650 metres between Tulsi pipe and Cadell roads

Life stinks .

Just after you cross Mahim causeway from the suburbs towards town , the road breaks into three ,creating some kind of a choice forced upon unsuspecting inmates of India’s capitalist prison , Mumbai .
The one on the left goes past Raheja hospital to Tulsi Pipe road . The two sides of this road are entirely different . The left has filth , squalor , dirt and muck of rows and rows of slums , inhabited by the erstwhile workers of flourishing textile mills , all of which are now closed , in central Mumbai . Half clad women and naked kids with soulless eyes mark their presence in hundreds . The entire stretch goes through Matunga and Dadar onwards to Lower Parel and Mahalaxmi . Matunga and Dadar are Mumbai’s original inhabitants , staying in original houses of four storeys with twelve feet high roofs and large houses with balconies , something you can’t find in the rest of Mumbai . Lower Parel is where all the mills where .
One used to hear tales of great labour union leaders who ruled this part of Mumbai complete with their factions and connections to the underworld . The mills fell silent somewhere in the late nineties when local industry met competition . These were casualties of the first wave of liberalization and advent of the competitors from all over the world . Cotton , Silk and Wool perished dramatically as readymades and brands took over .The manufacturing firms gave way to marketing firms who got apparel from other places , branded and sold . Some firms like Century textiles have recently got readymade brands into the marketplace. Too little , too late , one wonders .Others like Bombay Dyeing haven’t yet got their act together and make more monies from their mill land sale than from textiles . So much so , they recently launched an airline called Go air , the brother that runs that part dates Preity Zinta ,the beautiful and dramatic actress .
For the last ten years till a couple of months back , Lower Parel was an eerie place. There are many dilapidated , silent mills , all of which are being sold at astronomical prices now to builders from all over India who are setting up mega malls , residential towers and multiplexes . The workers of these closed down mills found their way into the slums on Tulsi pipe road all the way from Mahim to Lower Parel , a good six kilometer stretch . There are no signals on this road so one drives rapidly , except pausing for an occasional dash that a small kid would do to cross the road or to avoid overdressed women soliciting precariously on road dividers .
All of this filth ends completely on Mahalaxmi , home to the race course . Mahalaxmi . Eternal magnificient moolah , literally . Every Sunday from November to March , the social gliterrati assemble in their magnificient dresses to place their bets on horses of the season and make returns on their frivolous investments . The who’s who of Mumbai and Pune creating greater and greater wealth for themselves every Sunday morning . The McDowell Derby is the biggest of them all , fetching close to a hundred million dollars in the second Saturday of February each year .
The middle road , called the swatantra veer savarkar marg , or sv road for the initiated takes one right through the back of all these mills and serves as a conduit for people who would work in the lanes of the poorer and older Mumbai . The lanes are full of residences of people who work in normal jobs , take home normal wages and have asense of community , local sons-of-the-soil kind of people . The road dissects Mumbai’s townside into two and carries on on the other side of the causeway to Kandivali , some twentyseven kilometers away . All kinds of shops dot the way beginning with the Mahim Church , sweet shops , phone shops , travel shops , petrol pumps , bank atms , bookstores , restaurants , any kind that would serve the need of the local populace .Somewhere along the way , it embraces Shivaji park in Dadar , the hotbed of political activity and the official political rally ground in Mumbai . Many a politician has claimed their rightful place in Mumbai’s political sun by demonstrating the size of their persuasive power in getting supporters to fill in these grounds and then delivering fiery speeches .
The third road , the Cadell road splits away right from Mahim causeway and creates a surge of office traffic headed to Nariman point , the commercial capital of money-minded Mumbai. There are no two –wheelers or three-wheeled autorickshaws on this road , just the best cars that run on Mumbai roads . The rich , super-rich and the uber-rich travel through this road . The road is cemented , with a clear footpath and not a soul in sight for most part of the day on the roads . It passes through mini-pakistan , as the small muslim dominated area at the beginning of Mahim is called and then reaches Siddhivinayak , the famous ganesh temple that can fulfill all your desires unconditionally and ends at Haji Ali , the muslim dargah . Cadell road also houses Samudra mahal , one of the most expensive real estate residences in Mumbai , costing well over five million dollars.
Life in Mumbai is reflected in the six hundred and fifty metre distance between these three roads , the swanky Cadell road , the middle class SV road and the filthy Tulsi Pipe road . They have co-existed for many many years and think will continue to do so .
As you speed past large buildings and patches of lush greens on Cadell road on a rainy day , you feel the pleasure and joy of it all . The struggle has been worth it and you have earned the momentary glory of conquest .
As you drive cautiously through the bumper to bumper sv road , one looks at all those shops out there and wonders about mundane things like some forgotten books to be bought for kids next semester or tickets to the movie for the weekend or a shoe to be repaired .
And , as you look at the people in the roofless slums of Tulsi pipe road on a rainy , wet day you feel the poverty and the pain and question the emptiness of this constant striving for materialistic pleasures .
This is just one part of Mumbai .
The other part is cruising at a hundred miles per hour and is minutes from their next destination . The daily commute in the fast suburban locals defines everything for this lot, just about a million or two of them .
But , theirs is another story .
And we’ll keep it for another day .