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MUMBAI. FRIDAY, JULY 17, 2015
CELEBRATING OUR TENTH ANNIVERSARY IN MUMBAI
8-PAGE SPECIAL
LET’S RECLAIM OUR CITY
CHHATRAPATI SHIVAJI TERMINUS, HT PHOTO
HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE THIS CITY? And if you do, how can you not act to save it from its enemies within? BY INVITATION
KIRAN NAGARKAR
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was born in Bombay five years before we won independence. I doubt if I understood what the word meant but it was obviously a very special day, for my father unfurled the new Indian flag above our door and took my older brother and me out at night to see the litup Victoria Terminus station and municipal corporation building and from there to Flora Fountain and the Prince of Wales museum. There were thousands out on the streets and truckloads of people zoomed past singing patriotic songs. It was a joyous time and even a five-year-old could feel that this beautiful city was entering a new age. The air I breathed was full of hope. Those were the days. The BEST buses didn’t have numbers but letters of the alphabet. Which meant that including the Ltd. buses, I guess there were at the most twenty-six bus routes that connected the different parts of the city. Bandra and Sion were where Bombay ended as far as I was concerned.
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Bombay was my city as it was of another three or four million people. Imagine, we were part of the dowry the Portuguese gifted to the Prince of Wales. For the longest time we were peripheral to the British colonial project. It was just good luck that the British were a trading people and ports were central to their mercantile ambitions. At some point Calcutta lost its importance, the capital moved to Delhi
any part his own country.) Nevertheless, Mumbai continued on its rapid march forward. Twenty million people. At least six hundred bus routes. Mumbai boasts the most important stock exchange in the country. Mumbai’s GNP is perhaps the highest in the subcontinent. Without doubt it is the financial and commercial capital of the country. The city municipality’s budget is higher than that of most states in India. Apartments in the city can go for as much as a hundred crores. Let’s not forget Mumbai is also Bollywood and Bollywood is the heartland of our dreams, our macho fantasies, our subconscious, our warped sexual repressions and gender prejudices, our mainline culture.
and Bombay-Mumbai began its ascendancy to being the premier port. It was also in the process of becoming the industrial hub of the subcontinent. We had more cotton mills than even Ahmedabad and, come independence, the rise of Bombay was meteoric. (Don’t forget that Gujarat as we know it today was part of the Bombay presidency.) The Parsis, Marwadis, Sindhis, Punjabis, Gujaratis, Sardarjis were the business, trading and entrepreneurial communities who were the great drivers of the economy. It was an amazing cosmopolitan mix which was enlightened by the remarkable Maharashtrian reformist culture that had produced visionaries like Gandhiji’s teacher, Gopalkrishna Gokhale, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, Jyotiba Phule, Ramabai Ranade, Maharshi Karve, Laxmibai Tilak and so many others. Bombay’s arms were always open and everybody was welcome. In that sense Bombay and the U.S. of A. were kindred spirits. How can you not love this city? The most glorious thing about it is that we are girdled by water. Front, back, left, right, the sea’s everywhere. But that’s not all; we also have that other gift of the gods, the monsoons. Ask any Bombayite and she will tell you there’s nothing in the world to beat the sea’s romance with the city in the rainy season. Five- and six-metre waves whoosh over into the sky and it seems like every single Mumbaikar is packed tight on the parapet of Marine Drive to greet this incredible dance of water.
WHO OWNS MUMBAI?
The division of the country on linguistic lines was exploited by regional parties in Maharashtra to introduce the concept of the alien. (A most bizarre concept, that. How can an Indian be an alien in
WHAT MAKES IT ‘MUMBAI’ Festivals that spill out onto the streets; food that’s like no other >> P2
ASK YOURSELF JUST ONE QUESTION: WHO OWNS THIS CITY? THE NEFARIOUS TRIAD OF DEVELOPERS, POLITICIANS AND MAFIA, OR YOU AND ME?
DREAM CATCHERS On our wishlist: Decent roads, some tolerance, fewer bans >> P3
The most powerful and rapacious force in the city, as we all know, is the real-estate developers’ lobby financed by the politicians and mafia with their bottomless black-money accounts. Every little bit of open space is gobbled up by the ubiquitous triad of real-estate developers, politicos and the underworld. There was a great deal of hope that the new government bosses might be a shade better than the previous ones. Well, we Bumbaiwalas never seem to learn. As we have discovered, the municipal authorities may have given permission for just fifteen or twenty storeys of a particular building but the builder can exceed that limit and build another five, seven or more with impunity. After all, the difference between legal and illegal is just a few crores under the table. As of this moment the government is seriously considering regularising fifty thousand buildings in Mumbai which exceed the allotted number of floors. Truly our elected rulers are the most compassionate lot on the subcontinent. But the largesse gets even larger. It looks as if the floor space index (FSI, for short) may very likely go up, don’t hold your
breath, by a hundred per cent.
build, build, and build. Amen.
Over a hundred thousand flats lie empty and yet the prices never come down; instead, new ever-more-expensive, walledin super-high-rises are put on the market and advertised every day on the glossiest possible paper while anywhere between forty to sixty per cent of the city’s population lives on the pavements and in slums.
I remember my brother telling me that sarcasm is the weapon of the losers and the hopeless. Well, I’ll be damned if along with 19.99 million of Mumbai’s denizens, I am going to give up the fight for this beautiful city of ours. Ask yourself just one question: who owns this city? That nefarious triad, or you and me? No, Mumbai did not betray its people. We let down our beautiful city. Come, let’s take back our city. Bring everything to a standstill till the politicians of every hue realise that we mean business.
Sometimes one can be forgiven for wondering if the good denizens of Bombay are in a perpetual comatose state. Think about it, eighty-five percent of the city’s drinking water is laced with leaked sewage. The malnutrition rates for children in the city hover around sixty per cent; a rate that UNESCO considers genocidal. Despite the presence of the sea, the quality of air is just a bit better in Mumbai than in Delhi, which can now boast of having twice the pollution of Beijing. We not only have one of the largest slums in Asia, we take foreign visitors on tours there as if it were a world heritage site. The endemic water shortage problems have only grown worse. Obviously the poor are the worst sufferers since the rich can afford to engage water tankers, but even this view is skewered. How come nearly seventy years after winning independence, the most prosperous city in the country still can’t look after the most basic needs of its people, rich or poor?
MUMBAI, MERI JAAN
Just a few years ago a visionary environment minister had the brilliant idea that four or five of the remaining lungs of Mumbai, like the racecourse, should be opened up for real-estate development. It was a brilliant idea but it didn’t go far enough. It takes a genius like me to open up the field altogether. Why waste invaluable space on roads, expressways, highways. Anyway you can hardly move on most roads most of the time. Go ahead,
GOOD, BAD, DIFFERENT Here’s to the sea link, pop-ups and the Rs 200-crore club >> P6
Let me cite just two examples. Some years ago, a school located just beyond the flyover on Peddar Road suddenly declared that it was going to close down because it was in a parlous state of disrepair. Everybody knew that the only reason for this announcement was that the owners wanted to develop the land for a huge highrise. Well, the parents had a little bit of a surprise for both the owners and the government. They got together and halted all traffic. Nothing would make them budge. Ultimately the government caved and the school is still going strong. The other example is very recent. The denizens of Bandra pulled off an amazing victory over the hawkers’ lobby, one of the strongest in the city, and the government was forced to leave many areas hawker-free. Make no mistake. None of us is naïve enough to think that we can beat the triad that easily. Oh, it’s going to be long, long fight. But hey, our home, our city, is in dire danger. It will be a long and arduous struggle. However, if every one of the 19.99 million Mumbaikars joins hands, we can do it. Yes, we can. And we will take our city back.
(Kiran Nagarkar’s forthcoming novel is RIP Ravan and Eddie. He lives in Mumbai)
GONE... TOO SOON? Victorias, PCOs, Samovar. A look at icons lost over the past decade >> P7
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HINDUSTAN TIMES, MUMBAI FRIDAY, JULY 17, 2015
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10 THINGS THAT DEFINE THE CITY
CELEBRATING OUR TENTH ANNIVERSARY IN MUMBAI
WHAT MAKES IT ‘MUMBAI’ CORNERSTONES From snaking queues at Lalbaugcha Raja to the good old vada pav, some things never change 01 | THE STOCK MARKET
05 | GANESHOTSAV
FINANCIAL CAPITAL’S MASCOT
GANPATI BAPPA, MORE, YEAH
The Gateway of India may be used to represent Mumbai on fridge magnets, but if the country’s financial capital were to look for a worthy symbol, it would have to be the Bombay Stock Exchange building on Dalal Street. Legend has it that south Asia’s oldest stock market started in the 1850s, under a banyan tree, as a gathering of five men (four Gujaratis and a Parsi, not surprisingly). Since then, you could trace the city’s growth and fortunes as a business hub by tracing the graph of the BSE. It would show the joy of the bullish sprees, the despair of slumps, wars, scams and unrest. It also bears the city’s scars — including those from one of Mumbai’s darkest days, March 12, 1993, when a bomb went off in the basement of the BSE.
ILLUSTRATIONS: SIDDHANT JUMDE
02 | STREET FOOD
WHERE SCHEZWAN MEETS DOSA A tourist in London must try the pie and mash; one in Paris must try the crepes; in Mumbai, you have to have the vada pav. It’s a simple, deep-fried spiced potato patty in a bun, but no two varieties taste the same. No wonder stalls battle for supremacy, and any Mumbaiite worth her green chutney will defend her favourite. Add a quick cutting chai, and you have a cheap and cheerful evening snack. Or, look beyond the vada pav, bhel puri and pani-puri to the more innovative stuff — cheese Schezwan dosa, Manchurian dosa, Chinese bhel (this neonorange creation is only for those with invincible digestive systems). If that isn’t fusion cuisine, we don’t know what is.
On normal days, we may be an impatient lot, honking our way through traffic and cursing trains that are slow by even a minute. But during Ganeshotsav, as gigantic statues make their way slowly to their pandals, we not only wait, but also offer a quick prayer. For the hardcore Mumbaiite, the year isn’t complete without a visit to Lalbaugcha Raja, even if this means standing in a queue that snakes all the way out of the narrow lane and out on to the main road. More than anything, the festival is a leveller. In a city of gross economic inequality, it brings rich and poor together on the streets, in numbers that have to be seen to be believed. And on visarjan day, as the giant Ganpatis make their way to the sea, the whole city watches agape.
06 | TOWNIES AND THE ISLAND CITY
OH MY GOD, MALAD!? In 2013, high-street brand Forever 21 opened its first Mumbai store — in Malad. The internet threw up a meme of a lemur (representing a ‘townie’) saying, “Babe… I go to Singapore more often than I go to Malad”. Here are the clichés: the south Mumbai, or SoBo, resident has lived in Mumbai all their life but never taken a train or a rickshaw, and thinks Bandra is the edge of the city. We all know at least one person who fits the description. But Andheri and BKC the new hotspots, and the sea link has connected the city like never before; so the Malabar Hill resident must venture into the wild, wild ‘burbs’.
03 | ART DECO
04 | DAHI HANDI
08 | THE MONSOON
TRAVEL BACK IN TIME
RISING TO THE OCCASION
WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS
Stand in front of Eros or Liberty cinema and try to shut everything out but the buildings. The sleek fonts in bas relief, the grandiose geometric patterns, the Indian figures of cows, farmers, a woman carrying harvested corn — all in patterns that draw on Greek and Egyptian styles. They transport you to the 1930s. Art Deco was to that decade what glass buildings are to today. The architectural style can be spotted all over Mumbai, but is concentrated in the Fort and Marine Drive areas. Its origins are western, as are those of the modern skyscraper. But they make the city distinctive in a way glass and concrete never will.
In Mumbai, this festival — which recreates the antics of baby Krishna, stealing butter from an earthen pot — is much more than child’s play. In every neighbourhood, ‘Govindas’ start practising weeks in advance for the complicated human pyramids, putting the eldest and the strongest at the base, and leaving the lightest to make the climb. Over the years, the dahi handi festival has evolved into a competitive sport of sorts, with big prizes involved and some mandals even seeing Bollywood and Marathi actors participate. The mounting annual toll of injuries saw the courts rule last year that children under 12 could no longer participate, but that has done little to dampen the enthusiasm of the rest of the city’s revellers.
April is the cruellest month, Eliot said. We say it’s got to be May, when the sun bakes our parched, dusty city and we can’t wait for the relief of June and the rains it brings. And then it begins, not in irresolute drizzles but in a relentless downpour. Like any constant companion, over the following months it brings tremendous joy and days of utter pain. Air-conditioners are switched off at long last, the city suddenly turns green, and photos of frosted windows go up on Instagram, hashtagged #MumbaiRains. By day four and five, of course, you can count on the road in front of Hindmata to be submerged in knee-high water, and for the Harbour line to have thrown up its hands in despair. #MumbaiRains indeed.
09 | THE MUMBAIITE’S ATTITUDE
TIME FOR SOME ‘JUGAAD’ If you’ve lived in Mumbai for anything over six months, chances are you’ve picked up some of the street lingo, and attitude. You’re probably addressing the cab driver as ‘Boss’ or ‘Dost (Friend)’, and jumping into empty trains out of sheer habit. Of course, there is the good and then there’s the bad. Tell off the guy spitting paan onto a wall, and he’ll say “Chhod na, kya farak padega? (Let it go. What difference does it make?)”. But it’s also a city where the work gets done, even if means someone has to do a little bit of ‘jugaad’ to see it through.
07 | DABBAWALAS
BOX-ING CHAMPIONS OF THE CITY In Ritesh Batra’s award-winning film, The Lunchbox, the dabba Ila makes for her husband gets delivered to someone else. You know the chances of an error like that? One in 6 million. As a 2010 study by the Harvard Business School states, “the Mumbai-based Dabbawala organisation” achieves incredibly high service performance: “6 sigma equivalent or better”. Over a hundred years old, the network of 5,000-odd dabbawalas now delivers roughly 200,000 hot meals a day, from homes to offices, on time, using an elaborate but efficient coded system. In a city that thrives on efficiency, this is one of those ideas that sets the benchmark.
10 | LOCAL TRAINS
THE ULTIMATE CHAMPION We’re a city on the run. And it’s the Mumbai local — our veritable lifeline — that keeps us running. Every day, it carries a staggering 7.5 million commuters, making it one of the busiest public transport networks in the world. But, beyond the figures, beyond the routine of twelve (or nine) metal boxes running from one end of a long track to another, the Mumbai local is a microcosm of the city itself. We spend a significant part of our lives on them; play cards, make friends, chop vegetables, sing songs, and fall in love to the sound of their clattering wheels. They move fast because we need to move fast; they do their best to keep working in the heaviest of downpours — because we need to do the same. And every day, they magically pack in more than they were built to hold. And that’s just as true of Mumbai.
H I NDUSTAN T I M ES , M U M BA I F R IDAY, JULY 1 7, 2 0 1 5
10 THINGS WE’D LIKE TO SEE
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CELEBRATING OUR TENTH ANNIVERSARY IN MUMBAI
WHAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF A MODEST WISH LIST Decent roads, some tolerance, and the freedom to choose what we want to eat. That’s not too much to ask for, is it?
01 | AFFORDABLE HOUSING
A NICE (LITTLE) PLACE OF ONE’S OWN
05 | BETTER ROADS, DRAINS THAT WORK
BREAKING NEWS: ALL POTHOLES FIXED
There’s a famous sketch by the late Mario Miranda: It shows a family, new to the city, enquiring about cheap accommodation, and a roomful of agents laughing. Real-estate rates in Mumbai have only continued to rise, ever more sharply, to the point where the price for buying or renting even the tiniest of apartments has begun to sound like a cruel joke. If it was only south Mumbai back in the day, the ‘in’ crowd rushing to Bandra and Andheri has meant skyrocketing rents there as well. High-end residential projects are promising ostentatious affairs like mini Eiffel towers, Venice-like canals, and ‘11 swimming pools’. But we hope someone thinks of the middle-class family of four squeezed into a studio apartment, and builds something for them too.
We Mumbaiites understand space crunch better than anyone else, so we don’t dream of wide roads like the ones in Delhi. We just want roads that don’t resemble the surface of the moon. If the interiors of Rajasthan can have proper, metalled roads, surely the BMC must be capable of giving the commercial capital streets
that don’t wash away with the first showers every June. With a budget of Rs 2,500 crore for road improvements, surely we can afford more than paver blocks. And for a city with just two seasons — wet and dry — surely we deserve better drainage. Here’s hoping for a well-drained Milan Subway and Hindmata someday.
ILLUSTRATIONS: CHETAN PATIL
02 | AC TRAINS
06 | FEWER BANS
KEEP IT COOL
07 | MORE PARKS AND GARDENS
MORE GREEN, LESS GREY WAITER, WE’LL HAVE THE BEEF, PLEASE
The idea of an air-conditioned local train was first proposed in 2002. In typical Mumbai style, a decade has passed, and it has remained just that — an idea. Railway ministers have come and gone, but the current one, Suresh Prabhu, has promised to make them a reality by October. If that does indeed happen, it will transform the way we travel. We can expect the rush-hour commute to be no less manic, and to still be pressed up against the next person’s belly, or armpit. But air-conditioning will make it all so much more bearable. Here’s looking at you, Mr Prabhu.
03 | FREE WI-FI ACROSS THE CITY
LOGGED IN, 24X7 In July 2013, then mayor Sunil Prabhu spoke about the BMC’s plan to implement free wi-fi across the city. Even now, we seem far from having such a system in place. Free wi-fi, or muni wi-fi (because a local municipal body provides it) is a reality in several cities around the world. Cities like Mountain View in California and Santa Clara in Silicon Valley have it, so do London, Stockholm, Paris and Seoul. Even some areas in Indian cities — Park Street in Kolkata, Khan Market in New Delhi, MG Road and Brigade Road in Bangalore — have free wi-fi. If it does happen, it will mean significantly lower cellphone bills for us all. Of course, we’ll have to be prepared to have streets full of people walking into each other while staring at their phones.
Mumbai is India’s most cosmopolitan city. People of various ethnicities, from various parts of the world, call the city home. And yet there is a discordance between the people on the street and those making the rules. Even as the well-travelled Mumbaiite embraces cuisines from around the world, beef gets banned back home. As we strive to make movies that will leave their mark on the international stage, the censor board says we can’t say ‘Bombay’ in a song, can’t use cuss words, can’t watch Hollywood films or American TV shows without a series of beeps and edits. We say do away with it all, stop treating us like children, and let us be the judge of what’s good for us.
When we tell our friends in other cities about the rents we pay, they tend to choke on their food. Yet our windows look out onto other windows, and our neighbourhoods have no space for kids to play, or adults to go for a stroll. In a concrete-choked city, with leafy suburbs giving way to unremarkable skyscrapers, there is a pressing need to maintain
the gardens we have, and create new ones. Spaces like Hyde Park and Central Park define global cities like London and Paris, giving people space to relax, meet, stay fit, host cultural activities, even demonstrate without disrupting traffic. There is hope, though. Maybe the new Pramod Mahajan Garden in Dadar is just the beginning.
08 | MORE PUBLIC TOILETS, DUSTBINS
GETTING THE BASICS RIGHT First there was the ‘Clean Mumbai, Green Mumbai’ campaign, started in the mid1980s. Then, in 2013, the municipal corporation rebranded it ‘Majhi Mumbai’. But beyond creating alliterative slogans, little actual work has been done. The lack of public toilets in a city of over 20 million is alarming. The state of the toilets that do exist is more alarming still. In a city where citizens are encouraged not to litter, the chances of finding a decent dustbin are as remote as your chances of finding a postbox. Someday perhaps we will realise that a modern city isn’t about cafés and skyscrapers, but about these basic amenities.
09 | 24X7 NIGHTLIFE
PARTY ALL NIGHT
04 | LESS PREJUDICE
NARROW NO MORE You only need to go house-hunting in Mumbai to realise just how much prejudice surrounds you. ‘Are you a bachelor?’ ‘Are you Muslim’ ‘Are you a non-vegetarian? (sic)’. These are the qualifiers for finding a decent place to rent in a city that prides itself on its cosmopolitanism. We hope, someday, that the city that worships Khans on a movie screen will also rent their houses out to Khans. And that the courts, and our narrow mindsets, will learn to look beyond people’s sexual orientation so they don’t have to live, hang out and go about their daily lives surreptitiously. Here’s hoping for a wiser, more mature, truly cosmopolitan city.
Mumbai never sleeps, they say. Back in the day, that was true of its nightlife as well. This was before the 1.30 am deadline came into being, and before anyone bothered to enforce it. In February this year, the move towards a 24x7 nightlife came from unlikely quarters. The Shiv Sena was once known to ‘teach’ partygoers how to behave; in its new avatar, Yuva Sena chief Aditya Thackeray is gunning for pubs and bars to stay open all night. It was met with enthusiasm from the youth, and opposition from residents’ associations in Bandra and Colaba. CM Devendra Fadnavis seemed convinced, as did police commissioner Rakesh Maria. But the courts called last orders on the plan by asking the government how it planned to ensure women’s safety.
10 | PUBLIC LIBRARIES
READING ROOM FOR ALL In the heart of New York stands a massive Beaux Arts-style building that the city prides itself on. It’s the New York Public Library — a space where people can access rare books and information (the kind a Wikipedia search may not throw up). London has libraries scattered across its sprawl. The one in Delhi, though nowhere as elegant, is
also a valuable resource. Now, wouldn’t it be nice if our city too had at least one such public space? A place where you could walk in, borrow books, read or work on a computer? A space that would be more inclusive, culturally and economically, than the coffee shops in tony neighbourhoods with their Iced Frappe Talls and MacBooks?
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A DECADE OF YOUR CITY AND YOU
CELEBRATING OUR TENTH ANNIVERSARY IN MUMBAI
CELEBRATING OUR TENTH ANNIVERSARY IN MUMBAI
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HT SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAMME For the past five years, HT has awarded scholarships to 50 of Mumbai’s brightest young minds, every year. From schools across the city, 10 students each from Classes 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 are chosen based on all-round assessment of academics, extra-curricular activities, community service and an essay.
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MUMBAI MATTERS MAKING A DIFFERENCE A look at some of the most hard-hitting campaigns we have run in our ongoing effort to voice your concerns, address your issues and connect Mumbai
The final 50 winners are chosen after an interview with HT’s senior editors. Each of these winners receives Rs50,000 to further their education. The first year of the programme saw more than 27,000 applications. This year, the programme engaged with 300 schools and received 77,389 applications. The process culminates with an awards function, where the scholarships are presented.
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HT FOR MUMBAI AWARDS The HT for Mumbai Awards are an annual event held to recognise the work of individuals and organisations effecting change in Mumbai.
To help you plan your special day, we offered detailed guides to help you explore Mumbai, try out something new, and tell you what to see and do with your loved ones.
Urban planners, a furniture trader who honours the dead, a pioneering theatre group, a hockey coach, a naturalist, organisations dedicated to empowering women and a society for wildlife conservation have all been celebrated over the past two years.
For the past six years, HT has been at the forefront of letting you know the status of the city’s monsoon preparedness, before the rains arrive. Every year, a team of HT reporters, along with a panel of experts picked by us, conducts an audit of 10 major and minor nullahs and five major roads, rate the civic body’s preparedness on a scale of 10 and suggest ways in which things can be improved. The ratings are based on the assessment of the work done and the existing condition of the spot. Our mailboxes are flooded with responses and suggestions each year, making the Monsoon Audit campaign a crucial one for us because it has you, the reader, at its heart.
Hindustan Times’ award-winning campaign, Make Mumbai Safer for Women, has consistently highlighted the women’s safety issue by conducting audits at railway stations, raising public awareness and even petitioning the state government.
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Started in December 2011 with an HT-Akshara survey of 4,225 women, 90% of whom said they felt unsafe in public places, the campaign has since gained tremendous traction. The railway stations’ safety audit, in collaboration with women’s rights group Akshara, was conducted in September 2013 through safety walks twice a day. This was followed by an Akshara-Change.org petition, supported by HT, being presented to then CM Prithviraj Chavan. The charter of demands was signed by 24,000 people. For the past several years, HT has, through special stories and packages, consistently continued its effort to make the city safer for women.
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Finally, on D-Day, there were dance sessions, helicopter rides, treks, star-gazing sessions, dessert making and craft festivals so that you could step out and have a blast.
TOP SCHOOLS SURVEY Our exhaustive survey has ranked Mumbai’s schools, based on 18 parameters, for the past five years. Along with rankings, we profiled top schools in each zone, followed by a series of articles that captured key education trends, all of which was aimed at making your decision on selecting your child’s school easier. Over the years, we have refined the methodology, to reflect our deep understanding of the issues and by incorporating suggestions from readers. The series helps not only newcomers to Mumbai, but also parents who have lived here all their lives and want to be closely involved with their children’s lives and future.
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We received hundreds of responses daily over a couple of months. The worst cases were selected and photographs were published in your newspaper every day. HT informed the authorities concerned and got them to act. And to make sure they did a good job, we followed up and even published photos of the areas they cleaned. In some cases, we picked up the broom and got to work in an effort to clean our city.
HT MUMBAI BLUEPRINT – LET’S GET IT RIGHT Planning for the future development of a city like Mumbai, which is splitting at its seams, is of vital importance, and when the civic body’s draft development plan (DP) for the next 20 years fell short of your expectations, we took up the issue. Through a series of stories under our HT Mumbai Blueprint — Lets Get it Right campaign, we not only highlighted the errors and discrepancies in the DP, but also made your voice heard in the corridors of power. After regular reports on the issue for close to four months, the authorities concerned finally acted and the proposed draft was scrapped. As the civic body is set to begin the process to formulate a new DP, your newspaper is sure to walk the extra mile with you to plan a better Mumbai.
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HT TALKING POINT – ON THE WATERFRONT HT initiated the debate on how the innovative use of hundreds of acres liberated along the eastern seafront — equivalent to seven Marine Drives — could dramatically transform Mumbai. A series of stories and packages, under the campaign HT Talking Point — On the Waterfront, examined the possibilities and pitfalls of the mega plan. Suggestions were sought from readers and the best responses found a place in your newspaper. Experts and politicians spoke and wrote on the issue in a bid to redefine and renew our space-starved city, providing Mumbaiites with much-needed open spaces and other public infrastructure.
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HT CLEAN MY MUMBAI Launched concurrently with the government of India’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan, the HT Clean My Mumbai campaign asked Mumbaiites to locate dirty areas around them and write in to us with photographs.
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To help ease your commute, HT started the Unclog Mumbai campaign, where we chose stretches in the city that are especially arduous to be on, looked at reasons why they are in a mess, and with help from urban planners and experts, sought solutions to make your journey comfortable. Within a month of launching the campaign, officials responsible for Mumbai’s roads accepted suggestions made by HT’s panel of experts and promised to take a series of steps to implement them. We persisted and the authorities acted — there was realignment of traffic movement at a junction, tenders were invited for a junction improvement plan and the police proposed a new penalty system for traffic offenders.
On behalf of the city and its people, we acknowledge the work of these agents of change, who have toiled selflessly to help make Mumbai a better place to live in.
HT NO TV DAY It’s been four years since HT first invited Mumbaiites to turn off their TVs and rediscover their city, on HT’s No TV Day. The response in the first year took us by surprise; the response since then has been even more heartwarming, prompting us to celebrate HT No TV Weekend this year.
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HINDUSTAN TIMES, MUMBAI FRIDAY, JULY 17, 2015
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10 WAYS OUR CITY HAS CHANGED
CELEBRATING OUR TENTH ANNIVERSARY IN MUMBAI
THE GOOD, BAD AND DIFFERENT TWISTS & TURNS It’s hard now to imagine the city without its sea link, pop-up restaurants and Rs 200-cr blockbusters. And yet a decade ago, these didn’t exist
01 | OUR COMMUTE
05 | BAL THACKERAY IS DEAD
CONQUERING EARTH, LAND AND AIR
A PARTY LOSES ITS ROAR
There was a time not so long ago when Mumbai’s cityscape comprised streets, railway tracks, buildings, and the odd tree. Not any more. Look up now, pretty much anywhere in the city, and your view of the sky is likely to be obstructed by an overhead conduit of some sort — a skywalk or under-construction Metro link, a flyover, monorail link or freeway. Having exhausted our surface area, we’ve taken to the air, in a manner of
When he roared, the city shuddered. At the crook of a finger, he could summon enraged masses and unleash a fury of violence. Bal Thackeray never held public office, yet there has been no Mumbai politician quite as commanding. In fact, his boots were so big that it has been impossible for the party he founded, the Shiv Sena, to fill them. Today, strike calls go largely unheeded; Matoshree is no longer a Mumbai nerve centre; internal squabbling has seen stalwarts leave, and the party’s
speaking. Next up, tunnels underground, to accommodate the ever-growing number of cars and commuters. So the daily commute is no longer a humdrum bustrain-bus ride. It’s a sweeping, swirling, many-splendoured thing of new-age, highspeed links. That’s the good news. The bad news is that many of us can no longer afford to live any closer than Belapur so the commute is either as long, or longer.
06 | HOW WE PLAY
02 | T2 AND THE NEW ATC TOWER
OF ROOFTOP PARKS AND INDOOR TURFS
FINALLY, FLYING HIGH Mumbai’s airport used to be little more than an undignified exit. Then the GVK group roped in curator Rajeev Sethi, who turned the new terminal, T2, into one of the country’s largest art museums, packing it with painstakingly restored wooden pillars, bespoke frescoes, and samples of ancient Indian craft forms. The new terminal and the sleek new all-glass air traffic control tower opened last year and are a fitting gateway to a global city. Finally, we can look around and feel pride at what will be, for many tourists, their first glimpse of the country — a sparkling space that is well-appointed, plush and yet distinctly Indian. Now, the culture shock will begin only once they pass through its doors.
It sounds like science fiction, but the space crunch has become so severe in Mumbai that you now need to take a lift to the park, because it’s been squeezed in on the terrace. As builders seek to extract the most from every square inch, even the jogging tracks and cycling paths have moved indoors and upwards, and residents go for their
evening stroll high up above the city. Cricket and football pitches have moved too, into indoor turfs. No more rainy practice sessions at the maidan, then, or watching kids or pets roll around in the grass. Instead, kids can kick the ball around on faux turf, enclosed by glass walls.
07 | OUR FILMS
INDIE, CORPORATE, Rs 200 CRORES AND COUNTING Stars are never on time. Outsiders rarely make it in Bollywood. A hit can’t happen without a big star, a big budget, a big banner. So many stereotypes have found themselves reversed over the past decade. Technology and hyper-competitiveness have seen a notoriously stodgy industry go corporate, make space for new faces and new ideas. From Kangana Ranaut to Kiran
03 | THE FOOD SCENE
AN AGE OF DESSERT BARS, POP-UPS, HOME CHEFS Eating out used to mean a choice between ‘Chinese’, ‘Indian’ and ‘Continental’. As far as cuisines are concerned, you can now travel the world, a plate at a time, right here in the city. You can try Mexican or Mongolian, Nigerian or Meghalayan food. Like desserts? Pick from eateries that serve only yoghurt, or only cookies, only waffles, or just chocolate served up in different ways. Prefer home food? Pop into the drawing rooms of an Assamese, Goan, Bengali, Bohri or Parsi home chef. Or head to one of many food events where other home chefs serve up scones and bacon jam. You can also take food tours
voteshare has plummeted. As a son and grandson struggle to revive the Sena’s fortunes, a charismatic rebel nephew’s dream of continuing the legacy externally has more or less perished. Perhaps it was the man, perhaps it was his timing, perhaps both. Whatever the reasons for his unique and somewhat disquieting success, it is undeniable that his personality drove the party that went on to rule the state of Maharashtra; he made it what it was. The only roar left now is from the tiger on the logo.
that pick an ingredient or cuisine and explore its origins and examples in the city. Or join a meetup group for foodie adventures. If anything, the city’s now got too many options to choose from. But hey, there’s an app for that.
ILLUSTRATIONS: SHRIKRISHNA PATKAR
04 | THE SKYLINE
A MIXED-UP MAKEOVER There was only one image you could use to signify Mumbai without words — Gateway of India. Today, you could sketch the Bandra-Worli sea link, or the sweep of the bay with its soaring high-rises. India’s global city finally has a recognisable skyline. Of course, in typically Mumbai fashion, it is not a pretty skyline, nor a well-planned one. And it has come at a very high price, swallowing up acres of mill land in the heart of the city that were supposed to be used for green open spaces. Instead, the mills have been turned into malls, or torn down and replaced by luxury residences. A 33-km coastal road promises to add another element, eventually. For better or for worse.
Rao and Dhobi Ghat to The Lunchbox, the change has been sweeping. There’s been the rise of the shero, or woman hero. The surge of indie hits. And among the old faithfuls — the tried-and-true Khan clans — there’s something new too. In a world of movies that only last a couple of weeks, a new measuring scale: The 100-crore club, 200-crore club, and now, glimmers of a 300-crore club too.
08 | THE FRINGES
09 | LOCALITIES GETTING NEW NAMES
LUXE LIVING FINDS A NEW HOME
SHADOW LINES
To many Mumbaiites, the names are still unfamiliar — Roadpali in Navi Mumbai, Shil Phata near Mumbra, Vasant Vihar in Thane. A decade ago, most of the people living here had lived here for generations. Now, as real-estate prices in and around Mumbai continue a stubborn upward climb, the fringes are finding new takers. And getting makeovers. Luxury real-estate brands are planting flowerbeds and finalising blueprints. Swimming pools and clubhouses are beginning to dot landscapes. In their wake, restaurants and malls, schools and hospitals, multiplexes and high streets are springing up. For many of the residents, there is no longer a compelling need to visit the city — except for those with jobs there. As many of the fringes also get commercial complexes and business hubs, that is set to change too.
Lower Parel is Upper Worli, Wadala is New Cuffe Parade, Bandra East is BKC Annex and Four Bungalows is Upper Juhu. As builders snap up plots wherever they are available, they’re ‘rebranding’ entire chunks of the city to suit their target audience. Is Lower Parel too reminiscent of Girangaon and its textile mills? How about we offer you a Worli? Does Wadala conjure up images of bootleggers and swampland? Try Cuffe Parade on for size. Do Bandra East and Four Bungalows sound anticlimactic? Just tack on the nearest desirable destinations. After all, you no longer have to worry that the postman won’t be able to find the address.
10 | IMPACT OF TERROR ATTACKS
A TRUST DEFICIT What was once a gesture of goodwill — ‘Who’s left their bag on the rack?’ — has taken on a frantic air, ever since backpacks loaded with RDX were left on trains in 2006. A forgotten tiffin can prompt people to jump from a moving locomotive. Hotels that once welcomed you with folded hands now offer you a metal detector first. Terror has left an indelible mark on Mumbai, following the serial train bombings of 2006 and the terror siege of 2008. You can no longer just amble up to Gateway, for instance. Or
get through at all, after sunset. CST forever holds within it the image of bloodstreaked floors and a rifle-toting Kasab. And when you look at the dome of the Taj hotel, you can still almost see the plume of smoke.
H I NDUSTAN T I M ES , M U M BA I F R IDAY, JULY 1 7, 2 0 1 5
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10 THINGS THAT HAVE VANISHED
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CELEBRATING OUR TENTH ANNIVERSARY IN MUMBAI
GONE... TOO SOON?
01 | VICTORIAS
NO MORE CLIP-CLOP
CHANGE IS HARD. And it’s even harder when the old has been around forever. A look at icons the city has lost over the past decade
They were a reminder of a more elegant time, when horse carriages were the only traffic on the streets and families went out for a trot after dinner. From elegant, the carriages became Bambaiyya-ised, with coaches covered in silver foil and lights blinking pink, green and blue. The attraction for the patrons was the same, though — an evening ride for the whole family, with children squealing and trying to pat the horses as merry gangs clip-clopped along the promenade, past Gateway and on to the Taj. It was no joyride for the horses, though. So the high court ruled earlier this year that Victorias would no longer ply in the city, officially bringing an end to the days of the phaeton.
02 | SINGLE-SCREEN CINEMA HALLS
06 | ANANTASHRAM AND IRANI CAFÉS
SOUL FOOD FADES
CURTAIN CALL
They were typified by curt service, delectable specials and décor that was quaint even in the 1990s — marble-topped tables, wooden counters and bentwood chairs. Patrons would chuckle at but nonetheless dutifully obey the dos and don’ts — to not linger, get into arguments with other patrons, or ask the waiter too many questions. Because Mumbai’s khanavals like Anant Ashram in Girgaum’s Khotachiwadi, and Irani cafés like Naaz and Brabourne, were icons. And there was nowhere you could get a better seafood thali, or bun-maska and akuri. There was a passion and a uniqueness to the food served here. And a no-nonsense approach. At Anant
For some, the late show was a chance to dress up in evening wear and hobnob under chandeliers in red-carpeted lobbies. For others, it was at the single-screen theatre that, for a few annas (for those readers under a certain age, an anna was 1/16th of a rupee), the working man or woman could escape the drudgery of the mills and enter a world of make-believe — one marred only by the clatter of standing fans and the occasional snapped reel. This is where a film-crazy city paid tribute to an industry that would come to define it. Loyalty was measured not in crores but in years — Sholay ran for five; DDLJ is still running after 20. Now, their halls are silent, some shuttered, others fighting to avoid the wrecking ball. The show goes on, but elsewhere.
03 | CAFÉ SAMOVAR
THE LAST CUPPA With its homely mutton chops, kheema parathas and, of course, tea, Samovar nourished artists and art-lovers for half a century. Its narrow space inside the Jehangir art gallery became a haven for broke painters who could not afford a meal elsewhere in the posh art district. MF Husain would order his favourite baingan ka salan and add it to his running tab. Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan would come here on dates. The artists became world-famous and the actors became superstars, but the café retained its warm, hospitable air, allowing anonymous Mumbaiites to rub shoulders with celebrated ones at meals whose priced remained steadfastly modest. But the gallery needed its space back and, earlier this year, owner and founder Usha Khanna lost a three-decade battle to keep the café open. Giving to the end, she invited the rush of patrons to pick a souvenir on the final day and take it home. So part of Samovar lives on.
05 | DANCE BARS
THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED Centuries from now, if the remains of Mira Road’s dance bars are excavated, their multiple strobe lights, patterned floors and velvety red furniture will likely still spark debates about feminism, family values and free markets. Around the turn of the century, there was no freer market. Women looking for work could sway their hips and take home lakhs; men looking for excitement and ‘prestige’ could come here, ‘make it rain’, and be made to feel like kings. Love was gained and lost daily. Little dramas unfolded between the first number of the day and closing time. Then, in August 2005, the music died. A suddenly enraged home minister, RR Patil, declared that the bars were bankrupting young men and young minds, destroying family values. As subsequent court orders revoked and then reinforced the ban, in the bars, hope turned to resignation. Some of the women turned to prostitution. Many looked back longingly on the days when a pretty sari and a few graceful moves were all it took to earn a living.
07 | CYBER CAFÉS AND PCOS
04 | TRADITIONAL TAXI METERS
A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS
A NEW EQUATION Of all the many things sold at Mumbai’s traffic signals — umbrellas, best-sellers, toys and flowers — arguably the fastest-moving item was the taxi-auto tariff card in the days just after it had been updated. Everyone had to have one of those redand-black-printed, plastic-coated lifesavers because there was no other way to tell exactly what you needed to pay your driver — unless you were good at doing high math in your head. That was when the meter still showed the fare from the 1970s or thereabouts; and had to be translated into current-day fares according to complicated formulae. Now, electronic meters flash the time, date, actual fare and kilometres travelled. They could probably predict the weather with a little tweaking. But they can still be tampered with. Some things never change.
ILLUSTRATIONS: RAVI JADHAV
Ashram, for instance, there was no fridge. The owners would buy fresh fish and meat — twice a day. When they ran out of food, they just downed their shutters for the day. The menus were brief, the recipes home-style, and the prices meant to be inclusive. You could share a table with a bus conductor, a retired Parsi businessman or Nana Patekar. You became, for your time in the establishment, a part of the Bombay landscape. Anant Ashram was 80 years old when it shut in 2010; Brabourne at Marine Lines was 77 when it shut in 2008. Those that survive are finding themselves forced to change — offer craft beer, or pizza. They probably wouldn’t even mind if you loitered.
08 | CUT-OFFS UNDER 90%
PLAYING WITH NUMBERS It used to be that distinction was the most you could aim for. The norm was late 60s and early 70s, and anyone who got more than 85% was look at with suspicion and a little bit of sympathy — clearly they had not enjoyed school enough; just how ‘strict’ were their parents; did they even manage to watch a single Harry Potter movie? Now, there are college streams for which you need 100% to gain admission. 100%. To gain admission. The average applicant can have no hopes of making it to any respectable first list with less than 90%. Children who have scored in the 70s and early 80s weep with frustration and disappointment. Whatever happened to letting kids be kids?
09 | MUMBAI’S CRICKET
BOWLED OUT?
They were the lifelines of the college student, commuter and middle-class homemaker. All you needed was a handful of coins and you could chat with friends online or offline, call home in an emergency or print out a book report. They were your refuge when your computer or your Net connection crashed for umpteenth time, or your printer refused to connect. And if your cellphone battery died, you just had to do a 360-degree swivel and chances are you’d sight a boxy red phone in a lockable metal cage, perched outside a general store. You’d even occasionally have to wait in line. Today, there are large parts of the city with no cyber cafés at all. Those that still exist are usually part of an evergreen enterprise like a copy shop or stationery store. As for the PCOs, a few still stand in corners of railway stations and bus depots, but they stopped functioning long ago, and no one noticed.
We produced Sachin Tendulkar and Sunil Gavaskar. Legends and World Cup-winners. Our city also produced Dilip Vengsarkar, Ravi Shastri and Sanjay Manjrekar. In an overcrowded metropolis where space has always been a constraint, the poor state of the pitches was believed to offer young players an advantage. After scoring in Mumbai, the logic went, any other pitch would be a piece of cake. Now, in addition to being poorly cared for, the pitches are overcrowded to the point of overlapping. At the Azad and Cross maidans, you can no longer tell the teams apart; one game’s fine leg is another game’s slip cordon. The lack of infrastructure has taken its toll on a city that was once considered the nursery of cricket. While other cities have upped their game, we have taken our eyes off the ball.
10 | SEA ROCK HOTEL
SHAKEN AND STIRRED With its pool overlooking the ocean and its revolving rooftop restaurant, Sea Rock — when it opened in 1978 — was one of the first signs that Bandra would be the next cool thing. The hotel had the advantage of a stunning location at land’s end, and a stream of famous patrons, including Smita Patil, Rekha and Jackie Shroff. As the rest of the city began to move northwards, away from the glitter of the island city, Taj and Oberoi, it truly came into its own. Filmstars partied here;
restaurant openings were attended by the who’s who of the commercial capital. Then came the blasts; 12 explosions that forever changed Mumbai. The blast at Sea Rock left some of the floors damaged and the lift well bent out of shape. The rooftop restaurant no longer revolved. A couple of floors could be used, and indeed remained in use until 2006. The building finally came down four years later. Another hotel may be built in its place, but it will likely be a Taj.
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HINDUSTAN TIMES, MUMBAI FRIDAY, JULY 17, 2015
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PICTURE PERFECT
CELEBRATING OUR TENTH ANNIVERSARY IN MUMBAI
MUMBAI MOMENTS
SNAPSHOTS FROM A DECADE GONE BY A selection of award-winning HT photographs that showcase the city, its character and its various, varied moods
Runners cross the Bandra-Worli sea link on January 11, 2011, during the annual Mumbai marathon. This photo won the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon Viewers’ Choice Award. KUNAL PATIL/HT ®®
A flash of lightning illuminates the sky over Mahalaxmi railway station on October 14, 2011. The photo won the top honour at the National Press Photo Contest of the Media Foundation of India, in the ‘Daily Life’ category. VIJAYANAND GUPTA/HT ®®
Some of the world’s top marathoners run through the streets of Mumbai during the 2013 edition of the Mumbai marathon, held on January 20. The photo won the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon First RunnerUp Award. VIJAYANAND ®®
Sachin Tendulkar’s son Arjun (left) and his teammates appeal successfully during a match at MIG Club, Bandra, in 2007. The photo won the Sports Journalists’ Federation of India Award in the ‘Cricket Action Off The Field’ category. KUNAL PATIL/HT
GUPTA/HT
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Wrestler Ahsab Ahmed (left), who eventually won the match, tries to overturn Nivrutti Bidge at the Andheri Sports Complex on February 1, 2009. This photo won the Silver Prize in the ‘Sports Photography’ category at the IFRA Awards. SATISH BATE/HT ®®