Me Mumbaikar!

Yup. I'm finally a proud houseowner in Mumbai. Well, in the norther suburb of Malad, but that's as Mumbai to me as Colaba. So there.

And yes, I'm proud to be a Mumbaikar, recent incidents of random violence notwithstanding.

Curiously enough, the stray violence against the 'outsiders' elicited a completely non-solicited reaction from very unexpected quarters. Friends of mine (who would treat any sort of politics - parochial or otherwise with disdain) suddenly seemed to be rather upset about this (ill) treatment of the 'outsider'.
I think the reaction of everybody who seemed 'disturbed', 'aghast'... even 'ashamed' (yeah, us Maharashtrians are surprising self-deprecating) was more because they just didn't expect the meek Maharashtrian to react in this volatile manner.

And while I'm completely against the violence, I'm not surprised at it.
And in the melee of opinions, threats & counter-threats that followed, the real issue had been forgotten.

Of course, while most of the reactions I got were incredible juvenile and well, just reactionary, many were just downright silly - I could mention them, but then that would be trivialising the issue as well.


I think it's about time people realised that there needs to be some sort of regulation on the migrancy to this city. To quote a rather large Maharashtrian (Bharat Dabholkar) 'this city is like a cell phone, the incoming is free, and thats gonna create a problem at some point' - and the crumbling infrastructure is not helping either.

Unfortunately while I would like to believe that there's some sort of solution to the migrancy to this city, I can't think of a simplistic one.

Lets face it, we (yes, I include myself as a migrant... even though now I can claim residency!) can't expect to waltz in here in hordes and expect everyone who's already here to just be okay with it.

Someday, somewhere it'll snap.

And of course, when you have politicians waiting for just such an opportunity, the snap will be louder than it was meant to be.

Parochial politics isn't new to this country. And it isn't new to this city either.

Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. And 'repeating history' is something this city could do well without.

In order to move forward though, we need to make sure that we have an eye on the rear view mirror. Something every taxiwala in this city knows the importance of.