[Reader-list] The Sea Front - Urban from the Lens of Time and Space

[Zainab Bawa]

19 September 2004
Nariman Point
5:15 PM – 6:15 PM

Where Have They Gone?

Today is a Sunday. When I went to Nariman Point on Wednesday, I did not see 
a single hawker on the seafront. I thought maybe hawkers nowadays refrain 
from putting up their mobile stalls on weekdays owing to scant business. But 
today is a Sunday – I fail to hear the cold-drink sellers running the bottle 
opener through the glass bottles, making the w-hhhh-rrrr-ing- 
w-hhhh-rrrr-ing sounds. I do not get the tastes and smells of raw and 
roasted corn. Neither is the spicy gram-seller there, with his iron pan and 
ladle, spices, tomatoes, onions and butter, one of my favorite snacks at 
Nariman Point – I could drool over this forever! Nobody is here. Where have 
they gone? With the wind? Which wind, easterly or westerly?
In their place, I see these surreptitious sellers, walking past people 
sitting on the sea-face plinth and quietly saying, “Bhutta chaihiye, bhutta? 
(Do you want corn, corn?)” I see peanut and gram sellers, selling their 
wares in plastic packets instead of the huge basket with live coals which 
keeps the grams hot and crispy, wrapping the nuts in the conical paper 
rocket. I see cold-drink and water sellers, little boys, with about five to 
six bottles carefully wrapped in two plastic bags and slowly walking past 
people sitting on the plinth and softly saying, “Pani, pani (water, water)!” 
Yes, things have changed here. There is a level of surveillance that I see. 
I sense fear among these surreptitious sellers who, as they walk and call 
past, steal glances from the corner of their eyes to see if someone is 
watching them, someone is following them, someone is ‘seeing’ them. They 
almost appear like the black marketers along cinema halls, quietly mumbling 
black rates for tickets, watching out for the cops. The eye – it serves a 
different kind of sight function these days. So does the mind!
I don’t exactly know what has happened to the hawkers whose presence added a 
different colour to the Nariman Point sea face not so long ago. Perhaps they 
have been shoved away because they don’t have ‘legal licenses’. And here is 
where I wonder, what is legal and what is illegal? Does authority have more 
power than it (in an institutional sense) ought to have?
They have gone somewhere – I need to locate them!

Pay & Park: This evening I sharpened my eyes and found a little structure 
along the sea face which said ‘MCGM Pay & Park’. Yes, now I understand. The 
Municipal Corporation has introduced the system of payment for parking cars 
along Nariman Point. I could see MCGM employees, dressed in uniforms, 
walking around with a pen and a slip book, issuing slips to car owners who 
park their vehicles along the sea face. These guys are busy as well as 
leisurely. There are a quite a few of them, surveying newcomers and 
collecting dues from owners who are leaving.
Pay & Park is one of the hottest issues in the city today. There is severe 
dearth of car parking space while the number of cars is steadily on the 
rise. There have been discussions and plans between officials in the 
Municipal Corporation and the Transport Department to create more Pay & Park 
spots in order to discourage people from using individual cars. Lack of 
space huh? Shrinking space huh?
What is interesting about the cars along the sea face is the interaction 
between time and space. Most of the car owners are people who have come here 
to do business – not on the seafront, but either in Hilton Towers or in one 
of the big offices here. The car owners may then choose to stroll along 
Nariman Point after business is done, but that’s always an option. Most of 
them immediately go away in their cars, without taking a look at the sea. 
Busy-ness and business!

Public Space and Access: This evening, as I walked past the sea face, I 
noticed different kinds of people here, many migrants, mostly from Northern 
UP and Karnataka, sitting with their families and watching the sea. There 
are all varieties and classes of peoples – rich, young, old, middle class, 
upper middle class, lower middle class, clean, dirty, old, girls, boys, men, 
women, poor – from all over the country and even beyond (meaning 
foreigners!). As I walked, I realized that here is Nariman Point, a place 
where you do not have to make a payment to access it. You do not have to buy 
anything to enjoy the breeze and the sea here. You don’t even have a pay & 
park system for human beings here (yet!) where the payment for sitting for 
an hour is ten rupees, for two hours is twenty rupees and so on and so 
forth! Until the pay & park system don’t apply to us human beings, we can 
enjoy ourselves! But, some kind of surveillance does seem to be taking place 
here – I am sensing something with my nose!

