The Bombay Treadmill : Odes to Bombay

The Bombay Treadmill

ABBE! THAKELE!

The experience of a city is often defined by a mix of abusive language unique to that city.

For example, “Thakele” in Bombay, “Aantel” from Kolkata or just plain old “Chutiya” from Delhi.

“Thakele”, in particular, is a most interesting abuse.

While literally just meaning “tired”, it’s a quintessentially Bombay abuse. You somehow never hear this in the rest of the country, I'm not sure any other city assigns as much stigma to the very human act of being tired.

“Thakela” also fits in most contexts: it can as easily describe a boring movie plot, a mediocre meal, a slow or confused person, and even entire communities of people who aren't living at the very edge.

Bombay is a treadmill like no other, a place reserved for the emotionally and physically robust, a most unforgiving evolutionary climate for the upwardly mobile and the ultimate insult here is to get “tired”, to “give up” and in the end to literally,“fall off”.

The city experience is a relentless event, a constant uphill wheel in motion, gears grinding furiously.

The immense motive power of the city is palpable.

This is the elusive “buzz” of a city.

It’s what makes a week in Bombay feel like the blink of an eye, and a week in Goa feel like a month.

Cities have speed settings.

It’s interesting to think about speed having defined what ends up existing in our cities.

Delhi decides policy and houses most of the large institutions, dealing with long term planning and larger timelines.

Bombay is home to the stock market, that pulse-quickening institution of instant decision-making.

Co-incidence?

Cities have always historically functioned as valves, regulating the flows of varied streams through them.

Money, goods, people, culture, stories and resources are all channeled, and cities organically sprout where these flows merge, and it makes the most sense for there to emerge a node.

Nodes may emerge from geography, where say, a favourable harbour creates the flow of goods and commerce, or through a well-told story, where a flow of people is facilitated by a pilgrimage.

The creation myths around cities quite regularly define their culture, and most things that exist within it.

But how does the speed of a city aspect affect life in general?

What survives the treadmill, and what falls by the side?

Chef Gresham Fernandes told me about longer sit-down degustation meals, which require a sizeable time commitment from both the chef and the diners, and how it works across cities.

“One of the most interesting experiments I’ve worked with are the Swine Dine dinners, across the country, where the main ingredient is pork, and it’s prepared in a multitude of ways using different techniques.

I do feel the sense of preparation and ritual is vastly different in Bengaluru, even Delhi.

People have time to breathe, and spend time over their food. Food related rituals still survive, families eating together and our menus are able to explore genres apart from convenience dining.

I feel the current spate of cafes and delis in Bombay serving mostly generic food with small variations point to a degraded food etiquette.

I’ve seen people who’ve forgotten to chew, in the rush to move to the next thing”.

Conversation, nuances and rituals take a backseat over convenience, speed and availability.

We’ve seen this in our own work, the quality of craft is multiplied manifold as soon as you leave the city limits, there is a certain commitment to fine detail that gets lost out in all the mad rush.

While slower cities can explore the preparation of a 3day biryani, where ingredients need that time to settle into their final flavour profiles, Bombay takes the opposite stance.

Innovation is often confused with value engineering, the act of making something similar, faster.

Nuances are of no importance.

We’re willing to accept mediocrity if it’s delivered 2 minutes before time.

Certain processes thrive on speed.

Commerce and culture profits, where the increased flows fatten wallets.

The quick iterative atmosphere make Bombay an ideal environment for Fashion, Film, Television and other culture producing engines, where static environments are diametrically opposed to growth.

But the city then creates pockets of slower tides within it, or the illusion of pauses in heritage areas where one can trick the mind into believing life has slowed down.

The illusion is reserved for tiny residential pools, where one can take a temporary respite from the torrent that is the city.

In the scheme of things then, “Thakele” isn’t really an abuse, it’s just referring to someone or something that’s a misfit, an anomaly, an unnatural slowing down in a city built on speed.

Think about that the next time you’re stuck in traffic.