THE MEANING OF MUMBAI

It has been almost 30 years since I was in Mumbai.  We knew it as Bombay back then and until recently when it went back to its former name, Mumbai.  This week, it was struck by a wave of terrorism which seems exceptional in a country famous for religious hatred and violence.  While there have been such acts in the developed world (US, UK, and Spain) or the underdeveloped world (Indonesia, Africa), this is the first large-scale, orchestrated terrorist attack on a member of the developing world, which is so clearly on a trajectory to join the club of developed, industrialized, Westernized societies.  These attacks are a rebuke of that movement, of that progress.  What the attackers did not realize, however, is that even something of the scale of 9/11 would not deter that march forward of Indian society.  

The polygot culture of Mumbai is about far more than one's religion, one's station of birth, or one's family name; it transcends all of those factors and is about opportunity and the desire to expand one's sights and fortunes.  A very thoughtful and inspiring column in today's NY Times captures Mumbai well.  It is entitled, "What They Hate About Mumbai." The author, Suketu Mehta, a professor of journalism at NYU who has written a book entitled Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, compares Mumbai to a songbird.  People come to this city, he writes, because they long for the sounds of this bird (opportunity and fortune), and they are willing to toil for it and strive for it because they imagine how sweet it will be when they, themselves, finally get to hear it.  Their aspirations for a better life for themselves and their children are no different from the dock worker in the Baltic, the farmer in South Africa, or the first generation Indian-American doctor in Portland.  Hope will win out over fear, and the songbird still sings.