Bombayman's Diary

  Last week brought dreadful news for Mumbaikars. The pollution level of the city has surpassed Delhi. Mumbai’s Air Quality Index (AQI) has reached alarming levels. The city has become a gas chamber with many Mumbaikars dying untimely deaths by breathing the poisonous air. So, who is the Hitler who transformed the city into a gas chamber? There are many Hilter in Mumbai, not one. Every year, we see news on TV about how polluted the air of Delhi becomes in winter. The TV channels devote a good amount of airtime, showing the plight of Delhi citizens who suffer from breathing issues. The farmers of neighbouring Haryana are blamed for contributing to the pollution by burning parali. Several squads have been formed to check such activity. In the past, the courts have come down heavily upon the central and the state governments over their inefficiency in controlling the pollution. Some measures like even number-odd number plying of vehicles on alternate days was adopted. Mumbaikars fe...

  Last week, the Mumbai Police arrested four people for sticking flags of Israel on the roads of Bhendi Bazaar, so that people could put their feet on it. It was their way of protesting against the Israeli response to the terrorist attack engineered by Hamas. This is another example of how a section of the Muslim community has been reacting aggressively to the events happening in other parts of the globe. Although there have been reactions across the world since the Hamas attack on Israel two weeks back, and people support one side or the other, this piece specifically delves into the reactions of Mumbai Muslims to global events. In the last 30 years, I have seen around half a dozen protests where the trigger was not in Mumbai. Author Salman Rushdie wrote his controversial book ‘The Satanic Verses’ in Britain, it was banned by the Supreme Leader of Iran and Fatwa was issued against Rushdie, but the riots happened in Mumbai, which is thousands of kilometres away from both cou...

  My school was in the Samuel Street of Masjid Bunder in Mumbai. As a student, I never bothered to find out who Samuel was and why the street was named on him. I assumed that he might be some bigshot from the colonial era. It was around twenty-five years later, after passing out from the school, that I delved into the history of Samuel Street while researching for my first novel “Bombay 3”. I came across a very interesting story which tells Mumbai’s relation with the Israeli’s. The local train travellers on the Central Railway know that the first station after the train originates from CSMT is Masjid. The word Masjid in Urdu translates into mosque, but in reality, the station is not named after any mosque, but after a synagogue, a Jewish place of worship. Hardly after a two minutes’ walk from the station, one reaches a yellow-coloured structure named “Gate of Mercy.” There is a history of why the synagogue has been so named. Two Bene-Israelis named Samuel Ezekeil and Isaac Ezek...

Some people may find it absurd to compare Mumbai with Tel Aviv in the context of terrorism. The biggest terrorist attack on Israel was from all fronts: air, sea and land. Over 5,000 rockets were launched to target buildings in Israel and the terrorists used paragliders to land at public places and massacre people. Hundreds of Israelis were abducted on gunpoint. Although Mumbai has endured some of the biggest terrorist attacks in India, none of them have been of this magnitude. However, Mumbai continues to be on the radar of terrorists and one question that comes to my mind is, how safe is Mumbai from Hamas like attack? From 11 March 1993 to 11 July 2011, Mumbai has witnessed over 10 terrorist incidents in which around 700 people have been killed and over two thousand have been injured. The attack on 26 November 2008 was the last big terror attack on Mumbai, not in terms of the number of people killed, but, due to the multiplicity of the locations and the number of hours it stretched. T...

    The residential tower where I live is a microcosm of Mumbai. My neighbours are Maharashtrian, Bengalis, Gujaratis, Tamilians, Keralities, Biharis and a few from other states of India. They practice different faiths like Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. The managing committee of the housing society comprises people of varied linguistic, religious, and regional origins. There is no rule barring a particular community from buying or renting property in the building. As long as you are paying your maintenance bills on time, you are treated with respect. There are hundreds of housing societies like mine where people belonging to different communities live harmoniously. However, recently an incident that happened in the suburb Mulund of Mumbai led to a tremendous uproar and questioned the city’s cosmopolitan image. It especially enraged a section of the Maharashtrian community. A Maharashtrian woman and her husband went to scout f...