Sister Act

Mumbai and New York sit on opposite sides of the planet, but both are technicolor cities, pulsing with life and dreams. 

Like Mumbai, New York City is choked with cars and crowds, with hopeful-eyed travelers arriving bag in hand, hungering for the stars. Both cities don’t sleep. And perhaps most crucially, at their hearts, both cities are also marked by their diversity and cosmopolitanism, both moulded by the immigrants who now call the land their home.

And like Mumbai, New York City owes its existence to something far less romantic  — both were bargaining chips in deals made by the British empire.

Bombay fell into English hands around 1661, thanks to a bizarre marriage settlement; the city was part of the dowry of Portugal’s Princess Catherine of Braganza when she wed England’s Charles II (the man scarcely even knew where the city was). The East India Company eventually took them over, built up ports and institutions, opened the city up to immigrants around the world, and wove English into the city’s governance and commerce. Centuries on, Mumbai still holds that cosmopolitanism to its heart (a few rocky moments notwithstanding).

New York’s origin was an even more transactional exchange. In 1667, England and the Dutch Republic signed the Treaty of Breda, and the Dutch walked away from New Amsterdam — then a modest trading settlement on Manhattan — in return for Run Island in present-day Indonesia, at the time the world’s only source of nutmeg. The English rebranded the settlement New York, and English took over from Dutch as the language spoken in courts, markets, and boardrooms.

Nobody sitting at either negotiating table could have guessed that these two acquisitions would grow into the stately monarchs that they are today. And yet that’s exactly what happened. Mumbai and New York City both grew into fabled entrepots of commerce, and early adopters of ‘globalization’, well before the term gained currency in the contemporary world.

No wonder that both cities live curiously similar (yet rather dissonant) rhythms. Every morning, young Bandra professionals march their laptops into yet another cafe serving the latest artisanal coffee. At Churchgate railway station, a clot of commuters hustle in and out, streaming into waiting buses and black-and-yellow taxis. Just outside the city’s stately Gothic and Art Deco structures sit the street stalls, dispensing everything from sliced watermelon to sugarcane juice. For those without time to tarry and money to spare, the street vendors of the city have always held court.

Half a world away, in New York, the city is heading to bagel shops or grabbing its first matcha latte before the day fully dawns. Instead of local trains, New Yorkers pack into the MTA, earbuds in, sharpening their wits for the day.

By lunchtime, the contrasts sharpen. In Mumbai, the dabbawalas orchestrate a seamless ballet of home-cooked meals delivered straight to office desks, while co-workers congregate at the lunch table, trying each others’ lunches, and clucking and chattering about their day. In New York, the lunches feel different: a pastrami sandwich from Katz’s Deli, a hurried bowl of salad from Chopt, a rushed bite at a food truck, a sad desk lunch.

And then as the gloaming turns to nightfall, in New York, coffee dates turn to jazz nights, cocktail glasses clink and the Brooklyn Bridge lights up like a necklace. Back in Mumbai, the city’s Irani cafes brim with customers sipping their chai, Marine Drive glows golden in the sunset, a stream of Punjabi pop briefly pierces the evening air thanks to a passing taxi.

Both cities are defined by their weather. In Mumbai, the gusting monsoon, rain-slicked streets, the wind sending a great pane of water over the city, the jackhammer relentlessness of a steady rainy day. In New York City, the slate winters, smooth with ice, the Rockefeller Christmas tree hung about with lights, and girdled by gawping admirers.

Mumbai and New York — both queens in their own spheres, both throbbing with life and energy, both holders of dreams. Different skins, same restless soul. Both cities forget how to be still — they hum through midnight, roar through morning, and wear their exhaustion like a second skin, beautiful and unrelenting.