ONCE upon a not-so-long-ago time when Mumbai was Bombay you could proudly proclaim your allegiance to ‘Amchi Mumbai’. Now that the metropolis is known by its proper name, have you noticed the ‘Oh, poor you!’ look on people’s faces the moment they hear your hangout is the city under siege? Mumbai is now known for communal riots (we showed them), bomb blasts (they showed us), assaults on journalists, abuses for artistes, dug cricket pitches, desecrated World Cup trophies, protests in chaddis in defense of morality. Thackeray and his tribe. In short, for Mumbaikars, these are truly embarrassing times.
Is it really that bad? Well, unlike Delhi, we still shoot our models only with cameras. But for the rest, the good news is that it’s a bad scene, the bad news is that it keeps getting worse. Dhichkyaon now is a familiar sound for Mumbaikars. We don’t take criminals to the court s any more. In the last two years, the police have gunned them down (‘ encounters’) at the rate of a-criminal-a-week—...
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