How we learnt to live with shabby

A pile of garbage near a bus stop at Dharavi on October 6. Pic/Ashish Raje

Your only son didn't turn out the way you'd hoped he would. Not a comet but a mudball. Not a fast-rising manager or data analyst, not an architect or chef, not a poet or a programmer, just a thud. He loiters all day, whistling at girls, chews paan and spits on the pavement. He never shaves, bathes just three or four times a week and swears all the time. His armpits smell and he has halitosis.

But he's your child; to you, he's adorable even at his worst. Traits that might have shocked and disgusted you in someone else's son are just normal, even charming, in yours.

Mumbai is a bit like that tolerated son. If you've lived here four decades, like I have, then you too may have a long list of things best considered ‘normal' and left alone. Here are a few.

Mumbai has had potholes for four decades. They're fixed every year and re-appear like clockwork the next monsoon. They form even where concrete has replaced asphalt. We just assume they'll always be around.

Beloved Mumbai hasn't had flat, unbroken, smooth pavements for four decades. Debris, cracks, overgrown trees and arbitrary shrines to arbitrary gods are guaranteed to make every step a hazard. We've never known better and now we don't expect better.

Your city has always had random mounds of garbage where mongrels, crows, ragpickers and squadrons of flies rummage for scraps. We curse like hell but all we do is tiptoe around the filthy hill every day.

The air has always been dirty. You can pick it up by sliding a finger along your window sill. You can wash it off your face and hands in rivulets
every evening.

Everything is damp and dank; bedrooms smell mouldy. Housing colonies are black and green with moss, and rust is ubiquitous. Mumbai has always looked like a bombed-out, war-torn city with ruins everywhere.

This too is ‘normal'. Four decades of ‘normal'.

One word describes Mumbai perfectly - shabby. To live in it, you must be reconciled to an ambience that is perpetually unkempt, neglected and in chaotic disarray. Mumbai
is nobody's child.

A Mumbaikar lives without hope of change, assuming, based on experience, that things are doomed to be just like this forever. This is what, she is told, any city of 20 million people would look like if it was growing so rapidly that the municipality simply could not keep pace.

Really? Can we find another city of 20 million and see how it's doing?

You may never have been to Shanghai so you might not realise how similar it is to Mumbai. Also a coastal city, it is densely populated, with 24 million people, or 4 million more than Mumbai. It is also a magnet for Chinese workers and young people seeking a better life.

Like Mumbai, it is an economic and financial hub, home to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, with one of the busiest ports in the world. It is a vibrant, colourful city of towering skyscrapers, a rich history and a thriving art scene.

Urbanising rapidly, it has the usual contradictions: housing shortages amidst high-rises; green spaces amidst traffic jams; a sleek metro rail along with problems of mass transit.

But here's a difference: Shanghai is not shabby. It is proud of itself and does not assume things are doomed to get worse. It is an expert at self-care. Its pavements and roads are flat, durable and well-maintained. Things work as they should. Public toilets do not reek of urine and the leaves in public parks are not covered with dust.

Unlike Aamchi Mumbai, Shanghai's municipal corporation seems to believe that it is their job to make the city livable.

What, then, should we say to our municipal corporation, not even slightly embarrassed or apologetic about its battered thoroughfares and planned potholes that regrow like fungus each year?

Could it be that they are strapped for cash? Let's check.

Oh dear. According to every source I've consulted, the BMC is the world's richest municipal corporation by far. No city on the planet has more money to make life better for its teeming millions than Mumbai. Its budget for 2023-2024 is R52,619 crore. You could buy a lot of pizzas with that.

Surely that ought to cover the cost of forever flat roads and pavements, forever dust-free air and regular garbage pick-ups for the foreseeable future?

Apparently not. A contractor paving an Andheri intersection with peanut-shaped tiles explained why he always left his work incomplete. "I had to bribe a municipal officer one-third of the contract amount just to get the job. Now I don't have enough money to complete the paving and must leave something unfinished."

So he ‘forgets' to cement the gap where the curved tiles meet the straight pavement. Brick by brick, the tiles come loose along that precise edge. Business booms: a year later, the contractor is recalled to rebuild the damaged paving.

"Everybody wins, sir," he said, with humility.

Actually, no. You lose.

You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com

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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper