The city of dreams? You must be kidding!
What a lot of us are clinging on to are memories of a well and truly cosmopolitan Bombay.
The gang-rape of a photojournalist on Thursday has brought us back to a horrific reality of an entity called Mumbai.
The warning signs were only too apparent over the last few years. They started with the rape of a girl on the city’s famous Marine Drive in 2005.
And to think that the perpetrator was a cop in his chowki! All of us were horrified but it was only a matter of time before we moved on with our busy lives.
More recently, a Spanish national was raped in her apartment. This was in Bandra, home to the rich and famous of Mumbai.
A sexual assault on a lawyer in the wee hours snuffed out a precious life last year. The young woman’s screams for help went unheeded.
Barely a couple of months ago, acid was thrown on a woman had as she got off a local train. She did not live too long.
And earlier this week, an American national was attacked in a local train but escaped.
The rape of the young journalist is the latest in this list of horror stories that are now becoming part of Mumbai’s lore.
Imagine somebody in her early 20s with a dream of making it big in India’s most glamorous metro that is home to the Ambanis and the Khans of Bollywood.
Did she deserve a fate like this where five thugs decided to take the law into their own hands?
The doctors treating her say the girl is out of danger but it will be a while before she recovers from the aftermath of this traumatic incident. Where is Mumbai headed? When I moved in here two decades ago, the first thing that struck me was how everyone minded his/her business. It was incredible to see stations such as Churchgate and VT overflowing with people and, yet, nobody tried to get fresh with women in this mad rush.
And it was this incredible trait about Bombay (as it was called then) that I would brag to my friends in Delhi.
“Your city has wider roads but can a woman travel safely in a DTC bus? Sure, Bombay is chaotic as hell but at least nobody lives in fear,” I would say with enormous pride.
The honeymoon, though, was not going to last forever and change was creeping in slowly. Bombay gave way to Mumbai.
The dance bars, which were one of the biggest symbols of the city, were booted out. Never mind if the women lost their livelihoods overnight. It was equally irrelevant that the city’s lawmakers were frequent visitors to these dance bars.
What was happening was the cleansing of a city which our moral police thought was long overdue.
Some of them did not take too kindly to late night parties at pubs and police raids became the order of the day. The fabric of Bombay was undergoing an unwelcome metamorphosis.
What was especially frightening was a growing intolerance to free speech. Innocuous statements would have to be followed by apologies if the person concerned did not want his office or home ransacked.
And God help you in the event of a harmless tweet as writer, Shobhaa De, discovered recently.
The sad truth is that Mumbai has gone the way of other big Indian cities. Complete lawlessness prevails and there is nobody you can turn to for help. Old timers still recall with nostalgia how the city was tops in traffic discipline.
Today, drivers do not believe in stopping at red lights and if someone is knocked down, it is just too bad. There are no pavements in most parts of Mumbai and walking has become virtually impossible with vehicles double-parked or backed into every nook.
Senior citizens are terrified of living alone since assaults on them are becoming a regular occurrence.
The politician will, of course, blame everything on the endless migration from the northern States and Bangladesh.
So, who do we turn to for help? Thursday’s ghastly incident is another serious wakeup call.