OMG, the very idea! And yet, the suburbs are growing up and challenging SoBo snobbery in many little ways. SoBoites snark back!

OMG, the very idea! And yet, the suburbs are growing up and challenging SoBo snobbery in many little ways. SoBoites snark back!

During the last monsoons, a Starbucks in Kandivali’s Mahavir Nagar put out a sign asking visitors to place their umbrellas in a bucket outside the shop — in Gujarati. A few years ago, a Starbucks in such a location would have been hard to imagine. One that coolly communicates with its patrons in Gujarati Unimaginable. The “town” would sneer at the very idea — and yet, as the suburbs grow in size and financial heft, these once-gauche poor cousins are sneering right back at the idea of South Bombay superiority.

Godrej India Culture Lab head Parmesh Shahani moved from Colaba to Vikhroli (or as he says, “saw the light”) five years ago. A refreshing voice from SoBo or “so boring” as he calls it, Shahani believes that SoBo is like a museum — for dead and old things. “To me South Bombay is old buildings with colonial heritage which have nothing to do with contemporary India. I find it excruciatingly boring but I find the physicality of it to be overtly nostalgic. The other problem of South Bombay is its people..

...“It’s a strange species of people who shudder when you tell them that you have to travel when you have to go anywhere. It’s nice for tourists and old people,” he says adding, “Suburbs on the other hand are defined by their potentiality. They’re not fixated to a particular idea of who they are, which means that they are ambiguous. They are argumentative. I think that Mumbai’s qualities are suburban qualities — resilience, mutability. It’s time that the suburbs call South Bombay for what it is.”

Since Sobo prides itself as a more cultured pocket, Shahani has a word on that as well. He pointedly continues, “Two exciting art events in the past few years in Mumbai were the Dharavi Biennale and Culture Lab factory art pop-ups. How many SoBo people including gallerists actually ventured to see either I could count them on my fingers. Gallerists sit in their white cubicles and complain about art dying in the city while it’s actually thriving. What is a city, if not a gigantic tapestry I saw the entire picture when I moved.”

Freelance writer Tariq Engineer has a different idea of what the picture actually is. “South Mumbai has a history that the suburbs don’t. There is the Gateway of India, the Taj Hotel, VT Station, Marine Drive, all the colonial buildings, the grandness of Ballard Estate, the cultural cachet of the NCPA and the various clubs — that reflect our colonial past and carry with them a sense of elite-ness. The suburbs, perhaps apart from Bandra, don’t have that sense of history or grandness. They are newer, more chaotic and seem to cram more people into smaller spaces (though there are pockets like that in South Mumbai too). The rickshaws are the other big difference. I think of them as the cockroaches of the road. Since they are banned in South Mumbai, it adds a sense of order (possibly more perceived than real) to travelling by road. There is a feeling that South Mumbai is cleaner, more orderly, more refined than the suburbs,” he says.

Tariq isn’t shy of his townie snobbery. “I’ve been called a SoBo snob more times than I can count. I tend to wear it as a badge of pride,” he says.

While the physical difference is more apparent than perceived, suburbans are touchy too when it’s pointed out, says fashion consultant Richa Desai, a Malad resident. “They get touchy at the mere mention of South Mumbai. They need at admit that the suburbs are crap when it comes to decent public space where one can stroll around enjoying a beautiful evening while still being at an arm’s length from beautiful cafes. Which is easily possible in Fort and Kala Ghoda,” she says.

Given how diverse, innovative and entertaining the arguments are, in favour of and against the various pockets of the maximum city, they make for excellent fodder for stand-up comics. Ask funny man Anuvab Pal. A resident of Bandra, Pal often includes the divide as a premise for his stand-up comic material. Recounting an incident he says, “I remember during the US elections, there were all these jokes about how South Mumbai cared more about that, than an Indian election. I remember being at a place in Colaba and a man randomly shouted ‘Obama’ for no reason, and then touched his heart. Like he was a Navy Seal! I also did a comedy class for kids and when I said tell me about a vacation, everyone mentioned Paris, Rome, London, San Francisco. One kid said Mahabaleshwar, and most South Mumbai kids had no idea what that was!” Pal points out that it is the attitude on either side that defines them. “South Mumbai is still, fortunately or unfortunately, quite westernised from a 100 years ago. The rest of Mumbai is quite Americanised in a Hindi-speaking way, but very present day. I also love how a SoBoite has only a SoBoite for something — be it salsa class, catering. It’s all by word of mouth. The rest of Mumbai has apps and the Internet.”

SoBoites pretend not to care about the barbs. Mincing no words while standing up for her neighbourhood of decades, theatre personality Dolly Thakore believes that the suburbs can never match up to the charm of South Mumbai or for that matter, the sophistication of its people. “Town is made up of old families and professionals and with that, comes a certain amount of dignity, class and adherence to various traditions and norms. They are not ‘nouveau rich’ — not that we don’t have a section of them, but by and large South Mumbai has a certain sophistication about it. The suburbs in contrast are unruly, undisciplined and a disgusting show of money. They travel business class, buy expensive designer clothes and have done well in their businesses — which is an admirable quality — but there’s no class or sophistication,” she says. Ask her if that isn’t a little snobbish, she answers, “I don’t think people understand what snobbery is. A bit of snobbery is good.”

While ‘SoBo’ representing South Bombay may be a tag of honour, its suburban counterpart MaKaBo — which stands for Malad, Kandivali and Borivali in the western suburbs — is not exactly met with the same enthusiasm. “That’s because suburbans seem to live in a ‘small town’ space who think that ‘Colaba shopping’ or ‘chowpatty darshan’ is still a thing,” says entrepreneur Shikha Pandey. “They think that people who live in South Mumbai are either Parsi or rich.” If you’ve lived in Mumbai long enough, you’d know that even in the suburbs, there’s a tier system that places Bandra on top followed by the rest of the Western suburbs, followed by the central cousins — a fact that Shikha, a resident of Thane, has learned to live with. “I’m often at the receiving end of snide remarks from both sides of the Sea Link. I’m first met with shock at having travelled to wherever we are meeting and second, I seem to unite ‘town’ and the western suburbs in their mutual confusion and disappointment over what is Thane Then they ask me if I get charged roaming when I call anyone in Mumbai, if I still use dial-up Internet or if it’s in the same time zone!”

The comments come from the SoBoites’ dizzying sense of geography. Saraswati Iyengar, a resident of Peddar road, admits that her knowledge of Mumbai ceases at Bandra. “I thought Malad-Mulund were close by. And that Vashi was Vasai in Marathi. And all the ‘valis’ — Dombivali, Kandivali, Chandivali and Borivali must be close by.” Tariq, who has moved from the south of the Sea Link to the north, admits that he is still grappling with the east/west divide that’s part of life in the suburbs. “This may sound like a simple thing but I never thought in terms of ‘east’ and ‘west’ growing up. Colaba was Colaba. Breach Candy was Breach Candy. When I first moved to the suburbs, this whole east/west thing confused me completely. I had no idea Bandra West was so different from Bandra East. It also took me some time to figure out that railway tracks are the dividing line between the two.”

One will never be able to define the character of Mumbai simply because there isn’t one character to define. It’s humble on one hand and snooty on the other, it’s lavish on one hand and cuts corners on the other, it’s formal on one hand and laid back on the other — it’s Bombay on one hand and Mumbai on the other. The former reiterates the story of its past while the latter rewrites the story of its present. Together, they form the Yin and Yang of the maximum city. As Saraswati sums it up, “The drive to make it big in this city, to matter and to be judged for one’s work and not one’s lineage is what sets Bombay apart from other metros. Here, you are what you do.”