Why Mumbai is no longer the city of dreams, despite being the happiest city in Asia

That imagination is riddled with potholes now. Everything is too expensive, too dug up, too incomplete. I’m a connoisseur of long walks, but taking a stroll in Mumbai today is about as seamless as crawling through a post-apocalyptic landscape. So I’ve made peace with the irony that I pay to swim in a city that’s infamous for its floods.

This change is evident across fields but no more than in showbiz. Today, fewer aspirants dare to arrive at CST station with a bag in hand. The deeply entrenched resentment surrounding nepotism goes hand in hand with the fading influx of fresh talent. Models walk at knock-down rates because the competition robs the ramp of rose-tinted notions. Mannat seems beyond reach, both spiritually and literally. If the dramatic change in the tone of this essay brings to mind the anti-smoking ads before Mumbai’s film­ screenings, it’s because the city’s transformation is a plot twist that everyone saw coming but stayed in denial about. What else explains my transmutation into a bitter veteran who can’t stop invoking the good old days? I’m one breath away from sounding like Tinnu Anand’s character in Agneepath, the fictional ­ madman who loudly laments the decay of humanity.

A still from Luck by Chance (2009)

All of this is to say that the Bombay of Bollywood has been replaced by a busy imposter. The city is too real to be romanticised anymore; it lacks the character to be a movie character. Those flowery ‘Bambai nagariya’ monologues are harder to believe in. Even the fairy tales have mutated into cautionary tales. The few memorable instances of Mumbai that make an appearance on celluloid, in fact, critique the diminished personality of the metropolis. Like Raj & DK’s The Family Man starring Manoj Bajpayee, a series in which even a star spy is swallowed by the compromised domestic rhythms of the city. Or Jasmeet K Reen’s Darlings (2022), in which Alia Bhatt’s character is gaslighted by the lack of space as much as she is by an abusive husband.