Mumbai: a few weeks back

The ocean is angry today, all churning brown-grey water and unfulfilled currents. Waves rise and fall without purpose, swirling pissily. I wonder how much I impose my mood on the ocean. It is, after all, just going about its millennial business in obedience to the moon and the moods of the seasons. The other day, a similar view evoked images of romance and hope with the lingering aftertaste of danger. I saw young couples holding hands in the stiff breeze as though the feisty weather cut raw the strength of their partnership. I saw elderly couples looking newly alive as the weather played with their loosefitting clothes. And I saw kids, playful like dogs, as though the wild wind finally authorised their wicked ways. But today, without people to mediate between the ocean and me, I see only enormous, horizon pushing anger. Perhaps it is the colour of the water, stained by the very city on whose shores it beats, spoiled and gritted by the Mumbai millions. Were it dark blue and matched with a biting breeze I’d interpret it differently, perhaps as a statement of the primacy of nature. But here nature is beaten, and no matter how impressive its fist it can’t impose itself without stirring up the weakness in its shallows.

Seen from the top of the Bombay Stock Exchange building this city is Manhatten. Stretching north from Colaba and the old colonial buildings, built in foreign styles with long term colonial intent, the city disappears into a high-rise horizon, misted up by the monsoon.

On marine drive couples stare out through their wild hair at the sea. Behind them on the pavement, an old shrunken woman in greased clothes carries a wrapped bundle of possessions on her head. And I find myself wondering what she’s thinking, and whether the brutality of her existence has wiped thoughts clear from her mind. She stares straight ahead and shuffles in a northerly direction parallel to the gutter.

The stuff is everywhere, discarded stuff, no doubt placed with reason once but that reason long since forgotten. Roadwork signs, rusted around the edges and fading, once commanding traffic but now part of the streetscape like the bitumen and the street traders and so many feet. In India I sometimes dream of white rooms. Floor to ceiling white. I’m sure I’m not the first.