The Hindu Business Line : Megapolis bhaav

They colonised my life more than ten years ago. Not that the words were strangers. They were very much there in the Hindi taught years ago in school. What was painfully new when transferred on work to Mumbai was the way they permeated conversation from morning till night.

Maal or stuff was predominantly Harbour and Central Line; those two railway lines took people to the port and commodity markets. It usually invaded the suburban train when you had just plugged in your earphones and wafts of pleasant music had begun filtering in. For others of similar tranquil disposition, it could have been an interesting book; what else do you do when you have a monotonous commute every day?

Compared to chatting, which is usually trading yarns about oneself, or playing a game on your mobile, which is turning your back on the world, music and reading seemed benign investments for the rest of the day, if not for life. Best of all, a book in your hands or music in your ears disturbs nobody.

It was always at such a tranquil moment that maal entered, agitated and shouting on his mobile phone. Loudest was the transporter. A broken axle, a flat tyre or an accident — all meant, impatient clients calling up to know what had happened to their maal. Having fried the peace between your ears, he would get off at stations named Vashi, Wadala, Sewri, Dockyard Road and Raey Road. His was a rustic world. Some of these men, you felt, had struggled in life before they earned their faded safari suits. I don’t recall them as the card playing type; when two or more met on the train, greater likelihood was a simple chat. By evening, they were clearly exhausted and yearning for home.

The more sophisticated maal was typically well dressed, speaking containers with a dash of Jebel Ali, Rotterdam, Genoa and Southampton. He could talk a lot on the odd call but rarely lost his cool; online tracking helped his client track the shipment. If anything hassled, it was probably the many links he juggled — shipping line, port, Customs. This well-heeled version normally commuted straight to CST and from there to Ballard Estate or Nariman Point.

Sell-worth, self-worth

For all its intrusive ways, maal was however a harmless thing, not a punch line announcing worth. Bhaav or price was just that, it was the ruthless differentiator.

This word, possibly the essence of Mumbai, was spoken across the city — likely more on the prosperous Western line — by legions of followers addicted visibly to the business of material worth and less visibly to self-worth. That was so because, over time, they spread the notion that self-worth was nothing but a measure of material worth. Bhaav also had two forms, a version that was attached to maal and another, from Dalal Street, which was standalone.

Those getting off at stations like Grant Road, Byculla, Cotton Green, Sandhurst Road and Masjid were the maal+bhaav types. For example, some of them dealt in maal like yarn or fabric, for which there was a bhaav. Their phone calls and high-decibel conversations tracked the journey of a substance from raw material to finished product. Often, the calls were decisive — if maal had arrived and bhaav was attractive, an order was placed right away. Sometimes, it was a frantic call to two or three friends for maal at a certain bhaav.

Detached from maal was pure bhaav; homing in every day on the share bazaar. Possibly because that trade had shifted significantly online, its impact on human space was less physical than the rest, though more profound. In fact, if anything had shaped Mumbai’s bhaav mentality, it was this — the stock exchange ticker; that ready-reckoner of wealth. It made winning and losing a daily experience.

Tube of Babel

Around the central monolith of maal and bhaav ran the more modern concepts — banking, accounting, investing, insuring and the many avenues to spend from retail to entertainment and real estate. All of them converged on the suburban compartment; a Tube of Babel if ever there was one. Sometimes, one of them peaked, as with tax consultants who came alive towards the deadline for filing returns. Or travel industry personnel who got busy during the holiday season.

It was a busy, busy world, one that rubbished your anguish over lost music by showing the crowded shanties beyond train windows. Relax too much and that’s where you will end up, it seemed to warn. All that stood between a life near railway tracks and a matchbox apartment was the three inches of foam and graffiti laden steel with ‘First Class’ to set it apart. It didn’t take much to slip from that to second and a house of beaten talcum powder tins if you were lazy still. So, money returned triumphantly to focus and behind it beamed maal and bhaav. It echoed the dialogue from the musical Rent, “I’m a New Yorker; fear is my life.” That was true of Mumbai too.

Stress… and serenity

Now in the company of fellow men, no man could afford to be a coward or loser. Agitated phone calls on the way back home catered to this need. Somebody had to agree it was bad luck. If the loss had sunk deep into a man’s soul, it wasn’t words but actions — a twitch or hand movement — that manifested. Listen close and you even caught a sigh or two uttered in stress. At times, it was the serenity beyond provocation. “We have nothing to gain by quarrelling, bhai. You will get the maal tomorrow,” the transporter would say, face laconic to the outside world. Serenity also graced the faces of those who had surrendered to commerce. Slothful, out of shape and possessed of calm demeanour, only their eyes betrayed a ticking brain. They spoke little.

Plastic or cloth bag folded by the side they sat chewing to the constant machinations of an inner calculator.

Both maal+bhaav and its pure bhaav brethren from Dalal Street appeared the card playing type. Maybe there was something about cards and placing bets that was similar to their business. Maal made a commodity of everything, bhaav put a price to it. Critical was their link; for price to happen, stuff had to have demand and relevance. Anything without this was a drag on money begetting itself. Repeated day in and day out, the equation reduced Mumbai to a rule by the market. The best-selling took centre-stage. For films, the box office ruled; for music, being a hit counted, for books, popularity mattered, for knowledge, utility was paramount and for people, there were plastic, fantastic winners. Like cut-vegetables ready for the kitchen; all prepared for the market. If you wanted originality, you had to dig deeper.

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