Conversation in an Auto Rickshaw

Today while traveling back home with Paul (Aniruddha), I had an interesting conversation on how he started his career and his perceptions of the city. I am not too sure with sharing his biography here, (without his consent), but I shall definitely like to put down his perceptions of the cities he has been closely associated with over his life by far. I shall try to objectively put them down here:

Aniruddha was born in Jamshedpur, studied in Kolkata, did his postgraduate studies in Delhi and has been practicing in Mumbai since the last 20 years. Thus he has extensively spent time in all these cities. Talking of them one by one he says

"Jamshedpur was a fairly cosmopolitan city, due to the presence of Tata Industries. The city was fairly well developed and you had everything around. Wilderness edged the city so outsikirts was a perfect place for recreation. It has one of the best ICSE schools in the country. Infact, students were so competitive. Competition was like madness. Most of my friends went to IIT or did IAS. Although many of them may not be pursuing engineering now. But competition is so high that everyone wants to end up in engineering or medical. There is nothing else that they look at..."

"I studied in Kolkata, and although it was an industrial city because of jute and other, people there are extremely laid-back. The leftist ideology of labour class has not allowed them to grow. The labour there does not believe in working. They don't work hard. They are not motivated, even if you give them more money, they are not willing to work.Most people want to get work done through political connection."

"When I first came to Mumbai, I liked the city, because I felt the same kind of cosmopolitanism as in Jamshedpur. I had come here earlier for an internship. That time, I had liked the city. There is some kind of positive feeling with this city. You get a feeling of emancipation. People have aspirations and the positive will to achieve them. For example, each person you meet has a desire, and he works towards it. You can find people discussing their desires in trains, roads - even when you travel by an auto. The rickshaw driver strives to go to the next level of life. The street hawker wishes that he will have his own hotel one day. And many of them realize these dreams too. There is this positive emancipation of Mumbai. The best aspect of the city is that it respects your work. People are ready to work for more money. You can get more work out of people if you are willing to give more money. The city is professional. I like this city...I can not stay in any other city, I start feeling uneasy if I am out of Mumbai for too long..."

"Delhi is a horrible city - its a city of cheats. In Delhi, people don't believe in working, they believe in networking. They can not just see you working harder. I don't like Delhi at all - it is contrived. It is a very hard city - in its comparison, Mumbai is really soft..."

Somewhere in his discussion on Mumbai, he mentioned something that I felt was quite interesting. He said, "I have seen that mobility makes people human. Movement makes a space acceptable. It gives you a kind of access to things. There is a feeling of palpability through movement..."

I am not exactly able to remember his ideas on the last aspect in detail. However, I am glad I was able to know so much about how one synthesizes and analyzes cities. These impressions are valuable and I think they come with age. That is one reason again, why I perhaps like growing old. I am a collector of my experiences and I can't wait enough to be able to put them in a perspective that allows me to negotiate my life across space and time.

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Aniruddha Paul is the Dean of Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture.
The conversation above has been recorded purely to suggest one of the many opinions people have on cities and is in no way meant to demean any city or people staying in these cities. The above chat was informal and is to be taken light hearted-ly.