I must tell you that I had a very interesting passenger. She looked like a journalist, ya the people they show on television. She was reading something and I figured out that she worked with a local news channel. She asked me a lot of questions about my slum, my people and Mumbai. She told me how prized we are for the TVwallahs and for all Mumbaikars. I felt proud of myself. She was unperturbed by the gazes people threw at her, when she rolled her camera to take shots. She wanted to capture everything in the small chest she carried. She clicked and rolled and wrote and nudged and went on… I wanted to feel the light of sun under her camera shots. And I wanted her to picture the fathomless desires resonating from my place, the Gorai creek.
Today was a really lucky day. I got out to work early, could manage a commuter near my shanty at Gorai creek. She looked like an officer. Middle-aged, well dressed and educated… We have always been told that educated people know English and can speak with an accent, we can never catch. She was speaking to somebody on phone, thus I gathered she is educated. Mumbai makes you oblivious to everything around, trust me. It is full of people but you are always alone.
Kalu, my friend says, Mumbai matters to them, who matters to Mumbai. Whatever that means, I have always been happy here. People say this is city of dreams. I have been here when I could not really have an ambition or dream. And later, circumstances asked me not to dream but to sail on with the waves of the ocean here.
My second passenger was a firang…Gosh, I detest them. I start thinking of the old stories my mother used to narrate. How her soft and supple hands would rise in anger, her temples would burn and flaring her nostrils she would swear against them. Too bad, that even today these firangs come here with the hope of ruling us. But I must confess, they have stacks of money. It is easy to dodge them… He looked amused by Mumbai… and very smartly he used dictionary to converse with me.
I had some strange passengers followed by the firang. The three eunuchs I should not have allowed. They were very loud and looked painfully seared. They take a lot of advantage from the people and can never keep quiet. Well, let me also tell you, looking for quiet time in Mumbai is hoping against hope. You might see an Albatross flying from the Worli sea face, but you will never see an unobtrusive, silent and hushed Mumbai.
The rikshaw stopped for quite some time because of the jam. Mumbai jams are something you see everywhere. You can love it, hate it but you have to stay with it. My passenger tried to capture the boardwalk style abode a lot of city, or should I say footpath dweller has. The lenses imprisoned the swaying rag over the wobbly timber silhouetting a house. The some meter square place on the trail comprised a place; where you can cook, eat, bathe and even have sex. And the people who live there do not complain. They do not find the blaring horns irritating; they do not feel it is uncouth to spit on the pavement and they feel it is up to scratch even if you pass out right in front of ‘the public’.
