Mumbai, why so angry?

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Hey Mumbai… whatsup? Howz you? Kya haal hai? Sab thik thak? Maja ma? Kem cho? Just checking up on you. For a while now, you've been my muse, the ultimate kaleidoscopic city. You've combined "old school" wonderfully with "new age". You help us conjure up nostalgia with so much ease - because of your cosmopolitan nature, you've simultaneously been able to handle the crass, with the class. You've been mass, but also minority, you've been chivalrous and curmudgeonly, you've been ill tempered, but like a cantankerous old man, the smoke passes quickly. Because of your benevolent nature, you've been party to the friendly and varied "hey boss, hey bhidu, hey bhaisaheb, hey Bawaji, hey Bhai, hey Bhau, hey Dada, hey Kaka, hey Mama, oi uncle…" - all these terms of greetings have all been heard on your streets and in your gullies, in your bylanes, in your high rises and hutments, in your shanties and your skyscrapers. You've been multi-lingual, multi-cultural, multi-coloured, multi-cuisine. By and large, you've been friendly.

But, off late, I'm sensing deep seated anger, the ability you once had to let things slide, take a deep breath, turn the other cheek. "Jaane do yaar", "accha chalo chalo", "chod na yaar", "yeh hai Bambai meri jaan" were all encompassing. And I'm now suddenly asking, have we lost that personality, is it fading away. I always thought that all 18 million of us had sort of got used to the mad Mumbai we all knew, the chaos was in our DNA, but now, dear metropolis, you're bubbling under, ready to pick a fight at the drop of a hat.

A kind of volcanic rumble, pervades our streets.

If truth be told, there are turning points in one's relationship with a city, especially one's own city. Sarosh Dastoor, aged 75, out for a walk with his wife, merely asked an aggregator cabbie to not use the pavements as a spittoon, that such a small civic request should escalate so quickly, from an exchange of words into full scale violence.

What could have been an apology or a small argument at best, ended with an image that will stay with all Mumbaikars for a long time. That of a hapless old man, being hit repeatedly, till he fell fracturing his leg, in the process. This fight was watched by passersby, some capturing it on their phones - nobody stepped up to stop the uncouth young man beat up the elderly old man, till he fell down.

The sheer lawlessness, was galling. And so it goes on littering, breaking lights, cutting lanes. There now exists a self-righteous indignation even when in the wrong, the "how dare you and who are you pull me up for my wrong doing', to the point where "wrong doing and illegality have been normalised" - where the response is "nothing will happen to me".

And this low-lying anger, lava ready to erupt, that you, the city has turned from temperate to toxic, that your under belly can't be stroked to calmness, but instead will be stoked to a smouldering cauldron. That an argument has reached a point where "I have no issue causing you grievous harm". Fisticuffs do not fear handcuffs.

Mumbai city, I'm going to end on a note of medical caution. Have you done your tests recently? Blood pressure? Lipid profile? ECG? 2D Echo? Angiogram… Boss, Bhaisaheb, Bro, we need you to maintain good health, we've exploded, mini explosions every day. But we can't have you imploding. And are you bubbling because of a system failing, a displaced anger? Chill out please.

Rahul da Cunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, filmmaker and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com