Ashish Debolkar is not his real name, and this overweight disgrace to my neighborhood could thank me for my discretion in keeping him anonymous.

The man takes his morning walk an hour later than I do. This means that he’s just starting off on his perambulations when I’m on my way back. He’s a regular, just like I am, but I never paid him much attention over the years. You know how it is – we see people, yet their existence registers as more of an abstract concept than an actual fact.

I’ve never so much as exchanged cricket scores with him, and the only thought I ever spared him was an idle wondering…. how can a man walk like that for years and never lose an ounce of that gross flab? And why, if these nominal saunters have proved so utterly futile, has the oozy blighter not done something more constructive about his improbable girth? I mean, he has surely got a clear title deed for a 3BHK flat in Heart Attack Country and he’s bound to take up residence there anytime. Doesn’t that BOTHER him?

Anyway, three days ago the fact that he does figure on the landscape was driven jarringly home to me. The realization came in the form of a loud, agonized canine yelp. Jerked from my pleasant dawn reverie, I cast about for the source of the sound. A weathered doggie was making tracks for the opposite side of the road as fast as three legs would allow it. Three, because the other one was drawn up against its belly in a tortured spasm of muscle and bone.

Ashish Debolkar threw me a brief grin of vicious triumph as he took after the injured animal, brandishing the heavy stick he has picked up to launch the morning’s festivities.

“Saala kidela _____ (worm-raddled %#@>),” he cursed, enjoying every second of it. “Come sniffing at me once more and I’ll……”

He emphasized this sentiment by chasing the dog and giving it another lash of the stick, which caught the hobbled beast squarely on the back. The dog was out of its mind with pain now and was squalling like a bagful of BEST bus brakes during the peak hour crunch.

I was stunned into complete, impotent inaction. Debolkar delivered three more blows to the animal before a window flew open above us and an irate woman leaned out.

“Oye, stop this immediately. My husband can’t sleep!” she screeched in hellish accompaniment to the dog’s vocal efforts. The dog in question used the lull to crawl beneath a paan shop and cower there for dear life.

Debolkar flashed a spitless grin at her, favored me with a fading version of the same and discarded the stick. Then he waddled off, his mind obviously already switching gears to the stock market or some other good-time stuff. The beleaguered mutt crawled out from under the paan shop, scanned the surrounding topography and found it fortuitously bereft of fat middle-management prototypes headed for Stroke City.

Fade to black…

No, of COURSE Ashish Debolkar bears no resemblance to any of us. WE wouldn’t kick a defenseless street dog just because we feel so hugely superior to it. Nor would we tell a street urchin to scram when he or she sucks up for a spare coin just because the sight reminds of too uncomfortably of how our own kids would look if the Powers That Be had not somehow transpired to set them above such a lot. OTHER folks do such stuff. Sick folks. Folks like Ashish Debolkar.

But hey, what circumstances spawn such moral bottom-feeders in the first place? A desire to rid the city of unsanitary elements such as stray dogs? The trauma of having been bitten in the butt by just such a cur back in childhood? I don’t think so.

I close my eyes and see a different scenario – one littered with bugs that squirm and scamper for the shadows when sunlight hits them. Behind my closed eyes, I see a Ashish Debolkar who is not as secure in his precariously overloaded skin as he pretends.

The economy is see-sawing wildly, inflation has eaten into his once unassailable bank accounts and he may just have to pull his bounder son out of that fancy ‘international’ school next year. His wife, no less bloated on excesses than he is, treats him like the last dirt on earth – just like his dad did before him.

His boss has chuckled forlornly every time Ashish has hinted at that promotion. Ashish smells his essential powerlessness over the world he inhabits with every wheezy breath he pulls into his blubber-cased lungs.

He does not like this smell, and he needs to rid himself of it.

