Bright lights, big city

The road from Meerut to Mumbai often goes through Manhattan (though not the real one) finds Taran N Khan

Sipping tepid cappuccino in a suburban terrace coffee shop, Smita Singh shakes her carefully cut asymmetrical fringe out of her eyes and mulls over the perfect life.

“I like that whole Sex and the City thing,” she says, tapping her regulation oversize sunglasses to the staccato rhythm of her conversation. “Independent women. Big city. And the shoes.

I love shoes. I’m just like Carrie on the show. It’s not exactly like that here,” she says, gesturing to the crowd of hip young things pressing around us, “but it’s not so different either.” Singh moved to Mumbai three years ago, from a town so small she refuses to name it, saying, between giggles, “You’ll laugh yaar.”

Much pressing reveals the details that it is “up north” and “full of cows and traffic and a fashion scene that’s stuck in the 80s.” Its only saving grace seems to be the fact that when she goes back to visit, “the boys who used to check out my friends now look at me instead.”

Small town to big city is a beaten track, but for young women like Singh, the destination seems to be not so much Mumbai as Life As Seen on TV. And unlike the clueless masses that come to the city chasing a dream, they seem to know just where to find it.

“I used to read about this life in the glossies at beauty parlours back home,” says Singh, “and they always talked about how the glamorous crowd lived in Bandra.”

So when she hit the city, she headed to the tony suburb, and never mind the stratospheric rents. “It turned out to be even better than I imagined,” she says, of the single room, toilet and kitchen she shares with a friend.
 
“You create a map of the city through conversations, reading, watching TV,” says Nilosree Biswas. “Like, a  friend told me long ago that if I was ever in Mumbai, Juice was the place to go for hair.” So when the 32-year-old documentary director moved to Mumbai less than a year ago, the chic salon was one of the first stops she made for her dramatic makeover.

“I always felt I was cut out to be somewhere like Mumbai,” she says. “Kolkata had kept me covered under layers of its overbearing local culture, which I guess I always wanted to shed but couldn’t.”

In the few short months she has been in the city, Biswas has freed herself from her hometown’s preferred look of activist-grunge and turned into a girl who has her stylist’s number on speed dial and a tattoo of Betty Boop on her shoulder.

“I couldn’t access all this back home,” she says, running a hand through her salt-and-pepper hair, “and anyway it’s not the kind of thing that people like us are supposed to do. But I find it expresses my personality perfectly.” She moves her arms and the pink skirts on her tattoo ripple lazily.

“I have never felt as much at home in Kolkata as I do in this city. I am finally myself here.” 

Sometimes, this ‘real self’ is simply the opposite of what is left behind. “If I hadn’t left Karnal, I would have been wearing jeans and kurtis with sequins,” muses Sunira Madhok, sprawled out on a mattress in a Lokhandwala flat.

“And the coolest thing in my life,” she says, relishing the tragedy of the thought, “would have been to go to Kurukshetra University”. Madhok, a law student, lives in Pune but finds frequent reasons to be in Mumbai. “I was supposed to go to Delhi to study, but please!” she says, rolling her eyes, “It’s too close to home.”

In the blessed anonymity of Mumbai, she stays with friends, in a small apartment furnished mostly with mattresses and piles of clothes. “Even in Karnal there is a party crowd but it’s really sad,” says Madhok.

“They try to be cool and party all night but actually everyone would rather go home and sleep.” Her phone rings, which she answers with a loud “What’s up love? You’re in town and you couldn’t call me? Why?”

A friendly slanging match, a quick update on love life and a promise to meet at a chic club later, she signs off with a cheery “Party on”. It’s Saturday night and outside, her friends are getting ready to go out.

“Even when I was living in Karnal”, says Madhok, “I wanted to be a particular way. I really wanted to go clubbing, wear nice dresses, hang out. So now that I have the chance, I make sure I am living the life I dreamt of.”

A large part of the dreaminess of this life comes from being intensely aware of how great it all looks from the outside. For Singh, the glamour that she saw in the glossies back home now glows on her as well as from her. “Mumbai is a great city to be young in,” she says.

“It really helps you connect to your inner diva.” The only downside to this, she says, is that it provides just too many nice accessories to help make the connection.

Like the Swarovski studded stilettos she has been coveting. “They cost a lot. But I haven’t stopped thinking about them and as soon as I have the money, I will get them,” she laughs. It is evening and we have finished our coffees; time to leave. We walk out through the rooftop terrace and stop to admire the view of Mumbai looking as it can only when seen at night and from somewhere really high. “See, this is why I live here,” says Singh, gesturing towards the postcard view.

“It makes you feel like you are in the centre of everything. We could be characters in Friends or one of those amazing movies with Jennifer Lopez,” she muses. But aren’t those usually set in Manhattan, I venture. She doesn’t even look away, just shrugs her shoulders and says quite gently, but in the tone I deserve, “Whatever”.

(Some names changed on request)

k_taran@dnaindia.net