05.11.2009.

Bombay

I call her Bombay not Mumbai. I am in Bombay and for the first time since 2006 I will stay much longer than a few hours’ inbetween flights. My feelings about Bombay are quite perplexing. Like many who arrive by train my first impression of Bombay was of gloom, poverty and anger without enthusiasm i.e. depression. Early in the morning as the train enters the city, the stench, slums, people defecating in the open and the abject poverty visible everywhere invariably leads the newcomer to a sense of foreboding. I had arrived by train and the fact that I came with a lot of uncertainty which I intended to metamorphose into a bright future only helped to multiply that sense of foreboding. There are a hundred other things about Bombay that attracts my passionate disfavour. The bursting at the seams local trains where the people of Bombay prove their herd instinct similar to that of the Wilderbeest crossing the African veldts, the language, the apathy, the filth, the ‘Gardullas’, the Mumbaikar attitude and much more. Frankly I have more than enough reasons to be able to say that I hate Bombay and this is where my emotions get quite befuddled. Because there are also those things that I undeniably like about Bombay. The Seaman’s Club for example… I invariably stay at the club. The glitz of company paid star hotels have never managed to overcome the old world charm of the club. So what most rooms are on a shared basis or non air conditioned… I spent months double banking within these walls when I was a Gentleman Cadet or when I was a jobless junior officer. I still eat the same puri bhaaji for breakfast and chicken fried rice with daal fry for dinner… to commemorate those days. The days when the twelve rupees puri bhaaji was the best bet because it was filling enough to let me skip lunch... saved thirty six bucks. The beloved officer’s billiard room… where I have spent numerous idle days playing crown pool… hoping.

Bombay and her Irani Café, Gaylords, Café Mondegar, Marine Drive in pouring rain, Darab Shaw House, Four Bunglows, 5 Spice, Bade Miyaan and my perplexed state of mind. This time around I walked in Bombay… long walks, taking pictures & writing epitaphs for unmarked graves of a past long dead. A person I’ve known for more than a decade recently told me that I appear to carry my sorrows with me… as if I refuse to let go. Yes I do but not as you interpret it. Not as a triumph of sorrows but as a victory of will, to decree that no matter the madness of fate… I keep faith.

Because happiness belongs to those who believe in it the most… believe in it the longest.

P.S. Each photograph I took in Bombay turned out to be in black and white or sepia.