[ppi] [ppiindia] Journalistic tribute to Bombay

** Mailing List|Milis Nasional Indonesia PPI-India **

Book review,
(Far Eastern Economic Review, December 2004)

By Suketu Mehta
Knopf, 560 pages, $27.95

Reviewed by Salil Tripathi

To millions of Indians, Bombay is their country?s
Hollywood, arousing endless fascination with its
glitter and glamour. To the many of us who grew up in
Bombay and didn?t run into sultry starlets in suburban
trains, it is India?s Manhattan, the island of
opportunities. It is the melting pot where anyone can
be a star, an entrepreneur, a taxi driver-caste no
bar, creed no bar?becoming whatever one dreams of.

With shopping malls replacing textile mills, and
dozens of new flyovers allowing professionals the
illusion that slums don?t exist as they are driven to
their Nariman Point skyscrapers, it is easy to buy
into the dream that Bombay can become the biggest
financial center between Shanghai and London, if not
between Tokyo and New York.

Bombay pays 38% of India?s taxes, and has one of the
world?s oldest stock exchanges, where shares of
thousands of companies are traded. Office rents are
already higher than those in some parts of Manhattan.
Many foreign investors make Bombay their first port of
call, and in this century, it may indeed become a
major international financial capital.

But that?s only possible if another Bombay?called
Mumbai?allows it to happen. Mumbai looks more like the
Chicago of the 1920s, with speakeasies, gun fights and
mob rule. Mob families have divided up the city,
squeezing protection money from legitimate businesses
and destroying the fiber which makes the city cohere.
Hindu gangs burn Muslims and Muslim gangs plant bombs.
Meanwhile, the police kill criminals because it is
simpler than taking them to courts which are mired in
a backlog that at the current pace would take
centuries to clear. Even the judges sometimes turn to
the thugs to get justice.

New York-based writer Suketu Mehta has managed to
combine all these disparate personas into a credible
whole. The finished product is much like Bombay?s
favorite dish, pao bhaji, made of bread fried in
butter, eaten with a dozen vegetables beaten to a
pulp, served piping hot with spices?the original
ingredients lose their separate flavors as they meld
into one.

That?s great for those smitten by Bombay. But why
should the rest of the world care about an overcrowded
Third World city that has dismayed writers like V.S.
Naipaul? In short, because this is what the future
might look like for the rest of Asia.

Mega cities are an Asian phenomenon (out of the
world?s 15 most populous cities, 11 are Asian) and
they matter. In the developing world, enterprising
poor people are leaving their farms and homes to
pursue a bigger dream in the bigger city. In many
urban areas services have simply broken down. And yet
the people keep coming.

Among these cities, Bombay is the biggest. And
thousands more arrive daily. Within 10 years, it may
grow to 23 million people, or more than Australia?s
current population. ?Bombay is the future of urban
civilization on the planet, God help us,? Mr. Mehta
writes. 

So can Bombay offer any hope? Some two million of its
inhabitants do not have access to clean toilets, and
over half live in slums. However, most have TV sets,
and many now own scooters, if not cars. ?People in
Bombay eat relatively well, too, even the slum
dwellers. The real luxuries are running water, clean
bathrooms, and transport and housing fit for human
beings,? Mr. Mehta poignantly observes.

To get something done, you don?t necessarily have to
bribe officials, but you certainly need connections.
And with ever-lengthening queues, the only option is
often to go to the mob. For only the mob can and will
deliver.

And so Mr. Mehta directs our attention to the ?morally
compromised? people. There is the rioter Sunil who has
killed Muslims, but is now a civil servant who can get
small jobs done for people, since his party has come
to power. There are pitiless assassins for hire,
Satish and Mohsin, calmly describing how they kill
their targets. Then there is Monalisa, a seductive
cabaret dancer who has often slashed her wrists over
lost love.

