A Prestige Issue

Each time I raise my head in a Bombay lane to see where I’m going it surprises me to see surroundings I didn’t know existed, more so when I have been that way before. I would have thought that a walk through a lane is good enough to notice everything there is to see along the lane - buildings, names of buildings, shops, names of shops, compound walls, gates, name plates, and any prominent landmarks like temples, and petrol pumps among other things.

Over time I’ve learnt that it is not so simple, at least not in Bombay (renamed Mumbai). One way to look at it is there is something new to see each time you pass that way unless of course you pass that way so frequently that you eventually see everything there is to see and get around to remembering it all.

Thinking of it I believe that unless I were to raise my head at the same spot along the lane each time I take it chances are I’ll notice something new even if it is only for a moment that I raise my head before returning my attention to the footpath. A slight delay in doing so and I run the risk of stepping on a sleeping form on the footpath, bumping into a tree that rises along the edge of the sidewalk, twisting my ankle where the floor has gone missing, stumbling against hawkers’ wares, stepping on dog-droppings or even worse human-droppings. Then there is this continuous stream of folks coming from the opposite direction that I need to dodge to avoid stumbling over.

So, much as I watch with a smile television footage of bumbling personalities of ‘note’ tripping over weak knees wobbly from age but reluctant to let go of levers of power, making a spectacle of themselves while the nation suffers the indignity of parading weak-kneed netas who literally need to be held up on their way to the dais where a speech exhorting the nation to march ahead with its head held high awaits, I would much rather avoid making a spectacle of myself on the footpath even if I’m a nobody. There is nothing graceful in a fall, even if it were an accident.

I’ve noticed people who’ve lost their footing while walking, tumbling to the pavement and on regaining their footing rushing on without meeting sympathetic eyes, driven along as much by embarrassment as by the indignity of it all. A fall is ungainly, an antithesis of all that is dignified, besides looking foolish. A certain fallibility is associated with a fall, any fall else how does one explain ‘he’s fallen in my eyes’, ‘it’s beneath my dignity’, ‘his self-esteem fell’, ‘a fallen woman’, ‘he fell from grace’?

So, when I took an infrequent path one day not far from the Matunga Road station, keeping my head down to avoid the indignity of falling over any of the many reasons ‘inhabiting’ Mumbai footpaths, I raised my head ever so momentarily only to be pleasantly surprised to see this building I had missed noticing earlier.

I smiled before dropping my head and turning my attention to the footpath for, there was little time or for that matter, space, to actually pause on the footpath and look around. To do so would mean suffering the indignity of being stared at by a stranger for blocking their way, or worse still being rudely shouldered aside.

In other words it would mean 'a loss of face', and with it prestige.

As to why it took me another trip that way several days later to notice the other building not far from the first one, well, I would have to start all over again to explain it!

Dignity is after all a prestige issue. So long!