Million Dollar Mumbai


Ratan Tata will now drive Jaguar or even a land Rover. His servants servants will drive the Nano. Singur will produce the small car and London will deliver the big ones. Meanwhile, we also have some very rich Indians in the Forbes list and many more Indians buying yachts and islands. A crore is spelt easier than peanuts and doesn’t have too much value unless it has four or more digits in front of it. Personally, I know people who have invested a crore to buy matchbox houses at corners of Mumbai which don’t get much light, what an irony. Everybody wants their kid to have an IB education, a foreign degree and earn the highest salary. Money seems to have overcrowded our minds and our conversations.
Off late, in Mumbai’s public transport, you can find ample examples of wannabe noveau riche conversations. Right from ESOP windfalls, to making a killing in the stock market (sometimes being killed by it too), the average Mumbaikar (probably Indian too) is looking at the cash tills all the time. He is building castles on borrowed dreams, fed by images on television and funded by ICICI bank. The cash is someone else’s, the house is hardly mine, the car is on loan, but everything else is fine. Multi crore deals get discussed while hanging precariously off first class compartments and everybody has the pink paper at hand. Elders converse frequently on the lakhs that wards make every month and take pride in discussing how busy their sons and daughters are (“I can hardly remember what he looks like “). Names like London, LA get frequently dropped as if they’re loose change, introduction lines frequently sound like “Meet my nephew Rahul, he is from London “. Property deals seem to be in vogue too. Buying at a steal (under construction) and selling it six times over is a pastime, the home is now where dreams get sold and bought not where dreams get nurtured and built. No conversation begins or ends without property location, size of parking, resale value, rate appreciation and proximity of slums. Car parking in some areas is at three times the value of the car and this gets proudly stated by some. Ever imagine paying more for sitting at a restaurant than the food.

The frustrations of the have-nots are being fueled by these images and conversations. What’s more they are being marginalized by land deals and slum clearances. The have nots are being slapped hard on the face every day, everywhere by the unreachable heights of the rich. There are clear monetary dotted lines that they can’t afford to cross. Looks like the island city is going back to being the seven islands that it was at one point in time. This time though, the islands will be in the mind.

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