What old Ashish therefore does is treat each waking hour as another opportunity to bolster his sagging pride by taking pot-shots at the various hapless targets that the world has placed at his disposal. Therefore, the beggar on the road is cursed and waved away like a leper who has dared to cross the Holy Temple’s threshold. The street kid is treated to a look and words of utter loathing and revulsion. The maid is threatened with sudden unemployment every time she goofs up. And the street doggie gets a kick in his scrawny backside if he is presumptuous enough to make an appearance during Ashish’s fruitless morning waddles.

He does not have what it takes to tell his wife what HE thinks of HER. He doesn’t have the courage to tell his boss to shove his job up the old waste-pipe and look for a better prospects. His dad died of an apocalyptic, ghee-induced stroke years ago and is unavailable for settling scores with.

He is the overgrown schoolyard bully, even now desperately trying to salvage his self-esteem by preying on those who seem weak enough not to put up a fight.

Some days ago at Ghatkopar, I was knocked down by a speeding scooter. The guy didn’t look back… I think doing so did not even occur to him. I wasn’t seriously hurt, but it always takes the human mind a long moment to inventory the damage at such times. In that brief space of time, when adrenalin is pouring freely, one can sometimes experience amazing clarity of mind.

So I sat there under the dispassionate gaze of a roadside vegetable vendor, with a mangy doggie sniffing at my pant leg. I did not experience any urgent need to get up and go about my business. In fact, I found myself in deep thought. This state of mind continued till I reached home, and these ramblings are a side product.

So… what is it with this city? I mean yes, we’re busy trying to be a weird, schizophrenic hybrid of a Shanghai, New York and an Egyptian bazaar souk. There is no time to stop and smell either the cow dung or the waxy hothouse roses.

Yes, there’s money to be made, mouths to be fed, loser husbands to be divorced, insurance companies to be sued, pickpockets to be punched out, corrupt politicians that we have ourselves elected to be denounced, local trains to be infused into by sheer mob power (to be spat out on the other side by the same mindless force)… but hey, where’s life?

I recall a thought that came into my mind many years ago, after I returned to Mumbai, following a long spell in a smaller, quieter city. This one came over me while I was hanging on for dear life in a local bound for Churchgate.

It was simply this - “Does this city think that it’s the only place on earth where people actually work?”

We look down with patronizing disdain on the newcomer. Inside, we chuckle derisively when someone with a travel bag on his shoulder asks us for directions to Dadar TT. We’re quick to vociferously dislodge the queue jumper from his lawlessly begotten vantage point two places ahead of us.

We’re completely attuned to the cause of scoring that extra buck, denying the garland hawker a single rupee more than what he, according to us, is entitled to. Good for us. We’re the cream. We’re the winners in the rat race. All hail the Americo-indian dream!!

Then someone gets chewed up by a passing truck on a busy street, or maybe just knocked down by a scooter. We quickly avert our collective gaze, thanking whatever deity is in force on that weekday that it wasn’t us. We know we’re falling short of some more universal standard at such times, but the milling crowd reminds us of our priorities smartly enough. We arrive home drained to the core, having put in four hours of hardcore commuting to do seven hours of work.

Mumbai’s English-medium educated young graduates are making unerring beelines to the HR offices of call centers and shopping complexes, because money is God… future prospects take the hindmost. Every decade, we have another generation of burned-out youngsters struggling to come to terms with a dead-end career. The fake American accent that stood them in such good stead in those air-conditioned sheet glass mausoleums falter and die on their lips.

Mumbai seethes with sweatshops where those who cannot afford even this pathetic route struggle to keep life and limb together. Corrupt politicians assure us that everything will be just fine and dandy if we only cast our vote for them. This city remains the centre of Dawood Ibrahim’s crime kingdom. Much as we hate to admit it, Mumbai’s grassroots economy depends to no uncertain extent on this fact. Everyone, in every sector, has a haunted, harried and subtly hopeless look on his or her face.

