The invisible and insulated gates of South Mumbai

Mumbai’s newer infrastructure gleams like progress, but in reality its genesis is social, built to insulate privilege from the ‘others’

- SRINATH SRIDHARAN

I was recently struck by something a South Mumbaikar friend said. Let's call him Rahul, a popular name in Hindi cinema. He is observant in the way only someone who has seen the world—all his life—from a balcony overlooking the sea can be. Without the sea, whether in his club or home or office, he is simply not who he is.

Rahul went on to explain how almost all of Mumbai's ruling class—politicians, bureaucrats, industrialists, and celebrities—are packed within the old island city. What he calls ‘the zip codes of power’. He added smoothly that most of them, him included, have inherited kingdoms without the inconvenience of creation.

The city’s elite, clinging to nostalgia as identity, call it SoBo and don't realise that Bombay became Mumbai many years ago. Yet if you dare call it ‘SoMu’, you instantly become the outsider-who-doesn't-belong.

And then there's the tribe of the rich-but-not-SoBo, who describe Alibaug as the Hamptons of Mumbai—for they've likely never been to the real Hamptons. They call it so to feel grand. Just like a “New Cuffe Parade” luxury project rose from an old dump yard at Anik Depot, 20 km away from the actual Cuffe Parade.

The city’s geography has always been a metaphor for its existence: the further north or east you go, the more unreal and the more humans per sq ft. And every civic snarl or snag becomes an opportunity for project extensions and next-election posters.