Leaving Las Vegas

After twelve years we're leaving Mumbai, the original casino city, not that impostor in the desert of Nevada. Without even an actual casino in site this is the real capital of gambling, where thousands of people disgorge every day to not just gamble a bit of spare cash but their entire lives to try and make it in acting, music, business, serving, building, hustling, crime, life or even just staying alive; where for centuries Maharashtrians, Gujaratis, North Indians, Parsis, Jews, Armenians, Portuguese and the British jostled for their place in the sun and all helped to create a thriving ecosystem.

Everything that seemed alien and jarring twelve years ago when we got off the flight from Chicago via Amsterdam and stepped out into the pouring monsoon rain now isn't just familiar but comforting, at least most of the time. What seemed like chaos in those first days, and outwardly still is, hides or disguises a professional ethos that would put many cities around India, let alone the world, to shame.
It takes a while to realise that in spite of the glam of Bollywood and the top business houses this is fundamentally a working class city, and proud of it too. There is no poetry in the spoken word, people swallowing syllables as quickly as they do their vada pav,  their Hindi a guttural mixture of southern, western and northern Indian languages. There is no time for small politenesses, people brushing and shoving past each other to catch a train, bus or plane, always worried that they might be slower or later than the next guy and thus lose out on something worth having. There is hardly any place or space for organised retail as it's known elsewhere in the world, few sprawling malls, with most retail being conducted from small neighbourhood kirana stores. People live stacked on top of each other in a mixture of old dilapidated chawls and modern gleaming high-rises. 

And yet the city has a soul, a kindness that only slowly reveals itself, almost inversely proportional to the frenzied speed with which business is conducted. That guttural language is peppered with lines such as 'koi tension nahin lene ka hai', or 'koi lafra nahin', i.e. 'don't worry and don't get worked up, it'll be o.k.' or 'there is no issue', phrases that are applied as a verbal balm onto any tense situation requiring immediate relief.
That person who brushed past you a few minutes ago will turn around and double back when he realises you're lost and need to be pointed in the right direction. Honking and perpetually impatient taxi drivers will detour to return a lost iPad, phone or jewellery. The corner shop guy will send his delivery men come rain or shine to drop off groceries that were ordered on the phone minutes ago.
There is a trust in doing business with a business person's word still carrying weight.

We're heading to Bangalore, the southern Indian city that represents the wannabe new India of technology and startups and a new cosmopolitan mix of people from across India, perhaps a new Mumbai in the making, one fit for the 21st century.

Before we leave though we need to pay tribute to what we're leaving behind. So here's goodbye to:

• the delivery men who carry four bags of shopping on their bicycles through sun, rain and wind
• the careless Mumbaikars who stand out in the rain during the monsoon, talking and laughing with abandon, because it's raining and that's what you do
• the guards, postmen, newspaper delivery men, dhobis and doodh wallas who once a year miraculously discover religion while standing outside your door and say 'haan sar, Diwali'
• the faux glam SoBo women who answer their phone with an indignant flick of the hair and a 'WHEREAREYOU??', worried that their friend may be somewhere more fun, someplace better that they have missed out on
• the hordes of young boys who on a Sunday board a train for the Oval at South Bombay to play hundreds of overlapping games of cricket till it's too dark to see, who shout 'ball ball ball' to get passersby to throw their cricket ball back to them 
• the uncles and aunties on Marine Drive and Worli Sea Face who think that two squats and a single swing of the leg constitutes exercise and is a good build up to a well-deserved Indian breakfast
• the uncles and aunties on Marine Drive and Worli Sea Face who hire a trainer to put them through their paces, without any shame and under the watchful gaze of their fellow citizens
• the hut dwellers who have no business being happy but who sit on road dividers at midnight, talking and laughing with abandon, because tomorrow is another day, another chance to gamble 
• the city officials who can't build roads worth their name but who flawlessly organise twelve days of Ganpathi celebrations each year 
• the city that keeps its cool, in spite of being called 'Maximum City' by people who don't actually live here

Damn you Mumbai for making it so hard to say goodbye.