The Sea and Romance: Couples were everywhere even today. They always seem to 
abound here. One of the associations that comes to my mind is that between 
the sea and the idea of romance. There is some relationship between these 
two elements of life, not just in Mumbai, but universally. Thus, some things 
are not just ethnic and local; they are universal, like some values that we 
cherish and uphold. The sea affords some kind of space and luxury to people 
to bond between themselves.
Couples come here not just for romance, but also to resolve skirmishes and 
conflicts between themselves. One such couple was sitting next to me today, 
on my left. They were resolving a family conflict. Theirs is an inter-caste 
love affair. The conflict in their case was centering on language – Gujarati 
versus Hindi. The boy and girl maintained intimacy between them, but this 
intimacy was without any touching or kissing. It was a 
negotiating-understanding kind of body language.
There is also this aspect of ‘talking things out’ in a relationship which 
commonly takes place along the seafront. And the seafront is most apt in 
this respect – the atmosphere really facilitates the notion of talking 
things ‘out’, in the open, between the horizon, the sky and the sea.
The seafront also offers the luxury of time where couples simply come here 
to chat between themselves and establish bonds and intimacies of various 
kinds in their relationship with each other. It’s not only the couples, but 
also pairs of father-and-son, families, etc. which express their 
relationships in different forms here. There are ways in which personal 
space operates between couples – some maintain a degree of physical 
distance, some sit close but without holding hands or circling the arms 
around, some kiss on the cheeks, etc. One couple came and sat to my right 
today. It was a very, very raw couple, Maharashtrian. The guy and girl came 
and sat facing the track. At first, I thought that there has been some kind 
of fight between them. Soon, a little boy’s gimmicks with his tri-cycle 
brought a laugh on both their faces and also on those sitting around. The 
ice was melting. Then, the guy turned and sat facing towards the sea. His 
girlfriend gradually turned in the same direction, though grimacing. The ice 
was fast breaking away. Finally, the boy held his girl intimately. The girl 
kept shoving his hand away, but she appeared to enjoy the coziness. While 
they were romancing, a crow suddenly appeared from nowhere and landed 
straight near them. The boy got frightened. When they realized that it was 
only a crow, both of them laughed and the boy pointed his finger towards the 
crow and said, “No more disturbance now!”

Old Man Jolly: I don’t know who he is and where he comes from. I don’t even 
know his name. But I have seen him at Nariman Point, once in every blue 
moon. By now, there have been about five such blue moons where I have seen 
him. He wears this semi-army like attire – very British, like Asrani, the 
jailor in the film Sholay. He wears a cap. He is old, about seventy, not 
more, but maybe a little less. His face is freckled. He wears spectacles. He 
is probably senile. And if he is not, then we are senile! His pants are 
maroon, socks upto to the knees covering the pants, and he wears a 
creamish-white shirt. His main possession is an old radio which he hides in 
a black bag. He wears this bag around his neck, holding the possession on 
his chest. The radio is loud enough for everyone to hear. The old man will 
walk gaily, stopping at some points abruptly. When he stops, he will act out 
something. This time when he stopped, he gazed around and lit up a 
cigarette. And he did this in the most British and graceful style. I thought 
he was acting out until I smelt tobacco. I immediately looked away, thinking 
that I could be the target of his gimmicks. But he wouldn’t care for a 
little me. He went on with his act and then resumed walking. He is Old Man 
Jolly!

Muslims galore! Too many of them at Nariman Point these days. When I went 
back home and told mom about their omnipresence at the seafront, she 
immediately said, “Obviously, this is their month to enjoy. Next month is 
Ramazan and they will not be able to move out of their homes. Moreover, it 
was so hot today. Everybody must have come out to enjoy the breeze!” My 
mother is a clever woman. Her logics are simple and straightforward. Not 
much theorizing here!

Family Foto and Family Video: In the age of the digital video camera and 
digital camera, photography and video shooting has become ‘new age’ here at 
Nariman Point. The manual cameras are still in existence; they are not lost 
in the digital humdrum. Most often, the pictures and videos are the family 
ones i.e. those taking pictures and videos are family members - of their 
family, for their family and by their family, one of the versions of 
democracy. This is some kind of common obsession, both on weekdays and 
weekends. Foreigners like to shoot the sea and the city’s buildings and 
skyline. They like to shoot sights and scenes. But for our locals and also 
for those coming from other states in India, family is the priority – is it 
because this is what our primary value and priority is?

Highlight of the Day: A Sardar with a copy of Paulo Coelho’s ‘The 
Alchemist’. The Sardar was with his family. He kept walking here and there 
with his little child. Then, he finally settled his family on a bench and he 
went and sat away from them, facing the sea. Contemplatively, he read The 
Alchemist. I guess the sea and the book were disturbing/influencing him in a 
different direction! Perhaps, the seafront may someday produce several 
‘queers’ who may simply walk away from the mainstream system – no defiance, 
no rebellion, outright rejection!

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