Mumbai is ‘Allah miyan ki gaai’

National Award-winning filmmaker Shyam Benegal feels that people living in Mumbai nowadays take from the city without giving anything back.

National Award-winning filmmaker Shyam Benegal feels that people living in Mumbai nowadays take from the city without giving anything back.

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“The city came up the way it did because people who took from the city gave back to it. Now, Mumbai is ‘Allah miyan ki gaai’ (God’s cow), people keep drawing milk from the cow without feeding it,” said Benegal at the fourth Kolkata Apeejay Literary Festival on Friday.

“If you look at 19th century Mumbai and now, they are two different cities,” he added. According to Benegal, earlier in Mumbai one did not identify people based on religion or caste. “It used to be the characteristic of the city of Mumbai that you didn’t identify people in that fashion — based on religion or caste. But all that has changed now,” he remarked.

Elaborating on the changes the city has gone through, the filmmaker added: “When I had come to Mumbai nobody really worried about these things. (Back then) your worth was only measured by the work you did.