In search of Saraswati…

Bombay is really quite an attractive city, especially if you go “high”; by this I mean look up at the gorgeous old buildings surrounding you throughout the city, and walk up around the hilly areas north of Chowpatty Beach – e.g. Malabar Hill and Camballa Hill.

In conversations with locals on how beautiful the old architecture is here, and whether or not there are plans to restore and preserve such buildings, I haven’t received very positive responses. I think this is largely due to the common misconception that “new” indicates to others (who are just as mislead) that you are “coming up” in the world – be it as an individual, family or even country. (I particularly noted this phenomenon in Bangalore, where many of the girls from the Community College would make a notable effort to turn up in a new outfit everyday. The girls who couldn’t afford to do this looked on with angst or complained. The CC coordinators and I discussed this misconception of “new”, especially within underprivileged communities, at length. They did their best to try and rectify the situation with the girls, without implementing a mandatory uniform. I strongly believed that in this context, a mandatory uniform would be an unnecessary expense (in terms of money and time) given the various other priorities the girls, and organization, should be focused on. I have no idea what CC coordinators said, but they must have said something because this “fashion show” seemed to take a back-seat.)

Anyway, back to the old architecture of Bombay. For the sake of Bombay’s reputation as a desirable residential and travel destination, I hope the majority of these buildings are restored and preserved. I hope the city looks to other reputable cities that have done the same – e.g. London, Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm, the West Village and UWS of New York, the Rocks area of Sydney, etc. And I hope my children will be able to take photos of the same gorgeous old buildings in years to come.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 2:28 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.