There is literally not a single inch of unclaimed and uncontested land left in the central city, and the suburbs are almost spoken for too. All attempts at trying to untangle the traffic snarl are end-stage damage control that buys us a couple of months at the most. The city sends us a clear, unequivocal message when an overenthusiastic monsoon lays bare the inadequacies of terminally cancerous infrastructure.

We have reached saturation point geographically, socially and spiritually. Our weak pretense at savvy urbaneness has lost its convincing power. When we speak of Mumbai, we’re referring to a once moderately sane anthill that has suddenly been kicked, doused in gasoline and set on fire.

I don’t know every yardstick by which winners are defined in this world, but I suspect that we may be found lacking by at least some of them…

Some look for a way out, because there sure as hell is no way back. For many of my friends, leaving the city altogether has been the only option. They have the money to continue staying here, but not the willingness. “What’s the point?” they ask. “Money has no value on this city’s property market, unless you have enough to buy into Malabar Hill or Cuffe Parade. Even then, you’re just buying a sugar-coated version of the same old madness.”

Mumbai’s ‘fighting spirit’ is the mantra. But is it, perhaps, only the tight-lipped, white-knuckled determination to prevail that must have sustained members of the Bataan Death March until they dropped by the wayside? What exactly are we crowing about?

Maybe we should have a new city slogan – LOST OUR WAY – AND PROUD OF IT!!

You must forgive a disillusioned, middle-aged man his bitterness. I know Mumbai has its redeeming factors, but they’re not immediately apparent when you sit there in the dust, unnoticed and unattended by the teeming thousands, and even ridiculed for your temporary inability to match the pace.

I honestly feel that we have little to commend us above any other city in the country. Mumbai’s only true value lies in the fact that it is our home. The legendary opportunities it once had a monopoly over are rapidly being replicated in cities that none of us had even heard of so far.

Some humility and less swagger, guys….?

The other day, I met Hemant Shutterkhalikar. A chronic Mumbaikar and Saffron Brigade fanatic, he lives in Dadar and takes that fact very seriously. Dadar is to Mumbai’s Hindus what Jerusalem is to the Jews – you can strut your stuff anywhere, but this is simply the best place from where to do it. I’ve never been able to figure out why.

Anyway, you’d be hard put to find a more typical example of the illustrious Manus Marathicus genus than Hemant Shutterkhalikar… the man literally chews green and spits saffron. He hasn’t had much of an education – his father pulled him out of school after he flunked the seventh standard so that his precious male spawn would have more time to go and wave wooden poles at Shivaji Park.

No thoroughbred Brahmin male is considered worthy of the saffron flag if he hasn’t done this for an extended period of time. It has something to do with expressing one’s hypothetical willingness to do war against the ill-defined oppressive forces that would usurp the Maharashtrian Hindu from his rightful place on the top of the heap. (The top of the heap in Maharashtra, that is. Die-hard or not, this lot is realistic enough to know that they cannot trot that stuff beyond those sugar-caned borders.)

Hemant Shutterkhalikar spends most of his time hanging around the local barber’s shop, where he and his compatriots talk of their day’s ethnic purging exploits and slap each other on the backs. There is no shortage of non-Maharashtrian self-esteem to shatter in Dadar, so Hemant & Co. always have plenty of cannon fodder.

You’d think that Mumbai’s Gujaratis and North Indians would have savvied up by now and shifted their act to more convivial locations, but no – humans have this tendency to make their homes in the war zone. Maybe they feel that living so close to the source of infection stimulates their immune system into higher protection levels. The Jews didn’t shift out of Germany even when they could practically smell the Nazi concentration camp fire, either.

In the evenings, Hemant engages in the traditional neighborhood extortion game called ‘pygmy collection’ and repairs with the proceeds to the local hooch dive. There he and his pals drink deep of Government-approved rotgut and watch the sun go down over the slums of ‘Amchi’ Mumbai. He was there that evening when he saw me attempt to evade him and his sozzled cronies by crossing the road. He shot up drunkenly and hailed me.

“Oye! Where you going, yaar? Come here, come here. I am wanting to share with you somet’ing.”

