Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [61]
There were also coconuts and rice. And, above it all, the benign presiding influence of the goddess Mumbadevi, whose name—Mumbadevi, Mumbabai, Mumbai—may well have become the city’s. But then, the Portuguese named the place Bom Bahia for its harbor, and not for the goddess of the pomfret folk … the Portuguese were the first invaders, using the harbor to shelter their merchant ships and their men-of-war; but then, one day in 1633, an East India Company Officer named Methwold saw a vision. This vision—a dream of a British Bombay, fortified, defending India’s West against all comers—was a notion of such force that it set time in motion. History churned ahead; Methwold died; and in 1660, Charles II of England was betrothed to Catharine of the Portuguese House of Braganza—that same Catharine who would, all her life, play second fiddle to orange-selling Nell. But she has this consolation—that it was her marriage dowry which brought Bombay into British hands, perhaps in a green tin trunk, and brought Methwold’s vision a step closer to reality. After that, it wasn’t long until September 21st, 1668, when the Company at last got its hands on the island … and then off they went, with their Fort and land-reclamation, and before you could blink there was a city here, Bombay, of which the old tune sang:
Prima in Indis,
Gateway to India,
Star of the East
With her face to the West.
Our Bombay, Padma! It was very different then, there were no night-clubs or pickle factories or Oberoi-Sheraton Hotels or movie studios; but the city grew at breakneck speed, acquiring a cathedral and an equestrian statue of the Mahratta warrior-king Sivaji which (we used to think) came to life at night and galloped awesomely through the city streets—right along Marine Drive! On Chowpatty sands! Past the great houses on Malabar Hill, round Kemp’s Corner, giddily along the sea to Scandal Point! And yes, why not, on and on, down my very own Warden Road, right alongside the segregated swimming pools at Breach Candy, right up to huge Mahalaxmi Temple and the old Willingdon Club … Throughout my childhood, whenever bad times came to Bombay, some insomniac night-walker would report that he had seen the statue moving; disasters, in the city of my youth, danced to the occult music of a horse’s gray, stone hooves.
And where are they now, the first inhabitants? Coconuts have done best of all. Coconuts are still beheaded daily on Chowpatty Beach; while on Juhu Beach, under the languid gaze of film stars at the Sun ’n’ Sand hotel, small boys still shin up coconut palms and bring down the bearded fruit. Coconuts even have their own festival, Coconut Day, which was celebrated a few days before my synchronistic birth. You may feel reassured about coconuts. Rice has not been so lucky; rice-paddies lie under concrete now; tenements tower where once rice wallowed within sight of the sea. But still, in the city, we are great rice-eaters. Patna rice, Basmati, Kashmiri rice travels to the metropolis daily; so the original, ur-rice has left its mark upon us all, and cannot be said to have died in vain. As for Mumbadevi—she’s not so popular these days, having been replaced by elephant-headed Ganesh in the people’s affections. The calendar of festivals reveals her decline: Ganesh—“Ganpati Baba”—has his day of Ganesh Chaturthi, when huge processions are “taken out” and march to Chowpatty bearing plaster effigies of the god, which they hurl into the sea. Ganesh’s day is a rain-making ceremony, it makes the monsoon possible, and it, too, was celebrated in the days before my arrival at the end of the ticktock countdown—but where is Mumbadevi’s day? It is not on the calendar. Where the prayers of pomfret folk, the devotions of crab-catchers? … Of all the first inhabitants, the Koli fishermen