Young, brash and oozing with the cocksure self-confidence of a maverick moneymaker, MUMBAI (formerly Bombay) revels in its reputation as India’s most dynamic and Westernized city. Behind the hype, however, intractable problems threaten the Maharashtran capital, foremost among them a chronic shortage of space. Crammed onto a narrow spit of land that curls from the swamp-ridden coast into the Arabian Sea, Mumbai has, in less than five hundred years since its “discovery” by the Portuguese, metamorphosed from an aboriginal fishing settlement into a sprawling megalopolis of over sixteen million people. Whether you are being swept along broad boulevards by endless streams of commuters, or jostled by coolies and hand-cart pullers in the teeming bazaars, Mumbai always feels like it is about to burst at the seams.
The roots of the population problem lie, paradoxically, in the city’s enduring ability to create wealth. Mumbai alone generates 38 percent of India’s GNP, its port handles half the country’s foreign trade, and its movie industry is the biggest in the world. Symbols of prosperity are everywhere, from the phalanx of office blocks clustered on Nariman Point, Maharashtra’s Manhattan, to the yuppie couples nipping around town in their shiny new Maruti hatchbacks. The flip side to the success story, of course, is the city’s much-chronicled poverty. Each day, hundreds of economic refugees pour into Mumbai from the Maharashtran hinterland. Some find jobs and secure accommodation; many more (around a third of the total population) end up living on the already overcrowded streets, or amid the appalling squalor of Asia’s largest slums, reduced to rag-pickmg and begging from cars at traffic lights.
However, while it would definitely be misleading to downplay its difficulties. Mumbai is far from the ordeal some travelers make it out to be. Once you’ve overcome the major hurdle of finding somewhere to stay, you may begin to enjoy its frenzied pace and crowded, cosmopolitan feel. Conventional sights are thin on the ground. After a visit to the most famous colonial monument, the Gateway of India, and a look at the antiquities in the Prince of Wales Museum, the most rewarding way to spend time is simply to wander the city’s atmospheric streets. Downtown, beneath rows of exuberant Victorian-Gothic buildings, the pavements are full of noisy vendors and office-wallahs hurrying through clouds of wood smoke from gram-sellers’ braziers. In the eye of the storm, encircled by the roaring traffic of beaten-up red double-decker buses, lie other vestiges of the Raj, the maidans. Depending on the time of day, these central parks are peppered with cricketers in white flannels, or the bare bums of squatting pavement-dwellers relieving themselves on the parched brown grass. North of the city centre, the broad thoroughfares splinter into a maze of chaotic streets.The central bazaar districts afford glimpses of sprawling Muslim neighbourhoods, as well as exotic shopping possibilities, while Mumbai is at its most exuberant along Chowpatty Beach, which laps against exclusive Malabar Hill. When you’ve had enough mayhem, the beautiful rock-cut Shiva temple on Elephanta Island - a short trip by launch across the harbour from the promenade, Apollo Bunder - offers a welcome half-day escape.