Man From Matunga

Yes­ter­day, five days after the Mum­bai Marathon, I spent a day in Delhi. Delhi has become an impres­sive city. The new air­port ter­mi­nal, the roads, the metro, the hotels, restau­rants, night-life, the grad­ual shift to becom­ing the art and cul­ture cap­i­tal of the coun­try, have all in their own way con­tributed to Delhi’s emer­gence as per­haps “the city” in India at this point in time.

I remem­ber walk­ing with a friend to Con­naught place at 7.30 at night, from a hos­tel 10 min­utes away, in 1983. When we didn’t return by 8.30PM (we were at Nirula’s hav­ing burg­ers), a search party was sent for us. Delhi has come a long, long way since then.

Ever so often, an arti­cle crops up in some paper or mag­a­zine talk­ing about which city is bet­ter, Mum­bai or Delhi. It all depends on who the writer is and where his/her loy­al­ties lie. Typ­i­cally, those who are for Mum­bai, talk about it being the finan­cial cap­i­tal, how it is more cos­mopoli­tan, how Bol­ly­wood and Tele­vi­sion live here (hon­estly, I wouldn’t shed a tear, if the enter­tain­ment indus­try were to relo­cate to Delhi) and how Mum­bai­ites are more polite when order­ing food in restau­rants. Those who extol Delhi’s virtues talk about all the stuff I’ve men­tioned in the first para­graph and the fact that on any given day there are more events of all kinds hap­pen­ing in Delhi than any­where else in the country.

So what makes Mum­bai spe­cial for peo­ple like us! (In no par­tic­u­lar order…)

1. The Mum­bai Marathon
Once a year, it is a dif­fer­ent kind of high! This year, 9876 peo­ple fin­ished the half-marathon, 1450 of them over the age of 45. Run­ning with thou­sands of peo­ple, all com­pet­ing with them­selves, not each other, is an expe­ri­ence dif­fi­cult to put into words. Yes Delhi has the Air­tel Marathon, but it doesn’t really count. The SCMM in Mum­bai is the place to be at!

2. The Sea
This is nature’s gift to us. Three weeks ago, early in the morn­ing, I landed up run­ning along the Gate­way of India up to Radio Club. It was bliss! We may screw up our beaches, but the pres­ence of the sea, even if we don’t see it for days on end, is per­haps the most impor­tant thing that makes Mum­bai more live­able in and bear­able than any other city in the coun­try. I just wish we could take care off and use the sea better!

3. No Autos in the Island City
Every city in this coun­try has been ruined by the pres­ence of autos, Delhi included. While at one time, autos were a cheap way of get­ting around, the time has come that they dis­ap­pear. That a good part of Mum­bai is spared their agony is some relief!

4. BEST buses
No other city has such an iconic, well-oiled sys­tem run­ning effi­ciently and more or less on time! The buses are by and large clean, the dri­vers, usu­ally safe and the fares, reasonable.

5. Doc­tors
Sure, Delhi now has large, fancy, state-of-the-art cor­po­rate hos­pi­tals and is now the leader in liver trans­plants, etc., but when patients, includ­ing those liv­ing in Delhi are stuck after third or fourth opin­ions, Mum­bai still is the last word in a large num­ber of sub­spe­cial­ties. I am not sure how long this will last, but for the time being, we are the city to come to, if things get too com­pli­cated!
If you have other thoughts or points of rel­e­vance, let me know!