Circular/Narrow

Delhi is class. Mumbai is cool. But which one is better? The debate continues

- Shriti K Tyagi

THE Mumbai vs Delhi debate is done. Or so we thought. It is back, three bananas short of a fruit basket, a cocoa puff of never-ending nothingness with Fabulous Lives vs Bollywood Wives. Surely, the lens has shifted. And if anyone asks. Yes, Shalini Passi wins. The cities are merely bread on the sideboard. It is Passi vs Plebs all the way.

But the cities, Mumbai and Delhi, do crop up with their multicultural karmas to stir the debate only this time, with Reality TV walking into the drama in Louboutin-soled heels. One thing is certain, there is no place for indifference in their energy-wrapped rivalry. It nudges you to go into the dialectic of what frames them. If Delhi is ishq mohabbat pyaar with fixers, brokers, middlemen, meddle-ness, sprawling gardens, tombs, politics, chaat, bureaucracy, power and chana bhatura thrown into the mix; Mumbai is a fast, dense mass of walkers, dreamers, financers, buildings, slums, vada pav, cutting chai, seaside promenades, queues, stars, industrialists and idlers negotiating with limited space zara hatke zara bachke for it is Bombay meri jaan. If you stop moving, you might cease to exist.

Mumbai, as we know it, was born to Urbs Prima in Indis, the Latin phrase meaning the first city of India. Delhi was born to power for it was said that ‘whoever ruled Delhi, ruled India’.

Slowly, the cities took shape. The seven, separate, amorphous islands, named Heptanesia by Ptolemy in CE 150, were joined by a series of land reclamation projects to shape Bombay. On the other hand, Delhi became a site for seven cities when its rulers, belonging to different dynasties, built their capitals in different parts of the city rather than rule from an existing one. The romance of seven reigned over the geography, Mumbai went linear and Delhi circular. This has shaped how people in the two cities view space. (See image 1 and 2).