Touchdown on Planet Mumbai

by Indrajit Sundaram

I’ve read a lot of science fiction in my time, and one recurring person you can come across in most science fiction of a frivolous nature, is the intrepid planet-hopper moving at hyperlight speed from one world to another, much like Spaceman Spiff from Calvin and Hobbes. Travelling from New Market in Kolkata to the Phoenix Palladium Mall in Mumbai was a similar hop from one planet to another, although at far from the hyperlight speeds the Indian Railways is rumored to travel at. However, this time I wasn’t alone. I had my daughter Hannah Yudit along with me, which made for a fun trip as she has a streak of the traveler herself which makes trips with her interesting and easy.

Mumbai is a well-connected city with well-connected people. It has easily available public transport including taxi cabs (and autorickshaws in parts of the city that once used to be the suburbs). These still run on meter rates, I was delighted to find, after spending a lifetime out of Mumbai arguing with autorickshaw drivers. Mumbai has, arguably, the best public bus network in India run by the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) Undertaking, no pun intended there, and an amazing network of local trains running on the Central, Western and Harbor line routes. Of course, local train commuting is not for the faint of heart, and even with my seasoned Mumbai nerves, I didn’t risk getting Hannah to try that during peak hours. In another two years, I believe, the metro lines are to start functioning. Mumbai, incidentally, was among the first cities to equip taxi cabs to run with LPG (liquid petroleum gas), instead of petrol. The buses too, both single and double-deckers, are now electric. Yes, the double-deckers still run on certain routes to preserve some of the Mumbai legacy that we old Mumbaiites still love, and it’s a special treat to ride on the seafront route sitting on the top deck enjoying the view for just about 10c.

But enough of all that. I was agog returning to Mumbai after more than two decades, to see if the city was still familiar or had changed beyond recognition. An old professor friend had kindly invited us to stay with him, treating us like family, even after so many years, so we went to meet him at my alma mater, Wilson College. College had changed and not changed, and was, thankfully, familiar still.

I was pleasantly surprised by the warm welcome of the Zoology department staff, none of whom knew me, when I stepped in to show Hannah the lab where I had spent 5 years of my life. I had already regaled her with many stories of my time there, and while there are too many too good ones to recount, I can’t resist sharing one of the indelibly funny ones, and I beg your pardon for going down this quirky rabbit trail. I do know you can’t retire to India on just funny stories!

 Anyway, it was the unforgettable moment in my senior undergraduate year, when we were all sent leaping out of our skins in the midst of a dissection by a mega crack like a gigantic firecracker going off, and while leaving our flabbergasted skins, caught the unbelievable glimpse of a squid flying wetly through the air across the lab. 

What on earth??? 

Our head of department emerged from her cabin wondering the same, so after floundering around to find and get back into our skins, we turned around and saw one of our dear classmates, who had by one of our professors, been given the unfortunate nickname of ‘Potty’, an abbreviation of his finicky-to-pronounce-correctly name, grinning sheepishly at us from one side of the lab while sitting at another. 

Whaat???? HOW?? Then the story unfolded. 

He had got up from his table on the other side of the aisle to rinse out his dissection tray at the sink in the stone table on this side. Somehow, his brain forgot to send the command to his legs, and they stayed, oblivious, around the lab stool, while his torso got up, turned around and headed towards the sink. It took a couple of seconds for his torso to realize that his legs were occupied elsewhere, and so it quickly took matters into hand, and thankfully as it had more sense that the legs, it moved the arms like lightning and used the dissection tray to break the fall by bringing it down, flat side, on the stone table top, which was the crack that had caused us to exit our skins briefly. It was then simple logic to see the dynamic role played by inertia that had launched the squid from the tray, fleetingly boggled at by some of us. While others continued staring bemusedly at him, still trying to put parts of themselves into the right places in their skins, the few of us who understood what had happened were under the tables, rolling around in helpless laughter. Our head of department joined us as well and it was a while before she remembered to tell us to get back to work. Ah, the carefree days of youth…

Anyway, back to the present… While it was a treat to show Hannah my old stamping grounds, even with all the new sights, nothing could have prepared her for Professor Sudhakar Solomon Raj’s apartment way up on high in a high rise building much like New York’s, and that huge, ultra-modern mall, the Phoenix Palladium, he took us to for an amazing dinner treat.

The scale of life, vastness of the city and high-tech living quite overwhelmed her initially, as we’d been home-bound for the last three years, that too in a small town. 

We stood there at his balcony, our stomachs full of some exotic dish of prawns and blue rice, looking out over the big city nightscape, me being flooded with old memories I’d forgotten, she taking it all in with her seventeen year old eyes and trying to feel the city, alive and moving beneath our eyes.

Truth be told, it’s not easy to retire to Mumbai. You’ve got to love life in the fast lane to enjoy Mumbai’s rushing lifestyle, hard-headed money savviness and massive productivity focus. But if you’re a small towner like my daughter and me, you have to learn to find your spot to flower, in the fractures and gaps between the chrome, concrete and glass, where even ordinary folk can find root, but it’s not for the faint of heart. I remembered an urban folk song I’d written long ago-

On the sidewalks where cool people dance

To the scent of a thousand perfumes,

There are cracks in the sparkling array

Where broken folk slip into gloom,

And Life quickly moves on before

She sees the good she could possibly do;

When moments exist like small change,

They’re not worth spending looking for truth.

All these years later, I no longer see the cracks as the entrance to Mumbai’s dark underbelly. They’re places open to explore and express in. Mumbai is a fascinating, frightening, exciting, overwhelming, thrilling city of dreams, any time worth a visit, and maybe I’m biased, but I always say that people who visit Delhi and think they’ve visited an Indian city, should head down to Mumbai and stay for a couple of weeks. It’s an entirely different planet and changes one’s perception of urban India.

Now enough of this intense burn already! In Mumbai Marches on its Stomach, the upcoming post, we’ll explore the cracks, and the wonderfully simple, yet rich experiences one can find there. Till then, you have a good one!