Diaspora Diaries: London

Popular curry chain Bombay Bicycle (formerly known as The Bombay Bicycle Club) retains its colonial connotations.

As part of an ongoing series called Diaspora Diaries, we will run articles by Indians living and working abroad about life in their adopted country. If you’d like to contribute, please write to us at editors@mumbaiboss.com.

As a Bombayite living in Europe for the last three years, introductions have been a tricky affair. Europeans invariably ask where I am from. I invariably answer, “Bombay”. A pause ensues, and they ask, “But, isn’t it like…Mumbai now?”

On the surface, the question is always one of polite bafflement. What they are wondering is that if you so publicly and loudly went through the trouble of changing the name of your city to remove its tainted colonial associations, why don’t you just use the new name? But underneath the politeness—perhaps, as a result of my own guilt—I can also sense a lurking disapproval. “So, are you the unpatriotic one?”

I am not.

I am just the post-midnight’s child. By the time I was born—1980—just enough time had passed since India gained independence for my grandparents to begin talking of the Raj with rose-tinted nostalgia and of the British with patronising affection. In comparison, my parents who came of age in the 1960s and ’70s—living through three wars, a near famine, and a constitutional emergency—eyed everything around them with suspicion and bile. I took one look at both, and quickly threw in my lot with my grandparents. As I saw it, those British officers weren’t coming back and the buildings they left behind were beautiful and the names quaint and familiar so, why be petty about it?

But how am I supposed to explain all this to the part-quizzical, part-disapproving foreigner who grew up on the other side of post-colonial history? How do I explain that it wasn’t me, it was the Shiv Sainiks? That, back in Bombay, every Bombayite I know still calls the city Bombay. And those who call it Mumbai, always called it so. Such a passion-filled information overload at the very first meeting is sure to scare him or her away.

So I usually resort to a noise somewhere between a snort and a grunt and digress into The X-Factor. Of course, it doesn’t help that Bombay and Mumbai have polar opposite meanings in London, where I’m currently based.

Places that associate themselves with the name Bombay are latching on to a specific sense of India. An exotic India full of maharajas and palaces, of luxury and decadence, and spices—always spices. Consider the 28-year-old Bombay Brasserie: a posh restaurant in South Kensington, one of the most sought-after neighbourhoods in London. With its thick carpets, plush upholstery, chandeliered ceiling, paintings of maharajahs and a chef plucked from the very beacon of Raj-style decadence in Bombay, The Taj Mahal Hotel and Palace (yes, our very own Hemant Oberoi), how could it call itself Mumbai Brasserie?

Then there’s Bombay Bicycle (formerly known as The Bombay Bicycle Club), another popular curry chain that’s more than 20 years old. If the restaurant’s colonial décor doesn’t make its associations clear, its website does: The Bombay Bicycle Club was a popular gathering place for British officers in India where they met, gossiped, planned picnics and hunts, and savoured some mean Indian curries. (If they also sat and bitched the hell out of us Indians at the club, the website is polite enough to exclude that bit.) Again, Bombay takes us back to a genteel world of desultory pleasures.

Add to them Bombay Mix, a generic name for a spicy chivda that crowds the shelves of most Tesco’s, and Bombay Potato, a ready-made potato curry sold in most departmental stores. If it is exotic and spicy, it is Bombay.

But any mention of Mumbai and the discussion immediately zeroes in on Slumdog Millionaire. Suddenly, we are envisioning slums, poverty, crowds, street food, mafia, and people living by their wits and wily charm.This January, a popular British television channel broadcast Indian Winter, a package of programmes filmed in India. Four of the seven shows were shot in Mumbai: Slumming It, Slumdog Secret Millionaire, Slumdog Children of Mumbai and of course, the one that started it all—Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire.

It is as though Londoners cannot imagine Mumbai without the aid of Boyle’s film and all the ensuing associations. Mind you, it is not all bad.  People here claim to love the madness of Mumbai. Only, Mumbai’s exciting mean streets are a long way off from Bombay’s decadent pleasures. No wonder, the people I meet ask me to choose: “Where are you from, Bombay or Mumbai?”

The problem is that the city that my family and I moved to when I was 12-years-old was not one or the other. Bombay or Mumbai, it was always a composite of the two worlds. It was precisely the mad crowds and intense energy that gave my city’s grand colonial buildings their unique character and zest. It was the crazy juxtaposition of a vada pav seller and the tony-sounding Queens Road that I loved about my city. It was as much about its crows, cats, street food, slums, and street kids as it was about the luxury of its Race Course, cricket at Oval, and drinks at Bombay Gymkhana. So if I want to call it Bombay, I bloody well will—and the rest of the world can just stuff it.

Chetna Prakash is a freelance journalist currently based in London. She blogs about her life, views, pet peeves and experiences at various visa offices on www.gebachenthoughts.blogspot.com.