A tale of three cities

A city is not just an agglomeration of assorted homosapiens that inhabit it.  A city is characterised not just by the number and height of its imposing glass and steel edifices. A city is not just wide promenades, glitzy malls and mega-slums.  A city should be  much more than all these.  A city can and must exude life and vigour.  Its inhabitants may sleep but the city itself never does.  Like a woman, every city has its own smell,  feel and texture.  You only need to gently remove the outer veil and discover the beauty within.  Over the years, I have also tried to and have managed to get a feel of what lies beneath - in case of three cities. This is a tale of three cities, three special places in each of which I have lived for quite some time.  This is a tale of Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai.

Amar Sonar Kolkata

Everyone loves to hate this city of joy - but still can't have enough of it.  Its decadence, at first sight hits you like a hard slap on the face.  Calcutta stuns our senses, scalds our innards and simply overwhelms us initially.  As we gradually get accustomed to its ferocity, Kolkata charms, seduces and ensnares us and we fall hopelessly in love with it! Like an insect  rushing towards a mothball, we fall for it.  We fall in love with the glistening Ganga meandering across its belly,  with its quaint trams, with its puchkawalas dotting the New Market in the evenings, with the Victoria in all its colonial splendour, with its imposing old mansions in Girish Park, with its hand rickshaws and a million other things.  Typical of the Stockholm syndrome, we also fall in love with its squalor, filth and muck.

While other cities just exist in brick and mortar, Kolkata not just exists - it breathes, it lives with a capital L and it thrives.  Did some one call it a dying city?  Well, if dying can be so beautiful a process, let Kolkata keep dying forever.  Kolkata exudes vitality and energy like no other city does.Even as you get over the initial shock, Kolkata takes you into the embrace of its protective arms, as a womb would envelop the foetus and you would wish you continue to remain in such warm environs forever.

Every city is only as good or bad as the people that live in it. The Bengali majority among the Kolkatans is what has made the city what it is - warm, loving, caring and affectionate.  They are always there when you need them ( and many a time also when you don't!), they astound you with their wisdom gleaned from their travels throughout India and the globe (without Bengalis domestic tourism would have ceased to exist).  A typical Bengali can be equally at ease with a Kafka, a Kareena or a Kaka;  He is proud of his city, his culture and his discerning taste for food, particularly of the piscean variety.  He is firm in his credo that what Bengal thinks today, the world will, tomorrow. He is sure that he is far ahead of the times, notwithstanding the wag's quip that he is so ahead in a circle that he actually trails the others! 

Volumes can be written about Kolkata and Kolkatans.  That would still leave volumes about the unhonoured and unsung.  Suffice it to say that if India was the jewel in the British crown, Kolkata was and continues to be the jewel of India.

Aamchi Mumbai

They call it the maximum city not without reason.  Everything about Bombay is breath-taking in scale and scope - be it its suburban rail network, its sky scrapers, its teeming millions, the opulence of Malabar Hills, its glitzy shopping malls and the number of vada pavs sold daily on the streets. If Kolkata epitomises a typical laid back and desi metaphor of chalta hai, the Mumbai metaphor is one of 'go for it, at any cost'.  Rarely anywhere else in India would such industrious people be found, who value  and worship work.  The most abused term 'work-culture'  finds its true meaning in Mumbai.  The average Mumbaikar's penchant for discipline, not only in work but in everything he does (except when jumping into a train to grab a vacant seat, when his animal instincts get the better) is legendary.  Concepts quiet alien to our Indian "we are like that only" culture - like forming a queue wherever there is more than one person, switching off the fans in a train at the last station, refraining from littering etc. are what have made Mumbai the best city to live in for many.

Enterprise, energy, resilience in the wake of adversities are synonymous with Mumbai.  This megapolis never goes to sleep.  The Mumbai suburban network is a perfect example of what Mumbai stands for - the 'never say die' attitude.  Come rain or shine, floods or blasts, the trains chug on relentlessly, transporting in a day more than the whole population of half of europe. Plying along such congested networks, what with tracks passing through dense slums and lines interspersed with so many level crossings, the motormen of Mumbai are its real heroes - all the Khans may take a back seat.

