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Young, brash and oozing with the cocksure self-confidence
of a maverick money-maker, BOMBAY, or Mumbai as it's now officially known,
revels in its reputation as India's most dynamic and westernized city. Behind
the hype, however, intractable problems threaten the Maharashtran capital;
foremost among them, a chronic shortage of space. Crammed onto a narrow
spit of land that curls from the swamp-ridden coast into the Arabian Sea,
Bombay has, in less than five hundred years since its "discovery" by the
Portuguese, metamorphosed from an aboriginal fishing settlement into a sprawling
megalopolis of thirteen million people. Whether you are being swept along
broad boulevards by endless streams of commuters, or jostled by coolies
and hand-cart pullers in the teeming bazaars, Bombay always feels like it
is about to burst at the seams. The roots of the population problem lie,
paradoxically, in the city's enduring ability to create wealth. Bombay alone
generates 35 percent of India's GNP, its port handles half the country's
foreign trade, and its movie industry is the biggest in the world. Symbols
of prosperity are everywhere: from the phalanx of office blocks clustered
on Nariman Point, Maharashtra's Manhattan, to the yuppie couples nipping
around town in their shiny new Maruti hatchbacks. The flip side to the success
story, of course, is the city's much chronicled poverty. Each day, hundreds
of economic refugees pour into Bombay from the Maharashtran hinterland.
Some find jobs and secure accommodation; many more (around a third of the
total population) end up living on the already overcrowded streets, or amid
the appalling squalor of Asia's largest slums, reduced to rag-picking and
begging from cars at traffic lights. However, while it would definitely
be misleading to downplay its difficulties, Bombay is far from the ordeal
some travellers make it out to be. Once you've overcome the major hurdle
of finding somewhere to stay, you may even begin to enjoy its frenzied pace
and crowded, cosmopolitan feel. Conventional sights are thin on the ground.
After a visit to the most famous colonial monument, the Gateway of India,
and a look at the antiquities in the Prince of Wales Museum, the most rewarding
way to spend time is simply to wander the city's atmospheric streets. Downtown,
beneath the rows of exuberant Victorian-Gothic buildings, the pavements
are full of noisy vendors and office-wallahs hurrying through clouds of
wood-smoke from the gram-sellers' braziers. In the eye of the storm, encircled
by the roaring traffic of beaten-up red double-decker buses, lie other vestiges
of the Raj, the maidans. Depending on the time of day, these central parks
are peppered with cricketers in white flannels, or the bare bums of squatting
pavement-dwellers relieving themselves on the parched brown grass. North
of the city centre, the broad thoroughfares splinter into a maze of chaotic
streets. The central bazaar districts afford glimpses of the sprawling Muslim
neighbourhoods, as well as exotic shopping possibilities, while Bombay is
at its most exuberant along Chowpatty Beach, which laps against exclusive
Malabar Hill. When you've had enough of the mayhem, the beautiful rock-cut
Shiva temple on Elephanta Island - a short trip by launch across the harbour
from the promenade, Apollo Bunder - offers a welcome half-day escape. If
you're heading for Goa or south India, you'll probably have to pass through
Bombay at some stage. Its international airport, Sahar, is the busiest in
the country; the airline offices downtown are handy for confirming onward
flights, and all the region's principal air, road and rail networks originate
here. Whether or not you choose to stay for more time than it takes to jump
on a train or plane to somewhere else depends on how well you handle the
burning sun, humid atmosphere and perma-fog of petrol fumes; and how seriously
you want to get to grips with India of the late 1990s. |
