In which ‘the Bombay Blog’ threatens to become a woefully inaccurate moniker

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Bengalaru, Is It You?

The Indian renaming extravaganza that started in earnest in the mid-90s, with Bombay, Madras and Calcutta all disappearing from the cartographical lexicon, shows no sign of abating. Luckily I find it easy to remember the new name for Bangalore, as I can sing it to the tune of the T-Rex classic Metal Guru. I do get some funny looks in my 24 hours there, from people who might not appreciate my fondness for Marc Bolan and his magnificent hair.

Meanwhile, I sample a proper Kannada biryani. If you’re used to the tasty but mild dish beloved of the British curry house bargain-hunter, you’re in for a shock. This one packs a hell of a punch. Jeez.

Return to Deak Ferenc Ter

My stay in Kolkata, city of literature and leftism, is sadly a short one. But I’m looking forward to going back for more, from what I’ve seen – and heard.

To my hopelessly uneducated ear, Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati all sound quite similar: in Mumbai, you hear plenty of all three, but I can’t tell which is which. Bengali, heard on its home turf, is very different: wonderfully gutteral and percussive, like a Hungarian underground train announcement.

A tree! A real tree!

I don’t see too much of Delhi either, but I get a quick look at New Delhi – the British bit, planned by Lutyens, now home to the Indian government. By comparison with Bombay it’s elegant and green, with broad, tree-lined avenues and well-kept flowerbeds. It’s like Port Sunlight with auto-rickshaws.

But then anywhere is green compared with dear old Bombay: it makes Manchester look like Borneo. Trees don’t make anyone money, which in downtown Bombay means they are surplus to requirements.

They say that everything in Kolkata is devoted to the pursuit of learning; in Delhi, to the pursuit of power; and in Bombay, to the pursuit of money. It’s a crude generalisation, but there could be more than a grain of truth in it.

(Which got me thinking about the English cities I’ve lived in.
Since we're in crude generalisations mode, you might say that everything in Bristol is devoted to the pursuit of lentil-eating, sandal-wearing sustainability; everything in Manchester is devoted to the pursuit of a good fight; and everything in Birmingham is devoted to the pursuit of the bus you’ve just missed).

Fruit and nutcase

Back in Bombay, and that brief smile that comes from passing the India headquarters of Cadbury every day, two minutes' walk from my temporary home. Growing up in suburban South Birmingham in the 1980s, we didn't have much to write away about: having the world’s most famous chocolate factory down the road in Bournville was our one and only claim to global fame.

In Bombay, the HQ has some plants outside, all of whose leaves are sprouting resplendent in Cadbury purple. It reminds me of Bournville railway station: it should be offensively crass, but in my hopelessly biased Brummy way, I've decided it's charming.

Guilt and absolution

When I first came to India three years ago, my parting thoughts were that in fifty years’ time, Mumbai would be the world’s leading city. Now? I reckon I was about twenty years too cautious.

The pace of change in three short years is something to behold (a theme I’ll return to another time). India is rising, and we in the old world are going to have to go some just to keep up.

And yet…

Every time you stop in a car or taxi in South Bombay, you can bet that within a few seconds there’ll be a tiny hand pressing against a closed window, or reaching through an open one. Often, that tiny hand will point to a deformity – usually a burn-scarred or infected limb, or an amputation. It’s a rare, heartless soul that can just move on, look away, carry on chatting about the economy, the test match, the evening’s entertainment.

But what can you do? Give them a few rupees? Very foolhardy. The tale told in Slumdog, the tale of begging gangs and children maimed for adult profit is not purely a film fantasy.

So, in your commitment to what Michael Palin confessionally called ‘middle-class guilt socialism’, you search out an charity with a good reputation and contemplate bunging them a few bob a month. Got to keep that conscience clear! (I’m rather keen on Railway Children, not least because it makes me think of Jenny Agutter and Bernard Cribbins.)

Which poses the question: how much do you need to bung them to remain a member of the ethical club, to survive the Chorlton Inquisition, to see a mutilated arm reaching towards your window and not feel ashamed of your vast relative wealth? Enough to feed a child dal and rice every day? Enough to pay for a new toilet block a month? Enough to make you actually notice it’s gone, like a financial chastity belt?

It’s a facetious, reductive game, of course. We do what we can, or in most of our cases a lot less than we probably could. And we remember that we had just as much responsibility to those kids when we lived in Manchester as we do now we’re in Mumbai.
And that there but for the grace of god go all of us.


Then when those numbers games get too depressing, you play some more. Give or take a few, there are twenty million people here. More than half of them live in poverty. And Mumbai is by some distance the richest city in India. So what will happen when government programmes, NGOs, trickle-down economics or pure bloody hard work lift people up, as, slowly, they do?

You can see the answer at the railway stations every day. Twenty million people here, and hardly space to breathe: several hundred million who’d quite like to be here.

If you think about it for too long, your head hurts.
Thank goodness for escapism...

Oh! Bombay!

The new cinema at the new shopping centre in Lower Parel is dispiritingly similar to your average UK multiplex, except the Hindi to English language films ratio is about the reverse of that in Birmingham. Oh, and the building’s not finished yet. But nobody seems to mind that.

Just before the film starts, they play the Indian national anthem and project the national flag onto the screen, and everybody stands up. I’m told they used to do that in the UK. Then randomly, half way through, they stop for an intermission. They used to do that in the UK as well. Sadly, nobody comes up through the floor playing one of these.

The most irritating thing (apart from the movie – The Reader – on which more in a moment) is the censorship. Fair enough: they don’t like sex. I can handle that. A lot of people don’t like sex. (Particularly with me, boom boom.) And the rules appear to be very clear – bums are ok, boobs are not. Don’t even think about the really naughty bits. But they could at least make the cuts with a little finesse: here they are jarring, with incidental music cut off in mid-quasi-erotic-crescendo.

Thankfully, it doesn’t matter, because the film is a fetid pile of tripe, reducing the complex, nuanced and historically crucial question of collective German war guilt to a glib semi-eroticised yarn about a boy getting his rocks off and not getting over it for thirty years, with a woman who’s a mass murderer but she can’t read properly so oh ok that’s alright then. Oh give me strength.
On this occasion, dear old Kate Winslet getting her bits out (yet again) is far from the most offensive thing on display.

Thinking about googling ‘combover’

You know you’re getting old when the recession on your hairline is bigger than the one in the economy. But in India, I really am old – six years older than the average person, apparently.

So it’s always a pleasure to hang around some youngsters’ haunt and be made to feel a bit geriatric. Blue Frog is the coolest live music venue in India, and Indigo Children one of the hottest young bands. It’s a semi-private, unannounced gig, but word slowly gets out and before long, the place is busy with kids young enough to be my own - by Gorton maths, anyway. They’re heading to the UK in May. Trust me: they rawk.