Have your say and vote for your favorite in our global Facebook poll.
The annual Mumbai Diary 2010 is out
One part planner, one part picture book and one part souvenir -- this Mumbai-themed diary has a clever little essay hidden within it too
Most knife grinders have a fixed location so that a cook in need of a new edge on an old tool will know where to find one. But when the Municipal Corporation's grey van rolls up to clear the streets of hawkers, the knife-grinder simply gets on to his bicycle and pedals off. It's the ultimate in mobility.Author Jerry Pinto has written the introduction to the 2010 edition of the Mumbai Diary capturing, in not so many words, what it is to strive and survive in the aspirational, hardworking port city.
I transcribed Pinto's essay word for word here and it was worth it.
"You don't come to this city because you want to slow down.
You come to Mumbai with the heavy burden of your dreams. You work to make those dreams come true, even if it means pounding pavement with something as ephemeral as chemical chimerical bubbles stuck on a pole.
You come to Mumbai to make it big. A few hack their way to the top. Some make it with a Maruti and a mortgage. Most make do. But nobody starves. Because a city as large as this, and with fourteen million and counting, generates demand for human work. Someone has to put the fish on the table. Someone has to clean the dishes. Someone has to walk the dogs. Someone has to show you what you're going to be wearing next winter. Someone has to bulk up the crowd scene. Someone has to get you to the next suburb.
Fourteen million people on the tiny finger of land pushing its way cockily into the sea? It's room enough to get lost in but Mumbaikers refused to get swamped. We know that the only chance is to be seen and to be heard and to work that tiny patch of pavement into a mansion. The man unloading the truck then takes on the air of a sultan, surveying his domain. The man selling snake oil looks you in the eye and promises you a new life where you want a new life. They know they have a place in the world.
Don't believe it? The city is a symbiotic system of dependencies. If one element stops working, the city begins to clog and gurgle. It starts to reek...just a little more. It starts to get a little more dysfunctional. The emergency in slow motion, as this city has been described, speeds up. The knife grinder is needed. The ramp model is needed. The ditch digger is needed. The teacher is needed. The social worker is needed. The seller of all those things that you didn't know you needed? He's needed too.
It's how a city works.
It's how this city works.
Now get back to work. This diary will help."
Inside page layout
The Mumbai Diary is published by India Book House, Rs 395. Available at Indigo Deli, Ground Floor, Pheroze Building, Chattrapati Shivaji Maharishi Marg, Apollo Bunder, tel: +91 (0) 22 6655 1010
