Mumbai Nightlife

Just saw this news bulletin about night-life in Mumbai. And how its dying or actually is dead, depending on your point of view and inclination. Further, it is said that this is the first sign of ‘impending death of the great metropolis called Mumbai’; or is the last heaving gasp before it rolls over and dies. Again depending on your p.o.v.

Here are my two bits of musings on this issue.

Musing 1: When does a city die? Does it depend on when restaurants, pubs and other assorted nightspots shut down? Or does it depend on the decay and slow ebbing away of a deeper emotion that is central to the city?

Lets take a living entity, a human being say, Homo Sapiens. When does a person die? Is it

• When he / she is prevented from moving about and doing as they please, i.e their freedom is curtailed
• When he / she stops breathing
• When he / she loses the will to live
  

Now, most p.o.v’s I have heard about Mumbai’s demise fall in the first category of curtailed freedom. Whereas we all know that it’s the latter two that really define death.

Why is it that the life of a city is dependant on whether pubs stay open all night? What is the great sanctity and ceremony to the all-night pub that its bandied about as a symbol of a modern, liberated and forward thinking society? I’m sure these facts can be corroborated, but I’m not sure whether even major western cities allow pubs and bars to stay open all night. Agreed, that there are designated ‘night-life streets’ in Amsterdam, Bangkok etc, but I think we all know their area of specialization which necessitates nocturnal business hours (I wonder if that industry is hiring consultants to figure out optimal use of available capacity, but that would be musings for another time).

At a physiological level, it has been observed and proven that the relationship between alcohol consumption and the utility gained from it is inverse beyond a point (or beyond a few pints, depending on your favorite tipple). The laws of marginal utility sets in rather fast depending on your age, sex, your body’s tolerance levels and your profession; more stressed you are (who isn’t, I may politely inquire, in this great metropolis), the faster the utility gained is likely to turn negative. Hence my submission is that given a start time of quaffing 9 pm, a 1.30 curfew is quite sensible.

However, listening to all the urbane young men and women who purred on screen ‘to chill and let pubs remained open’ I now realize the real reason why pubs in Mumbai need to remain open later than 1.30 am. It’s the damn traffic.

By the time folks finish work, its about 8 pm or so. You head home, get a bite to eat (I hope so, else we shall see a spurt in gastric ulcers), then you spruce up, splash on the cologne, put on party wear, and then head out. By this time its easily 9.30 pm. Traffic again will be heavy, so by the time you reach your chosen destination, it will be 10.30 easily. Then you wait up for your friends, and we all know that its bad Indian custom to start drinking or eating ahead of your guests / fellow eaters. Further we all know the old Indian custom of arriving fashionably late; by the time the quorum at the table is attained, it will be 11:15 minimum. By this time, there will be a surge of orders that need to be catered, leading to some delays in fulfilling said order. By the time quaffing commences, it will be 1130 pm. An average, polite Indian will linger over his / her drink for at least half an hour; so by the time you start ascending the alcohol-utility curve, its pack up time. At the height of the curve, you feel invincible and feel that you can go on and on; and so the clamour for the pub to stay open.

So, why is it that we assign such importance to calls for pubs to stay open? Don’t u see the writing on the wall – its all the traffic that is leading to such levels of dis-satisfaction. That, or the fact is that the BPO industry has tipped over and there are young people wanting a drink at the end of their long day at 4 am in the morning. I suspect that’s not really the case, because I am told that at 4 am it is possible to catch a drink. But the kind of place where you can won’t have fancy ambience, DJ’s or PYT’s.

Which brings me to musing no. 2……I think this city potentially dies many times a day. I witness its death on my daily commute from a prominent suburb to South mumbai, morning and evening. I have seen the journey time increase from a sedate 30 mins to a minimum of 45 mins in the morning. And in the evening, a 45 min commute now takes a minimum of 75 mins. The time frame for this doubling of commute time – 4 years.

Sitting in a car upwards of 90 mins is sheer torture, not withstanding FM radio, ipod, reading light, reading material or su-doku. It’s a sheer waste of my life. A life so wasted that I think a part of me dies commuting. My driver endures more. He stays really far off. Commutes by train for about 2 additional hours he spends chauffering me around. So he spends nearly 4 hours going from point A to B to C to D (and E for lunch, F for agency etc etc). How does he stay sane? Well, I think he reaches office and sleeps most of the time, has a good crap (he can’t be regular with the work timings I keep, let me assure you!), plays carom (he’s the champ at work I hear), does cross-words (I discovered that there are Hindi crosswords, which is quite fascinating and liberating in a way).

If I were to ask him about Mumbai, he moans and cribs about things. Mostly general stuff; but I don’t think I've heard him write an obituary on Mumbai.

So what I’m musing……is that this city went comatose some time back. Quietly. Only, quite a few of us are so engrossed and caught up in what we do for a living that we didn’t notice.

Revival will depend on whether we shake ourselves awake. Soon.