Bicycle diaries: New book by Prof. Anjaria captures Mumbai's vibrant commuters

Professor Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria’s new book infuses manifold meaning into the term cyclist, looking at Mumbai and some of its most vibrant commuters

Along with the usual barrage of cars, impatient bikers, and BEST buses hurtling past on Mumbai’s busy roads, it’s easy to miss the stray cyclist: a food service worker on their way to deliver the noodles someone’s just ordered to their office, or, if it’s early in the morning, milkmen with cans of fresh milk, to be dropped off at housewives’ doorsteps. Or the occasional schoolgirl or schoolboy.

And Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria, hailing from the US, who at one time might have been seen cycling through the city and stopping to speak to other such wheelers, as part of the research process for his book, Mumbai on Two Wheels: Cycling, Urban Space, and Sustainable Mobility (University of Washington Press), which is slated for a June 2024 release.

He’s been living in the city, on and off, since the year 2000, as his wife Ulka’s family is from Mumbai. As a researcher and associate professor of anthropology at Brandeis University, Massachusetts, Anjaria noted the lack of literature on issues of urban space and infrastructure in Mumbai, contrasted against the research available on New York city. His previous works on the city have dealt with squatting, hawkers, and the rights to public spaces. But it was something personal that spurred his interest in researching Mumbai’s niche brand of cyclists.

Jonathan Anjaria

“I had started cycling with my kids in the city, after a 25-year gap, and that got me thinking about the importance of cycling as a mode of transportation,” Anjaria recalls. “When you talk about mobility in Mumbai, for most people that means walking, cycling, or taking the train.” He says that the city is cycling-friendly, in contrast to its perception as a motorist’s domain. There are five types or genres, as he likes to call it, of cyclists: The early-morning cyclists—the bread, egg and milk delivery men, the app-based delivery workers, the kirana store delivery workers, people who commute to work by cycle, and recreational cyclists and hobbyists.

When you start cycling, he says, you experience the city in a completely different way. Anjaria’s research methodology took him pedalling along with the city’s cyclists, who took him through their daily routes. This anthropological exploration, he says, revealed that they are much safer on its chaotic roads than they would be on the streets of New York, for example. Drivers expect chaos and all sorts of obstacles to their path, so they’re wary of cyclists. This is in stark contrast to the accident rate for another kind of two-wheelers, aka motorbikes, which accounted for 44 per cent of fatalities in the country last year, as per a Ministry of Road Transport and Highways report. Low travel speeds, Anjaria says, may account for the lower accident rate among bicyclists.

What was interesting, however, to him, was the stories that cyclists carried on their backs. Anjaria’s research took him through the lanes and streets of Chembur, Bandra, Juhu, and Andheri West. Taking the ferry over to Gorai and cycling to Uttan is his favourite route. “Every cyclist has a story: I met a man with a leather bag on the back of his bike. He told me there was incense in his bag; he was an incense seller, who also made perfumes from scratch,” Anjaria recalls. “We cycled together to his home and he showed me his workshop filled with raw incense sticks and scents. He told me he could buy a bike but preferred to use a cycle, which fit into the narrow lanes and streets where he did his business.” 

Another cyclist had a bag filled with teeth—dentures, to be more exact—and was on his way to deliver them to dentists.

What urban policies and infrastructure planning misses, therefore, is viewing the city from the top-down approach of urban planning instead of the ground-level approach. One of the biggest concerns is the surface condition of the roads. Those Anjaria spoke to told him that a lack of smooth roads, potholes, drains, and missing paver-blocks were responsible for most of the accidents they experienced. Rather than focusing on re-jigging existing roads and lanes to accommodate cycle tracks, therefore, improvement in road surface conditions is paramount.

For each pre-ordered book, R415 will go towards buying free bicycles for women domestic workers in Juhu.  The distribution of cycles will be undertaken by the NGO Smart Commute Foundation, under the campaign Me Cycle Rider, helmed by Firoza Dadan, the first bicycle mayor of Mumbai. It is an ongoing campaign to donate 1,200 bicycles to women from lower-income groups in a bid to aid their mobility and cut down the waiting time lost in travelling through other means of transport, mainly buses, and thus alleviate their transport poverty. This is an approach that urban policies need to target, he says: promoting cycling by actually giving citizens the means to cycle.

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