There was no way out. Telling an inebriated saffronite that you have better things to do than listen to his self-aggrandizing frog-in-the-pond rantings is not on. You may not actually wind up battered and smeared with dogshit in the nearest gutter, but you can bet your last modak that your bike tires will be just about as flat and perforated as a rava dosa the next morning.

I walked over and sat down beside him on the barber’s hospitality bench. From the smell of it, Hemant already had at least a quarter of arrack under his belt.

“I saw de movie your told me to watch. ‘Borat’,” he said. “About dat Afghani asshole who goes to America?”

He was talking about the outrageously spoofy film ‘Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.’ In this film, the fictitious character Borat Sagdiyev uses his assumed Third World ignorance to poke fun at the American mindset. He is portrayed as a total bigot and MCP who hates Jews and considers women as only slightly better than cattle.

“Kazakhi,” I corrected. “Borat is supposed to be from Kazakhstan, but he’s actually an American Jew.

“Ya, ya, whatever,” said Hemant dismissively. “Anyway, he funny – but he also right, you know. I know how he feel about de Jews. We have so many same problems here in Mumbai wit’ people who not from Mumbai.”

I chose not to comment. I’m not an inbred Mumbaikar myself and therefore walk a tightrope every time I sully this Sacred City’s pavements with my contaminated footsteps.

“But I think he not right about women, yaar,” he continued. “Women are not good only just for the sex. Dey also needed for cleaning and washing de laundry. Dey also take good care of the kids. We (he flapped his sweaty saffron neckerchief) treat de women wit’ respec’.”

“Yes,” I agreed readily enough. “Women have their uses.”

“But he right about dis ‘sexual consent’ business, yaar,” he said, looking drunkenly wistful. “What bullshit, consent?”

I said nothing, but did wonder just how long this guy would be able to run from a lynch mob of Californian women libbers if some unfortunate twist of Fate would ever land him in Yankeeland.

“Women are good, but what is use of asking dem about de man business?” asked disgustedly. “Sex is de man business - they not enjoy anyway. Do dey take consent of de man before de cooking or de cleaning house? No! Dat is de woman business, and dey enjoy and we don’t enjoy. Do dey ask for our consent when dey are washing de laundry or cleaning de baby kaka? No! Dey much better at it and we give dem respec’ for it! Mother is like Goddess, no?”

It was a tricky moment. Did I agree with a “no” or a “yes”? Indian English can be complicated.

“Dere as so many things where de man just shut up and let woman do. Same way, why can’t woman just shut up and let de man do de sex? Anyways, dis Borat he good man. He actually Kazakh Maharashtrian,” concluded Hemant. “I spoken to de Boss and he say we should ask him to join our party. We can use him in de Mahim ward. So many non-Mumbaikars dere.”

He look out an oversized cell phone that had what looked like old chicken grease smeared all over the display window. “You have Borat’s mobile number in de Kazakhstan?”

Sometimes it all gets too much for me, and I have to withdraw. Yes, even from my family and friends. Mumbai’s frenetic pace can mesmerize you into thinking that manic activity is normal. That we have always lived this way. But I guess, deep down where we carry our legacy of freedom encoded in our being, we know that this is a lie. The truth is…

Mumbaiites have not always fought for every square inch of space. We have not always attached a monetary value to every aspect of our lives. We have not always had to feel the do-or-die rush of toxic adrenaline as we gear up each morning and evening to engage in choiceless battle with our fellowmen on Platform 2, or automotive anarchy in the rush-hour traffic.

We have not always had to walk our streets with wary caution, our bodies clenched like fists do reduce the space we occupy to a bare minimum. We have not always had to have mastered the skill of looking through others as if they don’t exist, hoping only that they will be considerate enough to return the favor. We have not always had to traverse this city with one hand on our wallets and the other one clutching a kerchief to our noses.