Ajay Lal, a police officer, would never take a bribe,
but he has no qualms about torturing a suspect. Mr.
Mehta squirms when he sees a man being thrashed with a
leather strap at the police station. The policeman
tells him: ?This is nothing. This is Walt Disney.?

The focus on this netherworld has a purpose. In the
lives of these superstitious men and women who
gravitate to seedy bars, Mr. Mehta sees the
intersection of what makes Bombay fascinating?money,
sex, love, death and show business. Bombay has had its
9/11 moments in the form of bomb blasts and riots, and
yet the city is not the Beirut of the past or the
Baghdad of the present. It remains a remarkably
peaceful place despite stress levels reaching breaking
point.

Why? Mr. Mehta offers this revealing vignette which
any visitor can see for himself:

In the crowded suburban trains, you can run up to the
packed compartments and find many hands stretching out
to grab you on board, unfolding outwards from the
train like petals.? And at the moment of contact, they
do not know if the hand that is reaching for theirs
belongs to a Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Brahmin
or untouchable or whether you were born in this city
or arrived only this morning.? All they know is that
you?re trying to get to the city of gold, and that?s
enough. Come on board, they say. We?ll adjust.

It is that ability to adjust, to accept, to blend, and
yet to keep churning, that has kept Bombay thriving.
By almost any economic, demographic or environmental
yardstick, Bombay should have collapsed long ago. But
a city that continues to attract thousands daily can
never be called dying, Mr. Mehta says.

Ashutosh Varshney, who teaches South Asian politics at
the University of Notre Dame in the U.S., argued in
his book Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and
Muslims in India that commercial interaction between
communities creates a civic fiber which breaks the
barriers between people. In many Indian cities such
ties are absent. But in Bombay, an extended arm is
usually reciprocated. A mobster explains this
phenomenon as insaniyat, or humanity. Bombay has it in
spades. 

When Mr. Naipaul came to Bombay for the first time to
write An Area of Darkness, he was unnerved to find
that ?there was nothing in my appearance or dress to
distinguish me from the crowd eternally hurrying into
Churchgate Station.? A pity he didn?t try to seek out
those hands extended from the compartments. As Mr.
Mehta shows, it is easy to do so. 

Many fiction writers have immortalized Bombay, but the
city has never before been celebrated in a masterpiece
of literary journalism like Maximum City. Mr. Mehta
concludes: ?The reason a human being can live in a
Bombay slum and not lose his sanity is that his dream
life is bigger than his squalid quarters.? Because the
city is essentially humane, the most wretched of its
residents still dream, night after night. If Asians
continue to swarm the cities, they will need such
dreams and humanity.

Bombay-born Mr. Tripathi, a former review
correspondent in Singapore, is now a writer based in
London.

 



------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 
$4.98 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/Q7_YsB/neXJAA/yQLSAA/BRUplB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~-> 

***************************************************************************
Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg 
Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny. www.ppi-india.uni.cc
***************************************************************************
__________________________________________________________________________
Mohon Perhatian:

1. Harap tdk. memposting/reply yg menyinggung SARA (kecuali sbg otokritik)
2. Pesan yg akan direply harap dihapus, kecuali yg akan dikomentari.
3. Lihat arsip sebelumnya, www.ppi-india.da.ru; 
4. Forum IT PPI-India: http://www.ppiindia.shyper.com/itforum/
5. Satu email perhari: ppiindia-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
6. No-email/web only: ppiindia-nomail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
7. kembali menerima email: ppiindia-normal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    ppiindia-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
 



--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bagi Anda yang ingin berdiskusi tentang apa saja dg akrab, santai tapi serius 
dan penuh persahabatan dg seluruh masyarakat/mahasiswa Indonesia di luar negeri 
serta tokoh-tokoh intelektual dan pejabat Tanah Air, silahkan bergabung dg 
milis ppiindia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Kirim email kosong ke: 
ppiindia-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx atau kunjungi 
www.geocities.com/arsip_nasional/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Other related posts: