Mumbai

Mumbai is a city of extremes: Impressions from the Indian metropolis, in which wealth and poverty converge harshly.

Lovely Katrina is smiling. She has almond eyes, shining hair and light skin. Katrina is an actress, singer and ideal beauty. Her picture hangs in a salon in the middle of Dharavi, Asia’s biggest slum. You can find everything here: hairdressers, tailors, bakeries. Katrina’s complexion on the poster is light, far lighter than that of the women sitting on the rusted swivel chairs in this room.

Manisha Parmar, 26, has been operating the salon for four years. She does waxing, pedicures and manicures, make-up and hairstyling. She also does skin treatments. Here, beauty is measured proportionally by the lightness of one’s skin. India has a line of cosmetics called “Fair and Lovely,” a bleaching agent. Everyone knows the company here in the room, too, that is full of the scent of sandalwood. The elephant god Ganesh stands in one corner. Katrina smiles from the poster.

Shailesh N. Jethva is a slim boy who looks much younger than 21 years old. He is studying chemistry and lives here in Dharavi. Of course he’s seen Slumdog Millionaire. “The film only showed the mafia-like circumstances,” says Shailesh, “but not the productivity.” As all slum dwellers, he is proud of his origins. His father is a cabinetmaker and his mother makes candles as a cottage industry. He lives with them and two siblings in a small, but, all the same, two-storey hut measuring three by two metres, in which a television and Shiva shrine stand. Here they cook, sleep, love and argue. There is a tiny shower cabinet in the corner. He shares the public toilets with 800 other people. Their use costs one rupee, or about 1.5 eurocents. “Two if you’re in a hurry,” says Shailesh and laughs. More than one million people live here in a very small area. The astonishing thing is that 450 million euros are turned over annually in Dharavi. Welcome to the economic wonderland of rice and flatbreads drying in the sun.

If the city planners have their way, Dharavi, the slum in the middle of the mega-city, will be transformed into a residential area of high-rises. The inhabitants would be forced to resettle.

They are needed all over as taxi drivers and maids. Yet there is no more room for them in the city of turbo-capitalism. Because Mumbai is not only India’s most modern, but also its most populated metropolitan area with approximately 23 million inhabitants. Mumbai is a city of maximum contrasts. Mumbai is a metropolis and a moloch, a boomtown and Slumbay. Mumbai is everything: poverty and wealth, tradition and modernity, east and west. The fascinating thing about the city is its inconceivability. Mumbai is like a magnet that attracts many people, but also repels some.

Writer and curator Ranjit Hoskoté, who is designing this year’s Indian Pavilion at the Biennale in Venice, has no romantically glorified notions of the city where he was born in 1969. “The city is in a state of collapse,” he says. “The traffic is terrible, the noise is unbearable and there is practically no public spirit.” Ten years ago, his reply to the question of its attraction was far more positive, but today – with the right-wing extremist Shiv Sena party in power – his views of the developments in his homeland are sceptical. “The city has been squeezed dry by aggressive political powers and is victim of both narrow-mindedness and consumerism.”

Mumbai is lacking in much. It lacks mainly room and public spaces. At times, one thinks it is ruled by anarchy. It is on the streets in any event. Films are sold on the pavements on burned DVDs that have not yet been in the cinema at home. Yet, time and again the chaos is breached. For example, one is amazed by the dabbawallas, who deliver homemade lunches to approximately 200,000 office workers. It is an incredible system that only exists in Mumbai. They say they only make one erroneous delivery for every 16 million meals.

Even though there is a system behind it, it does not often seem to exist in the city. Cars honk constantly and everywhere. “Do not honk – avoid noise pollution,” the sign says, which makes one smile sadly at the irony. In time, you get used to the noise level, which reminds me of the time the German national football team made it to the finals. The noise level is on average 30 decibels higher than that deemed acceptable by the World Health Organization. Red lights? The strongest has the right of way. In his book Bombay – Maximum City, Suketu Mehta writes: “Breathing Bombay’s air is something like smoking two and a half packs of cigarettes a day. In the past, the sun set in the sea. Today it sinks into smog.” Mumbai is a challenge to all of the senses and to common sense.

Yet then there are people like Shanta Chatterji, an environmental activist and elegant lady, who helped launch the project Clean Air Island. She is concerned about the air in the city and how the extreme pollution can be abated. In the very south of the city a park was created and compost works with earthworms and plants. Here, this is like a green revolution. There is a great deal to do, for every day 6,000 tonnes of rubbish are produced in Mumbai. The initiators behind Clean Air Island want to increase the quality of life in mega-cities. It is a noble aim. They are hardly noticed by the local public. They hope for financial support from such organizations as the European Union.

Writer Hoskoté refuses to call his hometown Mumbai. For him it is still Bombay, “a name that encompasses the cosmopolitan, multiethnic and multilingual structure of the city.” Bombay comes from the Portuguese, who called the city “Bom Bahia,” or “good bay.” Even today, the city is a promise in which the people strive to attain their personal happiness. “Mumbai is like New York,” says Chatterji from Clean Air Island, “It is a city that belongs to no one.” And it is a city where many Indians from all over want to live, because it is where the money is.

The rents are comparable with those in London or Tokyo. The trendy districts are called Bandra or Juhu Beach, where the Bollywood celebrities have also built their glittering palaces. The wealthy people in Mumbai can live in their bubbles; they are members of clubs where alcohol is cheap, they shop in huge malls like Phoenix Mills.

In the neighbourhood of Powai many very modern skyscrapers were erected to take the burden off the south of the city. The city grows and grows. It is bordered by the sea in the south and west. “Mumbai ma rotlo made, otlo nahi,” they say here in the Gujarati language. “The city gives you food, but no place where you can stay.” Mumbai is many villages in one big bunch huddled against the sea. But, Mumbai is a young city in a dual sense. It is only 300 years old and half of the population is younger than 25. Sharad Vyas, journalist at the newspaper Times of India, loves the energy in Mumbai. He worked for a long time in Dubai on the Persian Gulf, that “artificial city.” Great job, great pay, but he came back here. “The future is Bombay’s,” he says. What that future holds, no one can say.