Posted by Namita Bhandare:
My column on the editorial page of the Hindustan Times looks at Mumbai and Delhi and how the differences between the two cities has narrowed in recent years
In the early 90s when I moved back to live in Delhi — ironically because I had married a Marathi manoos who lived as an ‘outsider’ in the capital — the Bombay (not yet Mumbai) versus Delhi debate was at its peak. Bombay was cool and cosmopolitan; a city of opportunity and dreams where everybody who worked hard enough, could make it big; a city that was so egalitarian that it didn’t give a rat’s tit to your last name; a city so safe for women that a ‘beautiful woman’, as the old saying went, ‘clad in the finest jewels may walk in the jungle safely at midnight’.
I had lived between both cities but finished school and college in New Delhi. Then, I left. Returning was like being reassigned to purgatory. Delhi was status-conscious and hierarchical with its own rigid social pecking order. Delhi was about nepotism and networking where those who made it big in the ‘import-export’ business did it because daddy-ji was pulling strings somewhere. Delhi was the city — or over-grown village, depending on your perspective — where no woman could be safe on the streets.
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I remember at the launch, you were quite upset withe way Shobhaa De went into a come time warp tryin to pull this whole Delhi vs Mumbai on. A few years back in a meeting in City, there was this discussion between Mumbai competing with Delhi in fashion — and how you found it utter nonsense. But I really liked the piece.
In Bombay, when a cabbie says the fare is Rs 96.50 and you give him a one-hundred-rupee note, he will return the balance Rs 3.50 in coins.
In Delhi, cabbies not only never charge by the meter, for some odd reason they also hide the meters under dirty towels.
Mr Grey, no cabbie in Mumbai has ever returned my change, in coins or notes. But yes, why Delhi cabbies and autowalas have meters that never seem to work is a mystery!