MUMBAI – CITY OF CONTRADICTIONS & CHAOS

If you are not Indian and have heard of Mumbai, it’s probably because of 2 reasons –
1. Slumdog Millionaire – the Oscar-winning movie set in the city, that celebrates the ultimate victory of good karma
2. 26/11 – the shocking terror attacks that exposed the city’s vulnerability

However, if Mumbai were to be known for only one thing, that one thing should be the resilience of its citizens. The approximately 19 million Mumbaikars, as we like to call ourselves, share a spirit that slows down or stops for no one.

Despite the shock of random shooting at a major train station, many Mumbaikars got right back on the trains the day after 26/11. In fact a lot of them travel hanging out of a crowded train just to get to work on time – a risk probably far more likely to be fatal than a terror attack. What’s more, they travel this way twice a day…because as we say in India, sab chalta hai (it all works)!

This attitude is largely why India’s primary wealth-generating city has crumbling infrastructure. We are so busy working hard to chase our personal karmas that we don’t have time to ask questions or having posed them, search for appropriate answers. Questions such as…
- Why the city that stops for no one comes to a standstill every year, in every monsoon, every time it rains continuously for over an hour?
- Why the city with the largest tax contribution doesn’t have a single road free of potholes?
- Why the small bridge to solve a small part of Mumbai’s traffic congestion took over 11 years to build and is still not complete?

After all, we are a city of professionals – we go about our own work and leave it to others to do their own. So what if our politicians define their priority jobs differently from what we’d like them to – such as…
- Changing the names of landmarks and roads to the point where it is near impossible to identify a place from its correct postal address alone
- Pitting Maharashtrians against non-Maharashtrians, a concept that should have no place in secular India and cosmopolitan Mumbai, whose growth is driven by the confluence of different communities and cultures

I love Mumbai – every Mumbaikar does, but sadly, we love the city in our own selfish ways. We want the city to improve in many ways but we feel that our part in this ends with pointing fingers & finding flaws.

Will we ever wake up to our responsibilities in a city that never sleeps?