There are many ways to look at the crisis brought about by the sudden and unexpected intensity of the monsoon in Mumbai last week. As a tragedy: people died, in landslides and on the streets. Homes and belongings were lost. A photograph of a missing schoolboy in the papers evokes the likelihood of others lost. And with the possibility of disease looming ahead the final toll is yet to be counted. As a celebration of Mumbai’s resilience: stories will be told for years to come of the resourcefulness and stoicism with which people survived the storm, the long wait, the long walk, through dark, flooded streets and the friendliness and helpfulness of strangers.As a situation that could have been averted: questions are being asked of the administration and relevant authorities. Where were those in charge? Did they do enough? Could they have done more? It is how it should be. Blame must be apportioned and measures evolved to meet such exigencies. But there is another perspective which coming as it does, so soon after the London blasts, seems relevant to the recent calamity. It is our relentless and unquestioned reliance on megalopolises.It can be argued, for instance, that the kind of difficulties Mumbai went through last week — widespread flooding, unavailability of public transport, no electricity and in some places no water, poor communication services — is par for the course in much of India. Why then did they seem that much more harrowing and significant?The answer is in the very oddity of the occurrence. Indeed the most striking feature of the storm was the aspect of sheer spectacle: not the harsh beauty of nature but its ability to put so many hundreds of thousands in a situation of extreme discomfort. The city’s highways, the hardy trains tracks, were rendered useless. There was something even more humbling about the sight of cars bobbing in the water, technology made instantly redundant.We have become accustomed to such a high level of efficiency in city life and allowed so much to depend on that efficiency, that we have lost the ability to cope with vicissitudes our ancestors lived with not so long ago and which many live with as a matter of course even today. As Emerson said “The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported in crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun.”This is not to make light of the Mumbaikar’s suffering or to make a plea for turning the clock back and returning to some imagined pastoral paradise. Far from it. There is however a case for recognising how vulnerable we are made to onslaughts by the very reliance we have allowed to multiply. It is also an opportunity to question our expectations from the process of modernisation and urbanisation.Most Western countries have been forced to examine their weaknesses and chinks in the face of the threat from terrorism. Last year’s tsunami hit some of the world’s most popular holiday resorts. One of the more memorable photographs to have emerged from the recent floods in Gujarat was of a man on a two-wheeler carrying a crocodile that had escaped on to the road.The chaos in Mumbai have led to snide references to Vilasrao Deshmukh’s much touted plan to turn Mumbai into a Singapore or Shanghai. Deshmukh needs to respond. At the same time, it is perhaps equally relevant to wonder how invulnerable Shanghai, Singapore or any other city is to primitive forces. To borrow another quote from Emerson : “We think our civilization is near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star.”On a lighter note, the June issue of Wallpaper magazine asked hotel futurist (yes there is such a thing) Yasmine Mahmoudieh to predict trends for the hotel industry. Among her suggestions were the following:• Plexiglass walls and doors with guests’ favourite video clips and images. Guests would also be able to change the colour of walls and cupboards to suit their moods.• Headboard lighting that glows according to the time of day, starting with a pale pre-dawn light.• Scented buttons to provide fragrance of choice in rooms and in the shower; textured carpets to create the feeling of sand.• End of the hotel key. Iris scanning and thumbprint recognition for better security.• No mini bars but super efficient room service and glorified vending machines in corridors already in place in establishments such as London’s Zetter Hotel.
