Jaywalking: Jerry Pinto: No city for walkers?

I will be haunting these pages regularly and if you think there is a place where I should be walking, or even a neighbourhood you would like to guide me through, please write to me at jerrywalksmumbai@gmail.com

They say Mumbai is not a walkable city. There is an element of truth in that. The streets have paving blocks on them in nauseous pink and phlegm yellow and there is almost always one that will spring up under your foot and splash you with muck at best or will up-end you at worst.

Writer and poet Jerry Pinto at Shivaji Park. Every fortnight, experience the highs and lows of walking along Mumbai’s streets with Jerry... (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT PHOTO)

I love walking in Mumbai, I love walking Mumbai for that very reason.

First, I can still do it. This is no city for old people and I am going to get as much walking in as I can while I can. There are times when I am striding down a street and am suddenly slowed to a crawl. I find that there is an old person inching along, slowing everyone down because there isn’t that much room between hawkers and street furniture and hungry shopkeepers encroaching on to the space in front of their shops. I have to calm myself, remind myself that we all have the right to walk at the pace at which we can walk. This is everyone’s city though I often think of it as ‘my city’ with the underlying feeling that only I understand it as it should be understood.

Second, I think of my city as something fragile and precious. Consider the walk around Shivaji Park which was like an introduction to Art Deco Mumbai. Then along came the gummint and removed the heritage tag from the environs and the park too and one by one the buildings are coming down and towers are springing up where they used to be.

In this Hindu Brahmin heartland, there was a Jewish building with the Star of David worked into its design. It’s gone now, gone like so many others. Before you sniff with outrage, think about this. You have a one-bedroom home in Shivaji Park and the builder comes along, offers you two bedrooms or two-and-a-half bedrooms and some crores in the bank. Would you be saying: “Ooh no, thanks, I love my heritage 1BHK with its lovely Minton tiles and its teak doors?” or would you be knocking him down as you make a run for the bank.

The sociologist Arjun Appadurai talks of restless capital; I think of the restless middle class, turning and twisting in the warm nights, dreaming of Redevelopment. So, walk the city now and enjoy what is left of it.

Third, there is often an accusation that this is a fast-paced city. No, it’s not. It’s a slow city. It takes three hours sometimes to cross the 16 kilometers between Mahim and Colaba. It is we who are in a hurry to get somewhere and in between getting somewhere and getting something done, we forget to stop and look. To look at the city is to find ideas and iguanas. This one was called Mary Jane and was being carried by Rahul. Mary Jane belongs to a doctor. I am sure she is a most affectionate animal.

And finally, you know how long it takes you to walk anywhere. You never know how long it will take you in your car. So try it, walk. Ten thousand steps and a fast pace and you will live long enough to be that old man who slows down pedestrian traffic. Which is where we came in.

(I will be haunting these pages regularly and if you think there is a place where I should be walking, or even a neighbourhood you would like to guide me through, please write to me at jerrywalksmumbai@gmail.com)