Through the
dreams of four individuals, Udayan Patel interprets
the city’s experiments with itself
 |
Udayan
Patel |
1970s: Twenty-two-year-old
Santosh left his village in western Maharashtra to come to Bombay. He
had never left the village. His experiences were limited to whatever
the village offered. When he came to Bombay, he lived with a relative
who let out a bed that he could use only at night. He had to be out
of the room the entire day. He managed to get a job at Churchgate. Now
he began to feel that all the vertical moments — of the bus, of
the building — fascinated him and he always sat on the top deck
of the double-decker bus.
He was frightened.
He did not know how to relate to the city, he had never seen so many
people. He had never had an experience of height, except climbing a
tree. So this fascination made him always sit near the window and look
out. So in his journey from Worli Naka to Churchgate, he saw from the
first floor of the bus, various sights like an old lady combing her
hair or a young person eating. And the bus would pass the same homes
everyday. He began to feel that he knew those people, of whom he had
no inkling. They began to develop an identity for him. So he began to
relate to the building and its residents as somebody he knows without
really knowing them. In this state of mind, he got a job in Nariman
Point. Though he took the same bus, he could see from a great height
at the new building. He felt that for the first time he could feel elated
in Bombay. And he was feeling that in the village he knew everybody,
nobody was unknown to him. Whereas here most people were unknown to
him and he felt they were also unknowable. At the same time he felt
he had a bit of their world by looking down from the bus as well as
the building. Then, he had a dream which I thought was very interesting.
And the dream is, he is lying flat on the floor in the chawl, looking
up. And he sees a huge number of ants rushing towards him, occupying
the space between the floor and the ceiling. And they rushed at him,
he had an experience of terror which woke him up and he found that he
had fever. So he broke into fever and was off work for few days. And
he began to tell me that, “You know when I saw these ants rushing
towards me, I felt very crowded by Bombay and there is no place for
me to live with somebody I know. Everybody is not known to me and they
are like I have no name, I am like an ant.” At the same time we
felt that he wants to stay in Bombay, he doesn’t want to give
up. So these vertical and horizontal lines that he was very observant
about made him feel that if he could take the bus journey everyday,
he’ll feel better.
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| |
The
70s were full of life with people trying to integrate with the
city. The 90s were painful. In 2006, Mumbai is trying
to cope with pain, anxiety, death and a sense of loss |
Then, an office
peon told him that he’ll take him to an Udupi joint to eat something.
He had never been to a restaurant or an Udupi joint. And he was fascinated
again by the shape of the idli which this peon ordered for him. He’d
never eaten anything other than the food cooked by his mother and in
Mumbai there is a system of khanewal who supply you village food. So
he told himself that this is my first experience that is different and
he thought that he didn’t know the caste of the cook. Who is this
cook? What is his/her caste? When he looked around for the cook, he
felt that nobody was bothered by the cook’s caste. That made him
feel liberated and he felt that his rigid walls were dissolving.
1992: When Bombay
was in the grip of rioting mobs, I met Prasad. He told me that he had
taken part in the riots, and since then he could not sleep and couldn’t
digest food properly. In his internal world, he felt there was no peace
and a disquiet that he could not erase whatever he did – got drunk,
left Bombay, came back. But his disquiet would not leave him. In his conversations
with me, he felt that there was no respite from the disquiet, by day or
by night. And then he had a dream that he is sitting in a Dadar-Thane
local train. He is all alone in the compartment, which he felt strange
as he was in a completely silent train. He looks at his hands and he finds
the hand has turned into a block of ice. He told me that he had this chilling
feeling, “How am I going to live with this image, this feeling?”
The hands used in the riots and the hands that he used to earn a living.
And the train was his normal Dadar-Thane train which he boarded everyday
to get to work.
So he felt that
if he could understand his dream, may be something can happen in his
life. Then he had another dream, which I want to narrate. In a conversation
a few days later, he said he had another dream that he is sitting in
the train. This time it is a Western Railway train and going towards
Borivali and there are people in the compartment. And there are ants
running up and down below his skin, making him feel scratchy and irritable,
and he could not do anything about it. And then he said that all this
happens to him through a feeling that the people he has killed in the
violence have never left him. They are with him. And he was really wondering
how to develop the patience to live with himself and his internal feeling
and at the same time be peaceful. He and his friends had looted and
murdered a Muslim family.
2006: Kirti, a
ba first year student in a suburban college, had this dream two days
after the Bombay blasts. There is an empty road with silent buildings,
and there is total darkness. He said he was shaken up by the blasts
because one of his friends returning from college had died in the train
blast. And he said that this dream is haunting him because he said this
is like a complete building, everything is intact but there are no people
and no life, no movement. So he felt maybe if we could understand what
his friend’s family would be feeling. So he said we had to understand
what his mother felt, but he felt afraid to go there. And he said after
this dream he felt some strength that look everything is intact without
life. It reminded him of something he’d read that the Americans
and others develop bombs that can kill people but leave the infrastructure
intact. And he felt in the train blast there was destruction of life
and of infrastructure. But he felt it was a stupid idea, forget it.
And he was crying a lot for the loss of his friend. So the whole darkness
in the dream and stillness has a quality of expressing what he felt
about Bombay’s situation.
2006: A very rich
woman came to me, totally shaken up after seeing dead bodies on television.
She, her children and her husband had a long discussion about what will
happen next. And they got worried about their driver who takes the evening
train. Was he on one of the trains? They called on his mobile, it didn’t
work. First she was anxious as to what will happen to him. Then she
tells me, “Look I have no other person I know who travels by train.”
Then suddenly she remembers that her cousin travels by train. She’d
completely forgotten, and she didn’t want to remember but she
did and she called him up. Her cousin said, “I am going to come
over to your house to stay because I have missed my train and now there
is no service, I can’t go to the suburbs.” Up to this extent,
the anxieties were felt in a real way. But the reality of anxiety underwent
a change: how to stop terrorists from attacking. But then she felt helpless
and she had no idea what to do. At this point she felt she had to close
her mind, forget about it and not think about it.
ISTHMUS |
|
The
seven islands that Mumbai is made from were Colaba, Girgaum,
Old Woman’s Island, Mazgaon, Worli, Mahim and Parel.
The British Crown leased it to the British East India Company
for £10 in 1668. |
|
These are experiences
of dreams about the city in different periods of time. The 70s were
full of life and people came in looking forward to getting integrated
in the city. The 90s were painful. Prasad did something he can’t
change. Nobody told him what the consequences would be. The young boy
who lost his college friend reflects how Mumbai is trying cope with
pain, with anxiety, with death, with a sense of loss. And the rich woman
reflects anxiety for the future. But like her, others don’t know
what to do, so they shut their mind and try and carry on with life.
In a way it is a commentary of what is happening to our city.
The
writer is a Mumbai-based psychotherapist
