Maximum Pity

Have you read Suketu Mehta's Maximum City? Do you read? Or buy books to decorate the coffee table? Do you buy books at all? Or put up names of books on FB to decorate your timeline?

Fuck it. This is going somewhere else.

This piece is about Bombay. Now called Mumbai. Or whatever. To truly get this piece, you must read it from the eyes of B21 - the guy. Someday, there will be more about B21. For now, don't get ants in your pants if you suddenly see him jumping out at you.

B21 was thinking of Bombay. Its linear designs and its serpentine plans. Its high commerce and its deep art. Its acoustic extravaganza and its stony silence. Its high velocity and, well, its high velocity. Its colours and its monochromes. Its everything and its nothing. So much so, that even the fantastic certain somethings about the city appropriate names of their own. Like jhol and chaai-la. Singsong certain somethings.

B21 was moving in Bombay. The great expressways and the not so great craters. The department of digging not talking to the department of filling. Hah. We move. And how. On road, on screen, on time. We are also moved. By landlords. The stock exchange. A new sensation. Breathing beyond 15 minutes.
B21 was dreaming of Bombay. In Bombay. Outside Bombay, the dreams are different. But inside Bombay, the dreams are the same. Eyes wide shut. But. Or tightly open. Hopin’.

B21 was walking in Bombay. The greatness of edifices and the paltry haggling of shantytowns. The marred, scarred beauty of stoic buildings. Holding Fort. Playing tug of war with glass and chrome, prefabricated packaged towers and swimming pooled residential complexes.
B21 was talking of Bombay. With aplomb. A migrant’s possessive love. With a belonging that can only be felt by the outsider. With sounds that were a curious cocktail of pace. Laced with the ace of base. With words that were really pictures of the Bombayana kaleidoscope. Turning. Turning around.

B21 was listening in Bombay. The hush, rush and blush of a million stories. Some sorry, some sordid but most, supremely sanguine. The ruddy outer edges of optimism. And a flotilla of cargo vessels carrying sunsets and success stories.
And somewhere, in the middle of all the thinkingmovingdreamingwalkingtalkinglistening panorama, there lies a great assault. For it’s one thing to not have something. It’s another thing to have it and lose it. And, it’s an entirely notherthing totally to squander it. And when that notherthing is pride, then the only otherthing left to replace the place is pity.
This is about pity. The pity felt by the outsider when ridiculous deeds break the city’s kneecaps in front of the whole world. Chop licking voyeurs exhale in spent confirmation when Bombay breaks, breaks down, gets up, puts up a brave face, staggers, falls, pretends nothing has happened, postures, falters, lies, whores with the aid of the ever obliging pimping television screen, gets cornered, makes roundly absurd allegations, jostles for space, falls again, lets the termites masquerade as leaders, gets off, cools down, gets mocked and goes on and on and on.
This is about pity. The pity that follows the outsider home when Bombay tries to abort anyone who isn’t a manhoos, halfway through being engendered. A political ticket, a slogan gone wild.

This is about that pity when wives and journalists are lost to potholes and guns. When savings are lost to some wild chutzpa and kids to bomb blasts. This is about this pity. Right here. Right now. Sitting and grinning like a Cheshire cat on steroids. Every time our markets melt and our hearts freeze. This is about this pity. The one that wails in a maniacal soprano like a cornered banshee every time a riot breaks and people scream. This is about the pity that eventually impales every fabric that is painstakingly woven by outsiders and insiders alike in a tapestry of commerce, culture and colours.

And pity is not what this should ever be about. And that is probably what B21's seriously significant serendipity suggests. That pride taken too far transforms itself into pity. Irrevocably.