Several other real-life heroes also abound in Mumbai - the housewife from Ambarnath reporting to her office at Nariman Point, sharp at 9.30 in the morning, every day, despite everything that the daily train commute has to throw at her (experience it and you will know), the enterprising idly/dosa seller at the basement of Churchgate station, who landed in Bombay penniless  from Ramanathapuram while he was 5 and now makes much more than the Reserve Bank Governor, that wondrous tribe of dabbawallas who, till the other day, was non-existant in the mind of the average Mumbaikar but who has suddenly become their pride - just because one Gora called Prince Charles managed to spot their talent...... heroes are aplenty in Mumbai.   Each sub stratum of the Mumbai society is a hero in itself - kindness, bravery, chivalrous, hard-working, all attributes of a hero are found everywhere in each human specimen of Mumbai.  Unlike Kolkata and for that matter any Indian city, no one identifies Mumbai with Maharashtrians only.  Mumbai was made by Mumbaikars hailing from all over India.  A pot-pourrie of  a hundred languages, cultures and tastes, that is the miracle called Mumbai.

Yes, jeena yahan is a bit mushkil but where else do we go?  Mumbai is where genesis is, Mumbai is our present and Mumbai is where we would vanish into the elements. Jeena yahan, marna yahan, iske siva jaana kahan? Salaam Bombay!

Namma Chennai

Long long ago, so long ago, where no human inhabitation existed, there suddenly sprouted a small fishing village by the Bay of Bengal.  It prospered and thrived.  It begot another hamlet nearby, and then another and a large agglomeration came into being.  It assumed the name Madras.  The die-hard natives called it Chennai.  Until one day, the conflict ended and all of Madras came to be called Chennai.  Over the years, Chennai grew in geometric proportions in population and size and is now one of the largest cities in the country.  

So what? yes, what is the big deal?  That exactly is the irony.  Namma Chennai is older than most of the other big cities in India, but still Chennai seemingly has no history to brag about.  Delhi was the seat of many a great empire and had always enjoyed clout in the power corridors.  Kolkata was the seat of the great British empire till a century back.  But Chennai has nothing to bandy around.  It started off as a single village and at best it now is a large collection of villages.  It never was 'cosmopolitan' and never will be.  It always was 'conservative' and ever will be.  Its climate is insanely hot and will always be.  Given all these, why Chennai even merits a discussion? 

Because it is simple.  Chennai never went attention-seeking, but on the contrary, attracted attention and continues to.  Some of the cliches the snooty cousins of the west and the north heap on Madras have never really affected the city's progress in any real way.  Chennai is not 'cosmopolitan' because there is a serious dearth of sleek high-end cars zipping about in the streets.   Chennai is 'conservative' because there is not much public  display of kissing  and hugging (only relieving oneself is quite public in Chennai but so it is with other cities)  Chennai is 'not hep & happening' because malls here find it difficult to sell astronomically priced junk.  Ah, yes, Chennai 'does not have a night life' because its liquor outlets do not vend their wares after 10 and its denizens still believe nights are meant for sleeping.  Well, if only other cities were as conservative and boring!  Life would be much safer and easier.

But Singara  Chennai has much to offer, for the benefit of ignorant souls.    It still is the capital of music and fine-arts among the big metros.  It has its unique December music season when it witnesses the largest ever gathering at one place of great musicians of all hues.  It has a 5 km long stretch of heaven called Marina beach.  It has the Theosophical society.  It still has arguably the finest film-production infrastructure and continues to produce the largest number of films in the country. It has produced highly skilled and acclaimed film technicians and has  given the world Ilayaraja and Rahman. It has produced several Chief Ministers out of film personalities who have fared far better than what the cow-belt could ever proffer.  It has some of the finest educational institutions and hospitals.  Its infrastructure is still holding and public transport has still not gone to the dogs. It is still the only city where auto and cycle-rickshaw wallahs can be routinely seen browsing through newspapers when not carrying a fare! (show me a similar sight in Delhi or even Mumbai and I will show you a scam-free politician).

In short, Chennai is where the typical middle-class Indian would want his kids to be brought up in.  He is game to watching sex and violence on screen but in real life would yearn for the safe haven that is Chennai, for the sake of his family.  He relishes being a peeping tom in his wild dreams  but would rather prefer to be esconced in his own safe flat in a quiet neighbourhood in Chennai with his wife and kids,  where the neighbours strictly mind their business and only their business.  Because he knows Chennai is safe. Chennai is comfortable.  Chennai is laid-back, yet happening in the real sense.  And of course, Chennai is 'hot and sultry' as the latest Bollywood heroine is.  It is hot but seductive too!  Fall for it at your own peril.

Now your vote goes to which city?  Whichever way it goes, you will not regret your choice.  Every city is but a microcosm of India, every city has its own story to tell.  Our cities may not be in the same league as a London or a Paris but they can very well hold their own among competition.  Because our cities are not merely tall buildings, swanky cars and tourist sights - they are but  mirrors reflecting the spirit and vivacity of our great people.  Our cities were not built with a plan and purpose.  They evolved into their own purposes.