When I first went to Bombay (it wasn’t Mumbai then), as a teenager from Madras (it wasn’t Chennai either) for a holiday, I felt it was a different country. Chennai in the early Seventies, was conservative, didn’t have coffee shops, restaurants, discos and had only prohibition. Bombay seemed so open, people so friendly, and more than anything else was a fun place.
When I was taken to the Taj Hotel at the Gateway, I felt I had died and gone to heaven. There was a disco called Blow Up and the arty crowd and minor film stars mingled easily with hicks like me. It was the very first disco I had ever been to. I ran into a now forgotten actor called Jalal Agha who I thought was the funniest man I had ever met.
A few years later, we moved to Bombay. Fortunately it was many years after Shiv Sena’s attack on south Indians. My extended family, which lived in Bombay thought of themselves as Mumbaikars, spoke fluent Marathi and Bombay Hindi and helped me settle down.
Most of the second generation had already married outside the community.
Suddenly, I had Sindhi cousins, Punjabi brothers-in-law, and so on. All this was quite common in Bombay.
So were Hindu-Muslim relationships, naïve as it might sound. An orthodox aunt of mine, living in Bombay, used to praise her Muslim daughter-in-law’s vegetarian Brahmin cooking. And at a suburban five-star hotel I ran into Haji Mastan the smuggler turned politician and Devyani Chaubal, the famous film gossip columnist.
They had no problem being seen with each other. I remember thinking that this is possible only in Bombay. If you are not very rich, life is not particularly comfortable in Mumbai.
You can afford housing only in the suburbs, travel a long distance in crowded trains and buses. But Mumbai was safe. Journalists invariably work late, and the magazine I worked for then let you take taxis if it was very late. Not only did you find taxis in the middle of the night, but also it was perfectly safe for women to take them.
Mumbai was one city where women didn’t feel threatened.
Although young and broke, one could still go to places like Samovar in Jehangir Art Gallery, and mingle with artists, filmmakers and theatre people. You could strike a conversation with a Shyam Benegal or a Tyeb Mehta. You could actually go to the Taj and the Oberoi if you saved up. Some of my happiest memories are sitting in the Sea Lounge at the Taj nursing a cold coffee and a cheese toast (both had fancier names) and watching the sea and chatting with friends, and even doing interviews.
The place I worked for was across the Oberoi, and my generous boss used to give us breakfasts, lunches and dinners there. Cost cutting hadn’t become the norm.
The horror of what is happening at the Taj and Oberoi is particularly heart breaking for me.
After I moved back to Chennai my connection with the city stayed alive because of my frequent trips there. The magazine, like Mumbai, was a melting pot. People from all parts of the country worked there.
Nobody thought about the divisions.
Most of us loved the city, loved our jobs, loved the tension and concentrated on delivering results. The city was so mediasavvy.
Captains of industry would take calls from even junior reporters.
You didn’t have to use influence.
It was such a professional city. Nobody bothered about your background, where you came from, or who your parents were.
You were what you were. Truly.
The first time I felt a change after the Babri Masjid. My Muslim friends suddenly withdrew into themselves. It didn’t make any difference to our relationship. But they started thinking more seriously about their religion, their future, and their children’s future.
Some friends who have never done that before started fasting during Ramzan. Soon after, came the Bombay blasts and then the retaliatory attacks when the Shiv Sena went on a rampage. Suddenly there was the Hindu-Muslim divide. Hindu friends became protective of their Muslim colleagues. Muslim friends became slightly suspicious.
As it is repeated ad nauseam, Mumbai is resilient. As though it had a choice. In 2006, there were the serial blasts in the Mumbai suburban trains, the lifeline of the city. It happened on a rainy dark evening when hard working professionals were returning home. The commuters are a community by themselves.
As they spend such long hours in the trains, they make friends, save sitting places for others, form singing groups, share snacks, and make life as comfortable as possible.
Even after that particular horror, Mumbai did go back to normal, picked itself together, and went back to business.
But then politics has started rearing its ugly head ever so often in Mumbai. The Malegaon blasts, the Marathi manoos campaign, all ruining the spirit of Mumbai. How much beating can the city take? The monsters who are behind this attack seem to understand very well that if they break Mumbai, they break India.