| 84 | 84 | This narrative of contrasts and compressed spaces has been central to the way Bombay has been imagined in literature and cinema and has informed the city’s cultural imagination throughout the twentieth cen- tury. The portrayal of Bombay’s affluence is exaggerated to highlight its darker and uglier side. For poet Nissim Ezekeil, Bombay “flowers into slums and skyscrapers” (cited in Patel and Thorner 1995, xix). For Marathi poet Patte Bapurao, the city appears like a stage of oppositions, such as the Taj Mahal Hotel and the workers’ chawls,7 speeding modern cars and helpless pedestrians (cited in Alice Thorner, xix). The popular song “Ye Hai Bombay Meri Jaan” (This is Bombay, my love) from the film CID (Raj Khosla, 1956) evokes a phenomenology of the city in which, in the midst of buildings, trains, factory mills, and the ubiquitous crowd, there exists a subculture of gambling, crime, and claustrophobia. This is a space purged of humanity; the crowd moves mercilessly, pushing aside those who cannot keep up with its pace. This diversity and plurality of experience, language, and class produces an acute sense of the city’s hybridity. To this, one can now add the rapid proliferation of high-tech products, visual images, and the simultaneous aestheticization and decline of the streets. |