Bird-brained beautification?

We were on a boat on the Kerala backwaters- Arundhati Roy territory- when the wife of the only other couple on board, a therapist from New York, who’d accompanied her academician husband to a conference in India said:

“And those buildings we saw in Mumbai around the Taj hotel -we were told were some of the most expensive real estate available-but they all looked so black and grimy from the outside. Tell me is it true that inside they’re like palaces?”

I laughed. How to explain to a foreigner Mumbai’s peculiar real estate and tenancy laws? How some of the richest individuals in the city stay at some of its most valuable locations for a few hundred dollars or less?

How landlords get such meagre rent that they have no interest in maintaining public areas in their buildings and would rather have them fall down? How successive governments are loathe to change the heavily biased- towards- tenant antiquated laws, because of electoral arithmetic?

In the balmy Aleppy breeze I tried to give the couple a potted history of Mumbai and its peculiarities. “Yes, I said, “our buildings look like bomb shelters from the outside-but believe me, they cost the earth to buy or rent at market prices. And yes, some of them really resemble palaces inside.”

What a contrary city we must seem: a skyline of hovels and sky scrapers; a city of luxury stores and broken down establishments; a Sensex that’s spiralling, and beggars at the traffic lights.

But I guess most foreigners who visit have their own way of decoding the script:

“ India is the exact opposite of China!” the marketing head of a Swiss luxury brand said to me recently “ In China, you get out of the airport and are overwhelmed by the infrastructure-the beautiful airports, roads, hospitals. But the people, they are not sophisticated and don’t speak English well.

In India, it’s the opposite: you are shocked by the poor infrastructure when you arrive, the airport, the roads, and the slums. But the people- they’re truly sophisticated, world class and speak English so beautifully!”

Speaking of which, have any one of you returned to Mumbai by Jet Air and thus experienced Terminal B of the newly-constructed airport?

It’s truly a thing of beauty and a joy forever! Cantilevered ceilings, vast light-filled halls, shining floors, green plants, a spanking new concourse….

‘World class’ are the only words my companion kept muttering on seeing it. And then, we hit the roads and he shut up. But they’re going to change too-sooner than we know it!

Just one reservation about all this rapid development though: some times things aren’t thought through properly. For instance you build a fantastic freeway to Pune and then forget to construct loos, depriving those with weak bladders the privilege to go around the bushes they once did before the freeway prevented them.

And now the pigeons! Have you seen the flock of pigeons on

Marine Drivepecking furiously away at the dry, hard, newly- paved cement pavement in vain? In their attempt at beautification, the powers that be have banned the scattering of grain for the birds, a ritual much loved and practiced for decades at the spot.

Trouble is no one has informed the pigeons, and so out of habit they descend daily, puzzled at their loss of food. Development’s a tricky thing and not every one gets it right all the time.

As for beautification-tell that to the birds!

—s_malavika@dnaindia.net