I have learned of a saner Mumbai at the feet of Dadasaheb Lohekar, who occasionally holds court at the local park where I live. The man is 91 years old and looks every day of it as he sits there with his decrepit Alsatian. However, his memory is as sharp as a Grant Road pickpocket’s blade and he has some stories to tell of this city.

Of course, he’s not old enough to actually remember some of the things he talks about, such as the days when Mumbai’s only inhabitants were the Koli fisher folk. Yeah, the people we resignedly make way for in the locals today, as they climb on with their noxious baskets, most of us unaware of the fact that Mumbai is named after their patron goddess Mumbadevi.

But Dadasaheb is old enough to talk authoritatively of them, and the standards of coexistence they adhered to. He is old enough to remember the Parsi, Gujarati and South Indian Hindu families, that lived together peacefully here at one time, when property was not an issue of power, and the sharing of resources not restricted to partisan community pockets.

His eyes, already filmy with advancing cataracts, cloud over even further when he regales us with stories of a Mumbai we would never recognize today. I don’t blame him. I get sort of misty-eyed myself. And so, on some nights after the daily struggle to emerge intact from the teeming human anthill, I take off on my old Enfield and look for evidence of Mumbai in the urban apocalypse. I leave my suburb behind, aware of the fact that the bike’s exhaust is not doing much to improve the pollution I often complain about.

I see a different Mumbai emerge after midnight, though the city truly never sleeps. This Mumbai tosses uneasily in its half-awake somnolence, the relative quiet after a day of commercial convulsions probably allowing it to reach back into its memory and remember that another order once existed.

For some reason, I always end up staring at Haji Ali bathed in the moonlight, glowing an eerie, timeless green. Its aloofness from the madness of the mainland seems to tell me that one can be part of the chaos and yet be apart from it.

As its walkway disappears under the tide, I understand that I, too, need to occasionally deny the city access to the essential me. The rat race churns on less than a hundred yards away, but Haji Ali finds an island of detached peace just by drawing up the bridge once in a while.

I’m up by seven, my mind already strategizing the commute to work and the uncertain odds of another day in Mumbai. I’m bleary-eyed but ready. The most profound insights of a Mumbai night cannot match swords with the realities of the city by day….

There’s this guy I’ve been observing crashed out on a bench at the park on my morning jaunts of late. He seems to pick the same park bench every time. No idea who he is or where he comes from, but my guess he’s a homeless South Indian. He always smells of cheap booze, but he never bothers anyone. When I pass by the park again at nine on my way to the office, he’s gone.

I’m a pragmatist, and I know all about the thousands who arrive in Mumbai every week to try Lady Luck. And I also know that the fabled woman doesn’t smile on each one of them. Pay a little closer attention while boarding your evening local back home and you can spot them.

Desperate faces, overwhelmed by the slow shattering of a dream and shell-shocked with the surplus of inputs this city provides for the uninitiated. They stand there, visibly clueless about what to do now that the interview didn’t pan out the way they had anticipated. Their clothes, hurriedly bought cheap off the shelf in some Tier III city, are grimy with the sweat and dust of cost-effective Mumbai commuting.

Sometimes they approach you, asking for bus fare back to where they came from – some godforsaken small town or the other. Sometimes you can see them in stand in STD booths, their beaten faces hung in defeat as they give the bad news to the people back at home. And sometimes – more often than not – you find them racked out gape-jawed on park benches and roadsides, wasted on hooch and deep in oblivion.

Strangely, Mumbai has means to capitalize on both the successes and the failures. Let me explain:

“In an attempt to earn more revenue, the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking (BEST) has finally approved the commercialization plan of its 27 bus depots in the city. Presently, of the 27 bus depots in the city, the Andheri (West), Chembur and Seven Bungalows depots have been taken up for commercialization in the first phase, while the bus depots at Kurla and Oshiwara will be follow in the second phase. According to the plan, the BEST will also rent out space for opening of liquor bars in these depots…..” (Afternoon, January 11, 2007)

Let’s all hear it for the city of endless opportunity!