Page 18 - Seniorstoday July-2023 Issue
P. 18
Our India
The changing
vistas of our cities
Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata –defining monu-
ments of the cities
Cookie-cutter lifestyles in cookie-cutter cities are an increasing reality,
writes Bachi Karkaria
Do cities make people, or is it the other markers, so have their home-cities. Money
way on the urban merry-go-round? If and power cohabit khullam and khulla in
the first were true, then many of us have Mumbai and Delhi; while musty ‘Cal’ clubs
a multiple personality. In my case, it’s a still cling on to their nostalgia and absurd
secular trimurti. However, mere mortals dress codes, change has finally begun
are less clear-cut than deities. So Shiv sweeping over this city too.
(Sena) Mumbai did not quite destroy what Consider just one indicator. The café
Calcutta created, and I remained confident is driving out the coffee house. In my
of my paternity during the years I spent in time, even those of us from swanky
Do-you-know-who-my-father-is? Delhi. I Loreto College would dress down for a
was brought up in what was still Calcutta; token pilgrimage to College Street and its
the other two contributed to my upward presiding deity --India Coffee House where
mobility, and, yes, even my downgrading. the air was turgid with Charminar smoke
Having been back and forth in all three, and leftist polemics, both impenetrable.
I can say that the old are becoming as Now the young sashay along Purna Das
obsolete as landlines. ‘Eentaalectual road where middle-class ‘baris’ have
snobbery, money and power no longer Cinderella-ed into a myriad cafes cum
define the people of Kolkata, Mumbai and boutiques, each newer and cuter-named.
Delhi respectively, that’s if they ever did. Like us Loreto-ites, they dress down
In all three, the elites always had all three. too—in distressed jeans. Though my jaw
In Calcutta, the bhodrolok, in Bombay the dropped to see a PYT in mauve angora
Parsis and in ‘Deh-li’ the lalajis. If these shorts. College Street is lined with equally
entitled beings have lost their genetic legendary secondhand book stalls. The
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