Rehan Ansari finds that Mumbai lags behind cities like New York and Milan when it comes to the ‘global’ quotient. To call something global is inviting comparison.
To call something global is inviting comparison. This causes anxiety for someone like me who has lived, not visited, in four cities in the world, and keeps running across more. Alternatively one could stay put and never know, or aspire.
One way Mumbai is not global is that the city cannot say it attracts global professionals. It’s Brooklyn, not Bandra, that has entire colonies of, say, French restaurateurs and English artists living there.
Imagine if one could say about a street off Hill Road that you know there are a bunch from that new crop of musicians from Karachi, who live part of the year on Somnath Lane.
Though to be a little fair the fact that that’s not true is more of a problem of India’s, than Mumbai’s. Last weekend at Indigo when Adnan Sami and companion were having brunch, the big table next to them applauded their neighbour.
I tried hard to not bring in public transportation into this. How much more can we complain about the roads? But yesterday, an editor with one of the best jobs in media, and with a fancy foreign company, said to me that (pronoun deleted for anonymity) was thinking of changing jobs for a smaller commute.
On a recent trip to Toronto I kept thinking of travelling within Mumbai. The TTC, Toronto Transportation Corporation, is a warm word, like a hug.
In the cuddly tram, bus, subway system one wants to zip north, south, east and west in TO (cuddly for Toronto). Warm embraces mean entirely different things on the local and suburban trains of you know where.
The subway of New York is grittier. I am tempted to say its more in the nature of Mumbai, but New York makes music about its trains. From jazz refrains to Billy Joel, songs sing the metallic grunting and sparking of the trains of New York.
When we say global, besides leaving us vulnerable to comparison, we also mean world class. Mumbai has mega numbers of lots of things that is the global I am avoiding.
I am talking about the feel good global. Spending a weekend in Milan, or actually just a walk all around the Duomo I counted what Milan has that is world class: Ferrari (in that one showroom I felt that if not mecca itself, then I was at a major dargah of design), the opera and its constituency (I didn’t see the opera, but I saw the crowds coming out close to midnight), the best dressed 50 year olds I have seen anywhere.
After I came back to Mumbai, I was acutely aware of how men, unlike the rich and the ordinary Carlos, don’t wear shirts that fit them well, especially around the shoulder. Oh and AC Milan.
I wanted to prostrate myself before that temple of football. Most of Milan is ordinary suburbs, but goddamn it, a walk around the Duomo makes you forget the prosaic lying in wait.
Can you think of five world class things, that don’t have to do with the sheerness of scale (as in its not the deluge of movies Bollywood makes, but the trickle of good cinema that counts) within half a km radius of the following: Kala Ghoda, Pali Naka, Five Garden, Lokhandwala, Hakim’s Alim.
Hakim’s Alim? Well it’s a hair salon, a neighbourhood landmark in Union Park I have moved to. Neighbourhood is a New York expression I use here out of habit, though they tell me that in Mumbai what I mean is ‘locality’.
Well, Hakim’s Alim is famous for its local clients like Sanjay Dutt and Salman. And Aamir lives down the road, and a colleague says that he sees Prem Chopra leave and exit some building and all.
This doesn’t make my heart flutter, though it makes a world class story to be told in Toronto, and New York and Karachi.
Out of the Blue and Olives and Movie Empire, or even Carter Road will not vow those other city dwellers. They’ll point to things that may be acutely better.
Maybe all I can conclude is that one man’s world class may be another’s ho-hum. But to bring their heads down from the star gazing I would certainly say that I am writing from Union Park, Khar, and from the 6th floor I am breathlessly watching a cloud of dust jostling its way between buildings.
I cant tell its source from all the new construction. God, are all my windows closed, and am I high enough?
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