No doubt Mumbai's slums got technicolor image with the success of Slumdog
Millionaire. That a British team made the film and won honours both for Britain
and India is indeed an irony of history. Mumbai is much a making of the
British.
Long time ago I read City of Gold by Gillian Tindall. Her book mostly dealt
with Mumbai's architecture that reflected British architecture. For her the
Victoria Terminus (now the CST) and the Mumbai Muncipality Corporation building
(now known by its Marathi name) were symbolic of the British contribution to
Mumbai's greatness.
She once said that "Bombay is still, for many of them, the place wehre they
most want to be. It is the eastern Hollywood populated by stars still more
legendary than those of California in the Thirties and Forties. As you trundle
your push-barrow or banana cart, or hawk your vegetables or cigarettes or
peanuts from some noise street-corner, it is nice to know you are living almost
next door to such immortals..
I have not read the book, A Classic Slum by Robert Roberts. One article I read
quoted the book saying that husbands and wives in Salford around the time of
the first world war would confess tht when they made love, they shut their eyes
and thought of a film star.
Not far behind from Bombay of the old days and, to a large extent even today,
Manchester and Liverpool were cesspool of the lowly and the desperate. These
industrial cities were appalling then as Mumbai is today.
So much for the British team to have come and reaped fruits from the slums of
Dharavi and Bandra.
Dear Bombay, or call it by any other name, can still be called the City of
Gold. Yeah, the Portuguese gave it the name "Bom" (good) "Bahia" (bay). It is
still the good bay where a walk on the Chowpatty or Cuffe Parade would make one
hold one's nose.
Eugene Correia
