Welcome to “Bewildered in Bombay”, a blog written by a psychologist who lives and works in the city. My intention here is to share ideas, thoughts and resources I've come across in my travels as a I arrive, settle-in and tentatively begin to belong in this city. My fascination which is profoundly well-fed here is with post-colonial dynamics and what it might mean to be a cosmopolitan citizen. You don't need an Indian identity to identify with and have passion for this country. It’s my belief that the most profound theoretical device for helping us to make sense of a "growing" India, globalization and the confusions, aspirations, losses, gains and hates that emerge, is through psychoanalysis. And here in the course of the blog I’ll share why I feel this, and introduce you to some interesting thinkers I've had the pleasure of learning from.
So is it ‘Bombay on the Couch’ a friend asked? We’ll see. Mostly it feels like I’m on the couch, disorientated, confused - hence naming the blog “Bewildered in Bombay”. I hope you enjoy the blog, and that it’ll bring you a little closer to an experience of the city and some useful thoughts about the psychology of things.
Let me now tell you a little about Bombay, or I should say Mumbai, its official Hindi name! It is a huge metropolis of a city brimming with extremes, as jarring as they are incongruous. The nouveau rich lavish luxury on themselves unmatched in any medieval court. The combined wealth of roughly 70 Indian billionaires is more than a fifth of national gross domestic product, a concentration of wealth far greater than almost anywhere apart from Russia. It is here in Bombay that vast numbers of destitute immigrants from different corners of India struggle to exist in shacks pitched on pavements, beside railway tracks or over putrid rivers of sewage, battling against bureaucrats, degradation and the raw unfairness of daily life in pursuit of dreams and imagined riches. It is boggling to the senses, and can feel hard on one’s heart to understand how this can be.
The population of this city is close to the 20 plus million people that inhabit Australia. Yet there is a sense that the Gods are always close-by; in the man singing his Bhajan as he cycles past you and smiles, in the endless festivals that worship one God or another. At weddings, services are conducted by Hindu pandits, but often people’s heads are turned towards the cricket on the TV in the background. Yet this morning I watched someone praying under an old Banyan tree, it’s branch-like roots reaching down to the ground. In crowds, faces look up at you and smile an implicit “Namaste”; the God in me greets the God in you, or something like that. It feels so very fearless of tomorrow, flexible and so deeply inhabiting of the "now". I walk past the makeshift Sai Baba temple. It is constructed from a few sticks of bamboo and plastic sheeting, tied to what is ostensibly the corner shop. No matter what time one is wandering about, a candle is always burning bright.
On mornings like today, I cannot imagine I will ever leave this City. The characters I meet on the street-life of the City are warm, expressive full of eye-contact and seem genuinely pleased to see you. But they are of course the poor. Many of the rich don’t leave the comfort of their chauffeur-driven cars. An elderly man from Kerala, in the South of India, who I meet on the street tells me that people are becoming more unhappy in his homeland these days. When I ask him why, he tells me, “they have money now”.
So is it ‘Bombay on the Couch’ a friend asked? We’ll see. Mostly it feels like I’m on the couch, disorientated, confused - hence naming the blog “Bewildered in Bombay”. I hope you enjoy the blog, and that it’ll bring you a little closer to an experience of the city and some useful thoughts about the psychology of things.
Let me now tell you a little about Bombay, or I should say Mumbai, its official Hindi name! It is a huge metropolis of a city brimming with extremes, as jarring as they are incongruous. The nouveau rich lavish luxury on themselves unmatched in any medieval court. The combined wealth of roughly 70 Indian billionaires is more than a fifth of national gross domestic product, a concentration of wealth far greater than almost anywhere apart from Russia. It is here in Bombay that vast numbers of destitute immigrants from different corners of India struggle to exist in shacks pitched on pavements, beside railway tracks or over putrid rivers of sewage, battling against bureaucrats, degradation and the raw unfairness of daily life in pursuit of dreams and imagined riches. It is boggling to the senses, and can feel hard on one’s heart to understand how this can be.
The population of this city is close to the 20 plus million people that inhabit Australia. Yet there is a sense that the Gods are always close-by; in the man singing his Bhajan as he cycles past you and smiles, in the endless festivals that worship one God or another. At weddings, services are conducted by Hindu pandits, but often people’s heads are turned towards the cricket on the TV in the background. Yet this morning I watched someone praying under an old Banyan tree, it’s branch-like roots reaching down to the ground. In crowds, faces look up at you and smile an implicit “Namaste”; the God in me greets the God in you, or something like that. It feels so very fearless of tomorrow, flexible and so deeply inhabiting of the "now". I walk past the makeshift Sai Baba temple. It is constructed from a few sticks of bamboo and plastic sheeting, tied to what is ostensibly the corner shop. No matter what time one is wandering about, a candle is always burning bright.
On mornings like today, I cannot imagine I will ever leave this City. The characters I meet on the street-life of the City are warm, expressive full of eye-contact and seem genuinely pleased to see you. But they are of course the poor. Many of the rich don’t leave the comfort of their chauffeur-driven cars. An elderly man from Kerala, in the South of India, who I meet on the street tells me that people are becoming more unhappy in his homeland these days. When I ask him why, he tells me, “they have money now”.
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