Are you a Delhi person or a Mumbai person?

It’s not been a week since I moved to Delhi, and I miss Mumbai already. If you ask me what is it about Mumbai that I miss, I can’t give you a convincing answer. I miss nothing in particular, and I miss everything in general.

I know that this Delhi-Mumbai debate — which city is more worthy of love and human habitation — is a touchy subject, especially for Dilliwalas. I’m a Dilliwala myself, or used to be, when I moved to Mumbai seven years ago to help launch this newspaper. There were also a couple of Delhites who had moved with me and they would go on and on about how Mumbai sucked and how Delhi was so much better, cleaner, easier to get around, etc.

Now, I am not the kind of person to develop roots in, or affection for, large, overcrowded, urban spaces full of smart people living and working in localities and offices that are increasingly beginning to look like localities and offices in other large, overcrowded, urban spaces full of smart people living and working in — well, you get my drift. But I’ve lived in each of India’s metros (except Bangalore) at different times in my life, and I’ve found that temperamentally, I am most compatible with Mumbai. I don’t know if it’s the sea, the local trains, or the humidity, but it didn’t take me long to get used to the rhythms of the city, the Bambaiya lingo (just yesterday an auto driver in Lajpat Nagar turned and stared when I told him ‘aage se left lene ka’), and yes, the traffic jams too.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m writing this sitting in Delhi, but it seems to me that the Mumbai traffic jam is somehow more tolerable than the Delhi traffic jam. In Mumbai, there is a sort of hidden camaraderie born of shared misery — we are all in the same jam together kind of thing. But in a Delhi jam, all I feel is a cold hostility that could, it seems to me, erupt into fatal fury at any moment. And I worry that I shouldn’t do something to trigger it. So I try and honk politely if I must, and smile apologetically into the rearview mirror when I do.

But this applies to not just jams on roads but jams elsewhere too. I’ve never seen people hustling their way to the front of the queue at the bank I used to visit in Mumbai. But earlier this week, I stepped into a Delhi branch of the same bank and the first thing I see is a well-built, middle-aged woman screaming at the bank manager because her queue was not moving fast enough. For someone like me, who is easily intimidated by official-looking people, and especially people like bank managers, to see an average citizen intimidate an intimidator was even more intimidating. Delhi is full of such people. Quite a few of them carry guns. Some use them too.

One thing Mumbai has over Delhi is its more equable climate, with the extremes limited to a few days during the monsoons. Yet the national capital’s climate is not without its advantages. I now scoff at Mumbai friends who dare to complain to me on phone about how hot Mumbai is already. “Mumbai? Hot? Hahahaha!” I laugh at them for a full minute. Delhi’s climatic extremes give me the upper hand in all weather-related discussions with Mumbaiwalas for a full eight months of the year, when Mumbai can never be as hot or as cold as Delhi. From June to September, I’ll need to avoid all talk about the weather, for I’d rather not hear disparaging references to Delhi’s micturitional monsoons, especially from Mumbaikars who think nothing of wading to work in neck-deep sewage water.

Then there are the usual comparisons — about quality of life (where Delhi scores), cost of accommodation (where Delhi scores), cultural and ‘intellectual’ life (where, again, Delhi scores), safety of women (where Mumbai scores), public transport (where Mumbai scores, though not by much after the advent of the Metro in Delhi). There is also the old cliché about how ‘connections’ is the currency of power in Delhi whereas the size of your wallet determines the pecking order in Mumbai. Other aspects that are too subjective for a meaningful debate keep popping up every time — the food, places to hang out, fashion sense, and yes, the people. Delhi men talk about ‘Mumbai girls’, usually appreciatively, while Mumbai women talk about ‘Delhi men’, usually with disgust. It is never the other way around — no Delhi girl will speak of ‘Mumbai men’, and Mumbai men don’t speak of ‘Delhi girls’, though Delhi men themselves do.

All said and done, I guess the city one prefers is as much a matter of sensibility as other, less nebulous, factors like where one grew up, studied, has close friends/family, etc — all of which, in turn, play a role in shaping your sensibility. In my own case, I grew up in different cities, and my friends/family are scattered all over. Yet I prefer Mumbai. Don’t ask me why, though. As I said before, there’s no convincing answer to that. I believe you’re either a Delhi person or a Mumbai person. It’s like your sun sign, but unlike a sun sign, this one can, and sometimes does, change during a lifetime.

G Sampath is an independent writer based in Delhi
sampath4office@gmail.com