Two Tales, Same City

The other day I heard a story that is so ‘Mumbai’, it’s no wonder India’s self-styled ‘megapolis’ has such a bad name. We are all familiar with pathetic games of one-upmanship ambitious people resort to, but this one takes the cake. Two prominent city industrialists were returning from extended jaunts abroad accompanied by their wives and children. As is customary for a certain class of upwardly-mobile people in our metros, the tycoons had pre-arranged to be met by their regular agents, posted at the immigration counters to ensure the bada saabs didn’t have to queue up. No jostling with the aam janata for these people.

Unfortunately for one of the tycoons, his man failed to show up. Shamed into rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi, he tried to pull rank and jump the line with that standard piece of nauseating dialogue: ‘‘Do you know who I am?’’ It didn’t work. Meanwhile, the other guy came over smugly to ask: ‘‘Do you need help? I can request my chap to clear you in a jiffy.’’ That infuriated Mr Big Shot still further. ‘‘No, thank you’’, he replied stiffly. ‘‘I’m sure there has been some mistake. My man must be on his way.’’ With a sly wink and a knowing smile, the first man strode off jauntily while the one-without-the-pull hung around looking miserably at his pregnant wife (also, an extremely well-connected lady) and cursing his travel agent.

Nothing extraordinary about the story so far, right? One sees a repeat of this at international airports in India all the time. But wait. Here comes the zinger. Tycoon No. 1 (the chap who was whisked away) was so thrilled with the incident, he summoned his airport contact to the office the next day. ‘‘Great going’’, he said, pumping the man’s hand, ‘‘keep it up.’’ With that said, he handed over Rs 10,000 as ‘‘reward’’. The lowly clerk was flabbergasted. ‘‘But...but sir... what is this for? I was only doing my job,’’ he stuttered. ‘‘So you were, so you were. But how well you did it. This is a small tip. Next time, you see Mr So-and-so arriving on the same flight, use your influence to keep him waiting even longer. Uska ego phus kar do.’’

The day these two landed in Mumbai, the newspapers were full of sad stories — a woman had been burnt to death by unscrupulous agents handling employment in Bahrain. The woman had been punished by her colleagues for her ‘sin’ of not repaying Rs 10,000 she’d taken as a loan. Or so the police story went. Ten thousand rupees. The exact amount that had been doled out by way of a ‘tip’ in the very same city. There’s something very bizarre about this. A young woman from a distant city paid with her life for her inability to raise a sum of money which was nothing more than a baksheesh for another person. None of this adds up. Perhaps it isn’t meant to.

The person who’d narrated the story to me had expressed his revulsion at the crassness of the industrialist. Frankly, I know these types. I know how their minds work. For all their wealth and power, they are petty-minded, insecure, paranoid people who are willing to pay the earth for settling scores. Ten thousand rupees is a pittance for them. An absolute pittance. The agent who facilitated Tycoon No. 1’s swift passage through long lines at immigration was performing a regular ‘duty’. But he’d actually earned his tip for something entirely different — he’d made his ‘boss’ look better than the boss’ rival. He’d demonstrated this man’s ‘superior’ status in the pecking order. And for such an invaluable service, no amount of ‘petty cash’ was excessive or wasteful.

The woman who was doused with kerosene and set afire while she slept unsuspectingly on a narrow cot in a dank suburban dormitory, while five others in the same room watched her body go up in flames, was obviously not even worth the 10,000 bucks she owed her employees. Same city. Same amount. Different standards. Different yardsticks. And tragically different fates.

Such is life in Mumbai.