India: Bombay Meri Jaan

Bombay Meri Jaan (which in English roughly means “Bombay, My Life” or “Bombay My Love”) is a very famous old Bollywood song from 1956. The song is sung by a character who is a petty thief, and he sings about how tough life can be in this City of Dreams, this modern-day Babylon – a city where millions of people come with stars in their eyes and the hope of making it big.

I am attaching the youtube link to the song. Most Indians would know and love this song. If you haven’t seen this video, I recommend you watch it. It has English sub-titles for those who do not speak Hindi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6INOamqU7xs

Fifty three years after this song was written, Bombay has lost much of its luster, though millions of people still come here from thousands of miles away in India’s hinterlands, seeking a livelihood and a respite from the desperate poverty in their villages. This huge migration of people has caused the city’s population to swell to twenty million, and put a huge strain on the city’s infrastructure which was designed to cater to five million inhabitants.

65% of the city’s population now lives in slums. The overcrowding in the city has also started causing tensions between “locals” and “outsiders”. India’s political parties, who never miss a trick, have started encouraging and exploiting these divisions for votes. Still, Bombay is the only truly “Indian” city in the country, with every single one of India’s states represented (and probably every district as well).

Citizens of Bombay are famed for its toughness. They are known for their intelligence, street-smarts, sass, tolerance, hardiness and sense of humor. It could hardly be otherwise. People live in tiny, one bedroom apartments in the far-flung suburbs, and often commute one hundred kilometers a day or more, packed like sardines in sweltering train compartments. You need all of the qualities mentioned above to cope.

You may not like Bombay; it is no longer a beautiful city. But you cannot deny that the city has a character and personality of its own, and how many cities of the world can you say that about?

I no longer live in Bombay, mainly because of two reasons. Firstly, I am not as young as I used to be. Pretty much everybody who works in Bombay is a workaholic. No matter how smart you are or how hard you work, there is always someone younger and smarter snapping at your heels. As I settle into comfortable middle age, my competitive spirit doesn’t burn as brightly as it did ten years ago. Secondly, Bombay is a chain of islands, and since there is no room for growth, the price of residential real estate is astronomical. A decent 1,000 square foot apartment in the area I grew up in costs in the region of US $ 400,000. I am not willing to mortgage my life to buy an apartment in a city that is already way too crowded, polluted and noisy.

But Bombay is still the city I was born in, the city I grew up in, the city that shaped the man I became. And there will be many others just like me; people who escaped Bombay to live in less stressful places. But ask them how they feel when they see a picture of Victoria Terminus (as in the “Bombay Meri Jaan” video), or Marine Drive or the Gateway of India, and wherever they may live, and however long it has been since they last saw Bombay, chances are they will look at the pictures and think “home!!”.

There is so much more I could say about Bombay, but for that, I would have to write a novel. So I will cease and desist!

Tomorrow (November 26th) marks the first anniversary of the terrible terrorist attacks on Bombay. This is my salute to everyone who lives in Bombay. People like the accountant I knew in one of my workplaces many years ago; a woman who lived in Kalyan and commuted every morning by train to Fort (a distance of about sixty kilometers one-way). A woman who woke up at 5 am every morning to cook breakfast for her family, feed and dress her kids for school and then come to work. A woman who returned home only by 10 pm every night, to cook dinner and then help her kids with their homework. She was super-efficient at work too, and accomplished more in a day than most people do in a week. I was in awe of her. And Bombay is full of millions of men and women like her.

So I would like to dedicate this blog to her and the millions of other hardworking residents of Bombay, that western-most of India’s cities. You deserve so much better.