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Sitting on the low, sea-stained wall that separates Mumbai’s southernmost tip from the Arabian Sea, a street-peddler blew hundreds of colourful soap bubbles into the evening twilight.
The bubbles rose in a playful arc, framing the faces of college boys, plump housewives and street urchins. Some burst against the flicking ears of horses harnessed to carriages that tout seaside rides to wealthy Arab tourists. Rising still, they hung an instant in front of the elite, 105 year-old Taj Mahal Hotel, its ochre domes enflamed by the setting sun. The bubbles melted into an inky-blue night, that later awoke to the roar of bombs.
The terrorist siege of Mumbai began at 2330 hours on November 26, lasted nearly three days, killed more than 180 Indian and foreign nationals, and wounded another 300. The attack was carried out by 10 highly-trained young men, who lobbed grenades and fired their AK-56 machine guns point blank into crowds at Mumbai’s central railway station, in the streets of Colaba – its charming old quarter – and inside a general hospital. They also bombed the historic Taj and Oberoi hotels, taking and torturing hostages. Nine terrorists were killed in the counter-attack by Indian commandos, while one was captured. Alleged Islamist radicals, the killers supposedly took arms against what they considered repression of Muslims by the West. Whatever their motive, in Mumbai they found a perfect target of their rage.
A door to the East with its face to the West, Mumbai is India’s biggest, busiest, wealthiest, most cosmopolitan city. It is equally an explosive melting-pot of cultures, languages, and religions. Caught in the grip of globalisation, born from ancient roots, it struggles to bridge the social inequalities that place its glittering skyscrapers side-by-side its sprawling shantytowns.
Originally a cluster of seven small islands on India’s west coast, Mumbai was ruled variously by Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim rulers. Portuguese Catholic explorers colonised it by force in 1534, dubbing it “Bom Baia” or the ‘good bay’, referring to its natural deepwater harbour. Bom Baia passed to the English Crown as dowry for a royal marriage; and in 1668, the English East India Company leased the islands for the paltry sum of 10 gold pounds a year. It anglicised the name to Bombay, which doggedly stuck till 1997, when an act of parliament formally reverted the city to its original name, Mumbai, in reference to Mumba Devi, the patron Hindu goddess of the indigenous Koli tribe.
The city has thrived because Mumbai means money. Home turf of India’s largest corporations – Tata, Godrej, Reliance, Birla, Mahindra – it initially prospered through textile manufacture and maritime trade. Over the past 30 years it has diversified into diamond-polishing, oil and gas, healthcare, information technologies, mobile telephony, shipbuilding, renewable and nuclear energy, aerospace, recycling, banking, venture capital, insurance, scientific and social research, and tourism.
Bollywood remains one of its most profitable and best-known products, with the film industry churning out some 120 glossily-produced films per year. The economic liberalisation of the 1990s and the phenomenon of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), whereby first-world back-office services are contracted overseas and executed by cheap, third-world labour, meant hundreds of thousands of jobs were relocated to Mumbai, further boosting its financial profile.
Mumbai generates 5% of India’s total gross domestic product, 25% of its industrial output, 40% of its maritime trade and 70% of its capital transactions. Many Indian and multi-national corporations and media houses maintain offices here. The 133-year-old Bombay Stock Exchange is the world’s third largest, with more than 4,700 listed companies and US$1.8 trillion in transactions. Riding the crest of this success, the city continues to experience phenomenal growth in the construction industry, with numerous luxury hotels, high rises, vast suburban residential developments; and astronomical property prices. And with its crowded parks, grubby cinemas, avant-garde theatres, museums, yuppie cafes, cricket stadiums, shady red-light district, beaches, street food, pavement book stalls, and a vibrant night life, Mumbai today truly ranks as a global city.
But Mumbai also means misery, and a disgraceful gap yawns between rich and poor. Thousands of homeless people, mostly poor migrants, live on Mumbai’s streets. Sometimes, entire families live their whole lives under railway bridges, in the shadow of mango trees or in the cramped labyrinth of Dharavi (with 1.1 million residents, Asia’s largest slum). The commuter trains that depart the central stations roughly every three minutes, are impossibly full, and ferry some 3.6 million people a day. Inhabitants often travel an hour or more to get to work from their homes. The power, waterworks (including Asia’s largest filtration plant), sanitation systems, multi-lane tarmac roads, flyovers and bridges, keep expanding but barely cope with a population of nearly 15 million inhabitants.
The pressure of Mumbai life makes it a fertile ground for violence, with criminal gangs, drug syndicates, human traffickers, religious leaders and communally-divisive politicians exploiting the disappointed hopes of the down-trodden for personal profit. Mumbai has witnessed its share of underworld murders, faked police encounter killings, ethnic riots and public sector corruption. Entire sections of the city have in the past operated quite independently of the law.
While Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Parsis and Jews, have coexisted peacefully for most of Mumbai’s history, religious tensions have heightened between Hindu and Muslim communities in the past 15 years. Right-wing Hindu political parties such as the Shiv Sena (Army of Shiva) have capitalised on this, even as the shadowy Mumbai underworld, with its finances and masterminds based in the Middle East, has become inextricably linked to Islamist terror and its young adherents.
Nowadays, life in Mumbai can feel as fragile as a soap bubble. But it will take much more than terrorists to shake its self-belief, to sadden the city that never sleeps.
Travel tips for Ugandan visitors
Kenya Airways flies daily from Entebbe to Mumbai via Nairobi
Emirates flies daily from Entebbe to Mumbai via Addis Ababa and Dubai
Take Hepatitis A and B, yellow fever, typhoid and tetanus vaccinations.
Drink boiled or mineral water and avoid colourful drinks sold from pushcarts, or street food that’s gone cold, or contains milk products.
oCarry diarrhoea treatment medicine and re-hydration salts.
Must see: Gateway of India, Elephanta caves, Prince of Wales Museum, Jehangir Art Gallery, Victoria Terminus station, Bombay University, General Post Office, Crawford Market, Fashion Street, Sasoon Docks and Marine Drive by night.
Must eat: Fried Bombay duck (a kind of fish); vada pav and bhel puri.
Must drink: Gin and tonic at Jazz by the Bay as the sun goes down. |
