no better drive – mumbai and songs for the deaf

I love this city, Mumbai, but it’s myriad inconveniences make you a certain kind of person. Its long list of purgatorial states - queueing for parking, lining up at signals behind hand-drawn carts, waiting at supermarkets with inefficient teller machines - means that you’re always optimising for getting from a to b quick. There’s no time to waste, your time is limited as it is.

But I love this city, I realise as I visit after several months away. As I drive down the Eastern Freeway listening to Songs for the Deaf by QOTSA, the South Central skyline to my right, Mazgaon docks to my left, the air clearer than I recall it being the last time I was here (maybe they’ve paused working on the metro and the roads, maybe my city is not under construction for the first time in years, a brief reprieve), a lump forms in my throat.

I miss this city, with its honking cars, its screaming hawkers, its unrelenting sun, its oppressive humidity. I miss the casual warmth of its people. I miss its pace, its drive. I miss the sea, the salty air, the beach – with its chaat shops and fairground games, the long line of cabs that brings throngs of visitors to take in the sunset every evening.

Most of all, I miss its suburbs: the unsung centre of the city, my childhood home. No odes are written to the lands north of Bandra. No songs about the struggling actors of Andheri, the investment bankers of Powai, the engineers of Chembur. For decades, the cultural centre of India’s cultural centre has been moving northwards from the old city to the suburbs. There’s no sign of this shift in the tales of the old bearded men who chronicle this city’s story.

When I lay alone in bed, thousands of miles away from home, amid Mario Miranda prints, bottles of Old Monk held as keepsakes, and historical photos of the city I love, it’s the suburbs that animate my imagination. It’s the 4 am Mini Punjab butter chicken roll that I crave. The noontime Mamledaar Misal misal pav eaten hurriedly under a wobbly fan. The new favourites like Madeira & Mime and Mirchi & Mime, which were rescued from a shutdown post-Covid by rabid local support. That’s the city I love.