its place is a fancy, glitzy restaurant with no character or personality.

Yes, I remember that Bombay well, the beautiful city with the sea on one side and the rolling Western Ghats on the other, easily the most important and enlightened city in India.

In light of recent events, that Bombay is gone forever. Bombay represented the mess that was India, but also all that was good and great. It was a grand experiment which showed us what we could achieve as a nation if we put all our regional and religious divisions behind us. It taught me what being Indian really meant. It taught me to judge people based on who they were as individuals, and not on what language they spoke at home or which part of the country they came from. I miss that Bombay, I miss that India.