Bombay...

Nothing more to say about the events in Mumbai today, than: A senseless waste.
Civilians caught in the crossfire, in the war of words by irresponsible right wing politicians and the retort in such brutal ways by fanatics.
Why would someone think maiming middle class families is an effective way to achieve any cause claimed?

Anyway while we wait with endless patience for our politicians and zealots to grow up, the heartwarming thing is that Bombay does rise to the occasion. If terror is the intent, that is not really achieved. The population reacted indignantly rather than with fear. From an eyewitness account of events I got, people were thinking rather than panicking. Within minutes, volunteers had stations condoned off and had started rescue work. That is something special Bombay has, a spirit of its own.

This is an article from exactly five years ago, written in another time, another place, another style. Some facets of Bombay themselves have changed with the recent economic boom. But it captures some of what I would put down had I to write today. So instead, I will content myself rereading and revalidating it and put it here for others similar loyalties...

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This is an ode to a city that is the love of many while as many loathe it, a city like no other in the world, that is for sure.
I love it!
What about it do I love? The fact that it is my home perhaps? Yes, but then again, I think there is more to it than that. There are many things that are unique about this dear city. No denying that, at first glance, it is highly polluted -- smog seems to have settled on it permanently, the trains are crowded, the buses more so -- there is absolutely no place to even stand in the trains. Why, it may occur to you, do people have to run so much for so little?
There ought to be easier ways of living. It is a scary sight, how the hell does it work, one wonders. But it does, and that is one of the keys to understanding why the people who love Bombay love it passionately.
But first let's talk about what Bombay looks like to the observer. The city painted to be the glam town, fast life, easy women are just a few things on the list of pre-set notions of the people that live outside of it and think they know all about it from the movies that they have seen or the few visits they have made. This article is in no way trying to belittle them, they definitely can't be blamed, considering most of those movies responsible for those stereotypes were made in Bollywood itself -- like that movie Snip. Make a bad movie, add all the masala about bars and night life and the mafia and one hot number with Sofia Haque at her seductive best(or worst depending on your taste) and then say it all happens in Bombay. True, we have all heard that's what happens in Bombay more often than seen it.
However, a majority of the population leads a very different, possibly difficult life.
Women try to be Superwoman -- they have no choice. They have to be home makers and bread earners. Sometimes, women start their kitchen chores in the train itself -- chopping vegetables or trying to get that much-needed afternoon nap. It is all a game of whether you can get to bed 5 minutes early today to get up a little earlier tommorrow so that you needn't be late again. But Bombay is a place that offers weirder solutions. Instant solutions but Indian style. You have people that sell you pre-cut vegetables in the trains or enterprising unskilled poorer women who cook some goodies and are selling it to the women who don't have time to do it themselves. Our answer to Wal Mart and K-mart.
You may laugh, but the point is, I find it rather nice. The person who sells that stuff to you knows you by your name and you know something about her family too other than the fact that she sells good stuff. She is a face and an entity in your daily life. And you wonder about her on days that you do not see her. The people who sit across from you are the people that sit across from you everyday. They might have been the same people that fought with you for a place in the train on day one, but then you see each other again and again and you realize you are both in the same boat of routine, daily grind, co-travellers...
Friendships develop and you just get to know a lot more about the other person. Looking at it differently, it is a place where you get a unique experience of human kind. When they step out of the train, they step into the shoes of what they are in the outside world, be it a manager or a receptionist. In there though, it didn't matter, for some strange reason.
To me, Bombay is the crook in the movie you eventually lose your heart to -- the bad tempered, snarling guy who hides a heart of gold.
The Mumbaikars are a population so trapped in a city that lives so ridiculously that whatever else they lack, they definitely have a sense of humor about it. You can't survive without one. Like when you fight in the train to get place at the door and then the girl from the opposite train at the door smiles at you because she knows the two of you have been winners of a foolish battle.
Bombay says 'be yourself'. You may try to be sophisticated but it stretches you to the point that all your uncivilized ways are bared. Have you seen all those movies of the 50's and 60's where they tell you that they just can't help loving mean, bad, old New York? Ditto for Bombay.
Everything about it feels special like those skyscrapers, the sea face where you can walk munching peanuts, the beautiful southern tip of Bombay, the young cleaner suburbs, the older more majestic corners of the city... And you needn't be a party animal or pub hopper to feel this way about it. I don't know if I have managed of convey even an iota of the feelings I have for Bombay...but some places have to be lived in to be believed! And the people who lived in it shall continue to constantly talk about the experience but never fully understand what makes the city tick. It just does!