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REVIEW OF MAXIMUM CITY: Bombay Lost and Found from The New Straits Times, December 11, 2004
POINT BLANK: Tales of one of the greatest citiesBy Johan Jaaffar
GREATER Bombay (Mumbai) has a population of 19 million. If it is a nation by itself, it ranks 54 in the world. It will soon be inhabited by 23 million people, almost the population of Malaysia.
It is one of the most densely-populated areas in the world. In certain areas, there are one million people per square kilometre.
The air is so polluted, breathing the air is equivalent to smoking 2.5 packets of cigarettes a day.
These are some of the facts and figures in Suketu Mehta's Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. The Greater Bombay region has an annual deficit of 45,000 homes, yet 400,000 of these homes are empty.
Landlords do not want to rent them out for fear of losing them to tenants. The archaic Rent Act of 1947 is the culprit.
According to the book, half the population does not have proper toilet facilities. A film-maker, Prahlad Kak-kar, made a film called Bumbay, about shitting in the metropolis.
Two-thirds of the city footpaths are unsuitable for pedestrians.
The homeless, hawkers, vehicle owners, among others, claim the footpaths as theirs. And Bombay is notorious for its lack of parking.
Mehta opines, perhaps the war of the 21st century will be fought over parking space.
Would you believe 73 per cent of homes in Bombay consist of one room? That is where they entertain, cook, dine, sleep and make babies.
What about Bombay trains? Unbelievably congested - 10 people to a square metre. In 1990, the number of passengers in a nine-car train during rush hour was 3,408 people. In 1999, it was 4,500.
Trains kill 1,000 slum dwellers a year in Bombay. Bombay-wallahs are more fortunate on the road.
There were 319 deaths on Bombay roads in 1994. But it has nothing to with civility, road safety campaign or good policing. Roads are just too congested, nothing can move faster than a bullock-cart in some areas.
Bombay had become so helpless in its fight against the underworld, even judges resort to creepy characters to settle scores.
In 1951, there were 4.3 policemen per 1,000 people, in 1998, 2.6. A staggering 40 per cent of the police personnel live in slums. The pay and morale is low.
Many in the force are armed with .303 riffles supplied during World War II. Little wonder chances of conviction for criminal offences are down to four per cent in 2000, from 15 to 20 per cent a decade ago.
Furthermore, the state of Maharashtra (where Bombay belongs) had the highest number of custodial deaths in the whole of India. Some of the reasons: "fell from bed" and "fell on others."
But Bombay is the premier dream factory. Bollywood is bigger than Hollywood in terms of films produced and ticket sales. Every day 14 million Indians watch them in at least 13,000 cinemas all over the country.
More than one billion or 1/6th of mankind watch Indian movies the world over in a year. Bollywood is about dreams and escapism.
One director told Mehta: "We don't want any poor people in our films, we only want beauty."
So, even the best and the brightest in the industry succumb to the need to entertain and nothing else.
In a country where half the population live under the poverty line, film is the best retreat from reality. Play to the gallery.
The people working in the industry are far smarter than the products they churn out. Even Mehta was involved in the no-brainer Mission Kashmir as one of its script writers.
In a nation of 1.1 billion, 60 million homes have TV and 28 million are cabled. Remember, that is more than our entire population.
In fact, when the former President of the United States, Bill Clinton, came to Bombay, he realised that there were more TV channels in Bombay than in any US city. As many as 1,000 films, 400,000 hours of TV programming and 5,000 music titles are produced in India each year.
The Hindi film industry, opines Mehta, has always had the secularism of a brothel. All are welcome as long as they earn or make money.
Mehta's journey to Bombay was an interesting one. He was born in Calcutta, then moved to Bombay.
He grew up in the city before his parents - who were in the jewellery business - took him to New York.
He came back 21 years later to rediscover his Bombay. What a journey it was. Maximum City is one of the best books ever written about any city in the world.
He did not just observe, he got involved. And like anyone searching for a long-lost possession, he was determined to tell a gripping tale.
Mehta came back amid fears of communal violence in India. Ayodhya of December 1992 was still fresh in everyone's memory.
After the Babri Mosque was demolished, riots erupted all over India. According to official figures, 1,400 people died in Bombay.
Tension was high and distrust deep. Despite attempts by at least 240 NGOs to unite the people and various people's movements to ensure normalcy, Bombayites were scared.
But Bombay lives on. Bombay is about survival. People have to find jobs, feed their families and live together like sardines. Mehta met some of the henchmen from both communities - each claimed to have killed their "enemies." Yet most of them admitted they can survive without the other.
Bombay eventually is to the lesser mortals the vadapav ‹ the food eaten by slum dwellers, cart pullers, street urchins, the clerks, gangsters, and cops alike.
It is cheap and fast. While those living in the slums have to be content with dismal surroundings, Malabar Hill is where tycoons and film stars live.
Some parts of the city, according to Mehta, became beautiful simply because "the messy poor and their children had been kept out."
That is Bombay's power construct. So, there is a place for every one in Bombay: the prostitutes and their clients in Gulpitha, the red-light district; the notoriously poor in Madanpura; Mona Lisa at Sapphire Bar; Honey/Manoj who lives two lives as a man and a woman; Chotta Shakeel, the don in exile; Mahesh, the struggling actor; Sanjay Dutt, the actor once accused of the Bombay bombings; Ajay Lal, the policeman and Babbanji, the runaway poet from Bihar.
Mehta met them all, followed them to the apartments, shacks and footpaths.
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