Whose Mumbai?

Whose Mumbai?

The Open Mumbai exhibition, currently on at NGMA, is the assertion of the common man’s right to create for himself spaces that are green, ubiquitous and accessible. Hosted by the Union ministry of culture, NGMA, the Mumbai Waterfronts Centre and architect P K Das and Associates, the exhibition has drawn support from all political parties and the chief minister Prithviraj Chavan has recently given it a month’s extension.

Open Mumbai visualises Mumbai, declared in 2009 an Alpha world city, as an urban space not only well integrated but also consolidated and beautified by mangroves, rivers, nullahs, creeks, ponds, wetlands, beaches, hills, forests and forts. These are Mumbai’s bounteous natural and historical assets that are forgotten alike by the town planners and the harried Mumbaikar, whose life is severely eroded by the arduous daily commute, environmental degradation, overstressed civic amenities and sheer lack of space. In this state of affairs, a Mumbaikar gets only 1.1 sqm of open space whereas a Londoner gets 31.68 sq.m and a New Yorker, 26.4 sq.m.  Even the relatively crowded Tokyo provides 3.96 sq.m to a person). Thus, a Mumbaikar is crying out for breathing space and Open Mumbai promises him much more: it promises him a whale of a time.

Coincidentally, the Marathi equivalent of ‘having a whale of a time’ is ‘celebration of Mumbai’, an expression deeply etched into the memory of every Marathi Manoos. A popular film song of the early 60s portrays Mumbai as the abode of the Mama (maternal uncle), a fun-loving father –figure who dotes on his nieces and nephews. Batatyachi Tsaal (not Chawl) by the iconic Pu La Deshpande has remained the quintessential source of humour for middle class Marathi Manoos that only Mumbai can generate. Marathi literature abounds in taking Mumbai as the basic reference point in songs, poetry, novels, short stories and even povadas and lavnis.

Not far from NGMA is Flora Fountain, renamed Hutatma Chowk to honour the martyrs shot down in 1956 for demanding that Mumbai, with a majority of its people being Marathi speaking, be included and made the capital of the state of Maharashtra, on Central government’s officially declared principle of reorganization of states on linguistic grounds. Today the Marathi speaking population has dwindled below an estimated 42%. Most have moved away due to economic and other pressures. The umbilical cord that transmitted intellectual and emotional  nourishment from Mumbai to the Marathi Manoos has been severed. The kinship based bond between the Marathi Manoos and the metro has been hijacked by political swindlers. The dream has vanished; what remains is the dreary, atrophied existence hanging by the overhead wire that may detach itself from the pantograph any moment of the day.

This is the angst of the Marathi Manoos that perhaps will never find expression on a cosmo forum.

Loiter right

 Last week I had the pleasure of once again listening to the erudite, enthusiastic and eloquent Dr Shilpa Phadke, Assistant Professor, Centre for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), who, along with Sameera Kha and Shilpa Ranade, did pioneering work on women’s access to public spaces, encapsulated in the book Why Loiter (Penguin).

Alluringly titled ‘Unfriendly Bodies, Unfriendly Cities: Reflections on Loitering and Gendered Public Space’, the talk was organised as the Eighth Professor L. B. Kenny Endowment Lecture at the Darbar Hall of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai, where she unfolded the theme to a mostly greying audience, spiced with a few young students from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

The novelty and freshness of the theme was unchanged since I first learnt about it about a year ago. The talk highlighted the muddleheaded way in which one makes the sweeping generalisation that Mumbai offers safety and freedom to women and how academic research turns such a simplistic assumption on its head. The theme argues that “the only way in which women might find unconditional access to public space was if everyone, including those who were not necessarily friendly to women also had unconditional access.” The study questions the labelling of young men as a group, among several others, as the unfriendly bodies who intimidate women and prevent them from accessing public spaces. The study also strips the idea of ‘loitering’ of its disparaging connotation and presents it as a desirable, enjoyable and celebratory activity, creating a free and egalitarian world for women, which at the moment is a faraway dream.

At the ground level, however, unfriendly bodies lurk in unlikely places. As far as public space in local trains is concerned, women themselves advise a woman who is a disadvantaged commuter due to being old or pregnant, or with small children, to travel in the general compartment rather than in the women’s compartment, because the men not only offer her a seat, but also some private space by way of gender. Woman rarely do.

The women’s compartment, even if moderately crowded, has become not only unfriendly, but a very hostile and threatening bit of public space. Women crowd the doorway, resisting entry and exit of commuters at every station. They have devised a complicated system of booking not only seats but even standing space which ensures that a novice will remain standing till the end of her journey. They freely engage in multiple activities involving the mobile phone, eating, writing, knitting, brushing their hair or applying make-up, thrusting their elbows into the personal space of their neighbours, and causing them considerable discomfort and inconvenience. They wear clothes and ornaments that are abrasive not to themselves but to the others. They cross their legs so that the toe points offensively at the woman seated opposite. And those who are doing this are not erring in innocence, they are deliberately invasive in defiance and denial of other people’s right to equal space. Aggression and encroachment is cantankerously defended, and the aggressor wins, most of the time. Women around who are unaffected by the intrusion mostly choose to look the other way.

All these are instances of irresponsible, intrusive misuse of the scare public space in which women become hostile bodies to each other. If there is a public campaign about creating a disciplined, responsible commuting culture in the women’s compartment, it would work towards making a certain public space safe for women.