Duality of existence in Mumbai city
Meghna Maiti
Mumbai
What if a raging monster comes and censures you in your loneliest moment, “After this life, you will have to come back again in pure flesh and blood. There’s no escaping the cycle of re-birth!” You would probably grit your teeth in anger and feel cheated. All of a sudden you would treasure every moment and little joys of your present life for fear of being perpetually condemned to damnation. Slowly, you would feel the ‘light’ in your present life and the ‘darkness’ in afterlife. And in realizing the polarities of existence, your appreciation of present life will increase manifold. Then perhaps we can say with confidence that lives of some special human beings represent the strange phenomena of ‘dualism’ that is constantly passing onto one another, through light and dark, truth and lie, misery and joy, that eventually enlightens, glorifies and then annihilates just as easily.
Simply put, dualism or co-existence of two different realities is vital for evolution. This is as much evident in the greatest of cities as in most complex of beings. For example, Mumbai is one such city where ‘duality of existence’ is palpable. Let us take a detour through Kalaghoda and Fort region in the most throbbing locality of south Mumbai, a place where clear blue sky merges with fine, filmy cobweb of a land. Kalaghoda, the heritage art district of Mumbai, seems to allow ordinary human voices to traverse freely across the expansive space, without trying to manipulate it or drown it with other noises. In a sense, the area is full of freedom and no bondage. It is visible in the way the soft tune of a flute-seller, chirping of birds intensify the ‘silence’; the wide-eyed wonder of a bunch of hippie foreigners, sudden flutter of a wild-red butterfly from nowhere creates ‘magic’ in nature.
Jehangir art gallery, David Sasoon library, Prince of Wales museum, Max Mueller bhavan and Rhythm House- the age-old music store bears testimony to kitsch in Kalaghoda. Also, Sabyasachi’s showroom, Fabindia, Hermes marks the place as an exclusive hub for design and creation where aesthetics is the main theme.
Just around the turn of Kalaghoda circle towards Fort area, one would see a series of innocuous cafes dotting the street where it is easy to spot one of those lonely souls, dressed in loose cotton, stirring his cup of coffee and staring at it in a dazed, fixed manner. While on the next table, a bespectacled woman maybe pouring over her book and right across, the air could be turning thicker with the smoke of cigarette and whispers of dark secrets of a couple in a forbidden relationship. As the day proceeds, a slight nip in the air and the orange radiance of the lamp-posts add to the mystic, trance-like charm of the place. For a moment when we shut our eyes the evening could feel like a dream bubble, light and soaring, never touching the ground.
In stark contrast to it, comes Dalal Street, located around Kalaghoda. The street seems to reek of blood on a cold, wet earth. Its main claimant Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) makes its presence felt like a snarling monster in charge of fortune of many. It exudes a certain subhuman, flashy charm, all ready to take on the world with its fangs. Its nouveau rich employees can be traced along Dalal Street, consumed fully by stocks and shares, culturally bankrupt and oblivious to life. They walk with a robotic pace and like to stay enchanted in their own moneyed circle. And over the years, they slowly transform into wolves and hyenas in human form.
In Chinese philosophy, a pair of opposites is considered to be complimentary forces, interacting to form a whole greater than each separate part, to form a dynamic system. As mentioned on wikipedia, the concept of yin-yang describes how seemingly opposite or contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world; and how they give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another. Natural dualities such as light and dark, low and high, cold and hot are thought of as physical manifestations of the yin-yang concept. This concept when applied in context of Mumbai perhaps explains its mind-blowing success in art and business, self and pelf, spirit and material among others. We understand how each of these realities can reach its full potential with the co-existence of a different realm of life.
Ambani’s 27-storey high Antilla, located on Altamount road in Mumbai is again a world apart from the city’s Dickensian tenements in its neighbourhood area, known as chawls. City experts say it is a ‘soaring monument’ which seems to draw a line between the rich and the poor. It is reportedly the most expensive home in the world, maintained by a permanent stuff of 600 (source: wikipedia).
If Mumbai suburbs, where majority of the citizens live is considered to be 'black', south Mumbai with its elite populace, sea-viewing million dollar homes and manicured gardens should be 'white'. The easy, comfortable lives of the town people are a world apart from the daily drudgery of the suburbanites. South Mumbai and the rest of the city seem to be two distinct realities surrounded by the sea. From a distance we realize how the interconnecting forces are always at play to balance the dichotomy of existence in this sea of swelling multitude.
The spirits of some of the world’s greatest cities live on this sense of dualism. In stark contrast to the billion-dollar suave apartments in Shanghai, the migrant laborers get to stay in cramped dormitories. So it is with Chicago, New York among others where Lamborghinis, Porsches on the road cannot hide its rising unemployment. From city to daily life, dualism slowly permeates into human beings from the heat, dust and grime of city air.
However, irrespective of nations or countries, the sense of two poles should usher in harmony and coherence and help us find our own meaning of ‘black’ and ‘white’. Black means strength: white means love. And grey is the in-between state of positivity. The union of two can only result in individual and collective happiness.
ENDS
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