Hear hear

I am happy to note that some of the points I make about the character of Bombay resonate in Gaurav Sabnis's post.



Already, this resilience thing has been summarily criticized in the newspapers. But the despotic nature of Bombay is not acknowledged by many. So, comforts me that people agree with me.



Gaurav writes


...There is a give and take relationship between every metropolis and its residents, Bombay just takes and I have had the opportunity of living in all of India's metropolises and Bangalore. There is a tacit understanding and acceptance of the fact that the city is the boss. You have to be subjugated to it. It almost borders on slavery and that too no ordinary one. I call the people here superhuman because of the immunity they have developed to the hardships they are put to. Commuting daily to work is an ordeal that is an affront to human dignity...

...New entrants will find it abhorrent and their faces would more than give away their feeling of impotent anger. Yet slowly but surely they will push shove and jostle and find some ground beneath their feet and something to clutch on to. Millions of people who live in this city have no other choice but to fight and survive this city and live, just like the gladiators of Rome. Those who survive, live. Those who succeed to get a ticket into their own islands are glorified.




I wrote here
...It is anyway a ghost town, a megalomanic city whose soul is long dead. In the quest for lucre, people were trampling on others, fighting for space, being inhumane or indifferent, just barely surviving. The city had itself taken a form of a uncontrollable monster, with its own mind, surreptiously enslaving its people - making them think that its alright to slog, suffer, scour, bear, beg, grovel now, because there will be a better tomorrow when they will be free from all this. Of course, there is no tomorrow for Mumbai. There never was. Those who realise what there were trapped in, work harder, just so that they can get out of it. And those who can't, romanticize the misery...


But rather than my drastic and destructive plan, Gaurav suggests a less drastic action - a revolt.


Mumbai is revolting anyway!!