Understanding Mumbai through the Interplay of Individual and Collective Experiences and “Close Reading” of Maps
Interplay of Individual and Collective Experiences in Modern Mumbai
Mumbai, starting as several islands, is a city that was under the influence of multiple imperial forces. After escaping these colonial forces, the present-day Mumbai is a city that faces its own problems. It’s high density brings many issues and contrasts to light: the city is prosperous as it has the highest GDP out of any Indian city, but is still slum-ridden; its citizens live in such close proximity that it is at once intimate and isolating (as is highlighted in Ritesh Batra’s 2013 film, The Lunchbox); and the citizens’ different two religions, Hinduism and Muslim, frequently come into conflict as in the infamous Mumbai riots in 1992-1993. The Lunchbox, with a focus on the aspect of isolation and anonymity in a city, highlighted how individual experiences of the city that informed both a variety of experiences and a single collective experience. We see how the main character, Ila, a housewife, can be isolated in her role as a mother, a wife, and a homemaker. We see how a widower, Saajan, can be isolated in the hustle and bustle of traveling through the city and working at a desk job. Both individual experiences give the impression that any two individuals with separate lives can share a single feeling in a city such as isolation. Through shots of the city while the characters are traveling, we see how isolation highlighted by the anonymity and density in the scenes could also be a collective experience in city. Yet, we see that this experience is not exactly shared by all characters in the film, representing the diversity of experience: Shaikh, a secondary character in the film, is presented as a foil to Saajan. Shaikh is energetic, sociable young man who is at the start of his life (about to marry and start a new job), embracing the city, and striving to do well.
Mapping Mumbai
“We never map reality; we always map how we see reality, which is very different.”
- Philippe Rekacewicz (Mumbai Omeka Assignment)
The interplay of individual and collective experiences of a city is also explored in the “close reading” we did for the maps of Mumbai. When doing a close reading of any primary source, we are analyzing the nuisances and biases of the primary source as a product motivated by a single person’s reality. Yet, we can draw on some trends of the time and understand collective experiences of the whole society. From this course, I have found how individual experiences feed into a holistic understanding of a city and vice versa. In the Mumbai Omeka assignment, we viewed maps as a piece of a text to be read providing information about both the geospatial representation of the space and the coded information about the context, the author, and the audience. Examining the period of British rule of Mumbai, in my Omeka essay, I analyzed a map of Bombay and its surroundings (“Plan de Bombay et ses environs”) that was created by a French navigator and whose intended audience was future navigators and imperialists. The map brought into light the broader experience of time – Mumbai under colonialism – and brought into questions about the reality of the time and the progression of history after the map was made. We see how heavily colonialism influenced the perception of the lands and how in turn, maps like this one, made it easier for more Europeans to come to Bombay. We also see how control of the physical space, not just the map, was affected by foreign powers through the reclamation projects done by the East India Company that transformed seven separate islands to one continuous city connected to mainland India.