February 2009
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Mumbai: a combination of the goddess Mumba and the word ai for mother. Does the city live up to her name, asks Manil Suri
As the plane begins its descent, the twinkling lights that suddenly emerge from the darkness below are promising. Something alive, miraculous, is bursting out of the land. Then a sea of ramshackle roofs comes into view – hundreds of them rolling in waves underneath. Could this slum also be a mark of the Devi?
The conundrum deepens on the way in from the airport. Elevated highways bank gracefully through the air, but empty into narrow streets lined with slumbering pavement dwellers. Tracts of shanty huts sprout skyscrapers. Enormous billboards advertising Seiko and Honda and Sony rise above crude wall paintings. By day, when the disparity between wealth and poverty is at its most unvarnished, the idea of city as patron goddess seems even more remote. And yet the name is apt – it is the Devi’s persona that is the key to deciphering Mumbai.
The Devi, like other major Hindu deities, is not only multiarmed, but also multifaceted. She can be immaculate as Ganga and motherly as Parvati, but she can also consume her young as Kali. This is the essence of Hindu mythology – the recognition that what might seem horrifying is part of the natural cycle, multiplicity must be accepted, contrast cherished.
Mumbai embraces opposite extremes with the zeal of any good Hindu goddess. This revelation comes to me on one of my tri-annual visits. I have just watched the sun set into the Arabian Sea from the roof deck of the InterContinental Hotel. Feeling the breeze against my face, with the sounds of the city far below, I imagine I can spread my arms and glide into the open expanse. Twenty minutes later, I stand packed on a suburban train, the rush hour mass of humanity so crushing that I can hardly breathe. This, I realise, is what Mumbai doles out to millions of her children every day, just as she gives them the serenity and boundlessness of her sea.
In some ways, Mumbai is called upon to be even more subsuming than other goddesses. Her population is enormously diverse and regularly at odds on the basis of religion, language, class, caste and ethnicity. Somehow, she manages to incorporate each element into her mosaic identity. This diversity does wonders for her restaurant offerings: spicy Mangalorean crabs at Excellensea, mustard-infused Bengali hilsa at Oh! Calcutta, even an exquisite Chinese steamed pomfret with ginger and scallions at Ling’s Pavilion.
The Devi has many incarnations, and Mumbai enjoys slipping into alternative identities. Each morning she appears as Usha, the dawn – with the buildings bathed in delicate light and the streets empty save for milkmen pedalling their bicycles. At the bookstores and art galleries sprouting up all over the city, I sense her browsing over my shoulder as Saraswati, the goddess of the arts. Her most time-consuming role is as Laxmi, the goddess of wealth – all those necklaces she must try out in jewellery bazaars, not to mention supervising the many economies (both legal and underground) that run the country. Her Bollywood incarnation mesmerises city dwellers at an early age, making them lifetime supplicants at the movie palace temples where she likes to be worshipped.
For me, what’s most unforgettable is her Bombay persona: the city I was born to, the city I grew up loving, with her Queen’s Road and Flora Fountain and Victoria Terminus (all by now renamed). I read Enid Blyton and wore a tie to school, where we put on plays like Hungama, Bombay Style. When in 1995 my city was stripped of her name, I was heartbroken. Mumbai (the name in the local language of Marathi) had none of the international cachet of Bombay.
But my beloved Bombay is still alive and well. I feel her presence each time I ride the red double-decker buses, unchanged from my childhood, or eat chicken sandwiches at Gaylord’s, where my parents used to take me on Sundays. Mumbai, the all-encompassing mother goddess, has welcomed Bombay into its fold, developing a uniquely Indian personality more cosmopolitan than ever before.
Manil Suri’s latest novel, The Age of Shiva (£14.99, Bloomsbury), is available with a 25 per cent discount from bloomsbury.com/manilsuri.
British Airways flies to Mumbai from London Heathrow. Book a flight on ba.com now.
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