Hey Bombay! You still there?

FirstPerson: A Students' Notebook

Between cinematic fantasies and realism, it's a dream sequence which must go on, despite chauvinistic politics and the sound of gunshots

Ankita Chawla Delhi

I GREW UP in India in the 1990s. I've fed myself on Bollywood movies -- melodramatic, colourful, unbelievable and it all happens in Bombay. Though Switzerland always seemed to be a dream song sequence away, life always goes on here. The fights, the ‘attempted' love affairs, the ageing actors stuck in college, more often than not St. Xaviers, and crucially, the Juhu beach, Chowpatty, a lot cleaner  than possible on a regular day. I've been to Bombay in the mind, never lived in it in person. It is a part of every movie-watching Indian's corny, glamour-loving, over-romantic consciousness. It's a part of mine for sure.

When the names Santa Cruz, Colaba or Lokhandwala are pronounced, it isn't Latin for anyone here. You've been there. If the phrase were to be changed to "Ab Bombay door nahin" it would stand just as true. When you reach the part of the movie where you arrive in Bombay you see the glorious Victoria Terminus - VT. For years, this is where your story enters the showground -- it is the theatre, the stage, the canvas, and the rest of us -- the audience. The Indian Railways is spread out across the land like veins in our body. In a country where from remote villages and big urban centers, "All Rail Roads lead to Bombay" it is logical that VT serves as the headquarters of central railways. Come to or go from Bombay, the act becomes worthy of a chronicle, and your establishing shot is always the Gothic colonial structure; a blend of Victorian and traditional Indian architecture. In its very make it seems to consolidate the spirit of the city it introduces to you, very international, cosmopolitan and yet an essential point for the country. A mix of all that's new and an account of all that passed.

They don't say Bombay dreams for nothing. It holds within itself, the Gateway of India. And beyond it the boundless sea. Scores of thousands of people, young and old, have ventured in to fulfill their filmy aspirations here. Even though the legacy of the mammoth entertainment industry flows with heredity, it doesn't deter a gazillion dreams each new movie that hits the screen fosters in the hearts of the gazillion. Though cleverly stated in Raj Kapoor's Shree 420: "Yeh Bombay hain meri jaan, yahan rasta batane ke bhi paise lagte hain", it does not discourage the same gazillion who prefer to struggle and sweat their guts out in the city of dreams. 

It seems from such a state of affairs to be a place for anybody. No class, caste, religion; only the dream and the passion to fulfill that farfetched dream. The need to define oneself as to fit in as a social entity is derided by the outlook of being a person wanting enough to be surviving in Bombay. The local trains become another trademark image adding fuel to the enchanting idea of Bombay. While movies upheld the idea almost every Friday, television went a step ahead, entered your homes and made Bombay a place everybody lives in. Like a dreamland, it is where you would float above the surface, fly and for once not look for roots.