Now come on, wake up Bombay!

Indore loves to be outdoors Especially at night This is the first thing you notice about this Madhya Pradesh mercantile town walking around downtown bazaars like Sarafa buzzing with people of almost equal genderratio chaatshop hopping close to 3 am on any given dayThis is in sharp contrast to the rest of India which is obsessed with sleeping early and waking up early mdash having yet to discover the true joys of electricity that makes it possible to reverse the sleep cycle That said there are in fact two kinds of people and seldom the twain meet mdash morning people and night peopleThis demographic divide is deeper than we accept To the point that the only unsolicited relationship advice I ever give is for couples to check if their sleep patterns are compatible enough for a relationship to last Rest can get worked around that eventuallyLikewise there are morning cities and night cities This isnt a surprise For what are cities but people anyway By that measure Im often embarrassed when Indoris call their town Mini Bombay while for the past decade or so Ive actually envied their nightlife far more than the proverbial city that never sleepsSure like New York and very few cities in the world Bombay doesnt sleep mdash not at the same time at any rate It cant There are far too many people for all of them to hit the streets simultaneously And most are packed into pigeon holes making the footpath better for nightly respiration To paraphrase Javed Akhtar Iss sheher mein ek hi gham haiHar ghar mein ek kamra kam hai This city has just one stressEach home has a room lessYou could be stuck in a traffic jam at 3 am in Bombay and not wonder whats up This is also what makes it the city that feels safest in India Youre always surrounded by people There is hardly ever a deserted gully conducive for mortal attack Ironically governments lording over this seafarers funmetropolis have used safety as an argument against allowing places to stay open until late mdash since a heavily understaffed police would not be able to bear such civic burdenPolicetopopulation ratio is incredibly low during the day as well Its not that there are cops everywhere you look You call them during emergencies You could do the same at night on occasion even while all shopsestablishments hire private security for immediate exigenciesWhats the other thing you associate Bombay with a clicheacute and therefore true That it runs on money What do we like to do with spare money People milling around all night after work on waterfronts and apologies for walkways somehow making themselves happy through lowkey retail therapy hogging on cheap grub watching movies mdash all recessionproof preoccupations mdash equals good economicsThis is how I imagined Bombay to be And it lived up to that glorious reputation when I moved here in 200102 although my experience of nightlife essentially entailed stepping out of hectic bars Fire n Ice Athena etc shitfaced in the mornings before community breakfasts on the way home This Bombay of 200102 was still a pale shadow of the one before the 1993 blasts that turned the city on its head And yet Bombay was as playful as any in the worldWhat defied the economics of the night Morals of the day Entertainment is a bureaucratic sin and mercilessly taxed likewise but why not clamp down on it altogether This was imposed by the government of the day mdash ordained to rule over a unique city with rules of a generic stateLet alone daily banging about little outlets serving people snacks cigarettes etc late at night in an organised fashion they first came after regular pubs with cops sauntering in at 1 am to make sure the places are empty by 130 am Who were they protecting Im unsure In 19 years I have not seen a single pubbrawl in BombayThen they came after dancebars mdash the only nightlife institution worth showing off to tourists females included with women dancing to Bollywood songs like Bollywood stars in the home of Bollywood How did its closure positively impact crime rate Nobodys produced any data so far No one has to Gradually the public began to cede spaces of the night left to only work sleep work and feel like you could be in TasgaonMuch water has flowed under the bridge The progressive Shiv Sena government in 2019 passed an order to keep some malls and establishments in nonresidential areas open all night Fivestar hotels for the rich always did anywaySuperexcited I took my laptop after work close to midnight to Kurlas Marketcity to write this potentially fervent piece Entrances were open Shops were still closed There was lobby music overlaying sounds of silence in this deathly morgue for a mall Perhaps this city has been intrinsically deconditioned At least the choice for it to eventually wake up exists Will waitMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paperCatch 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