A spirit that does not exist
Updated On: 14 October, 2023 07:44 AM IST | Mumbai | Lindsay Pereira
It’s interesting how Indians outside Bombay have long congratulated this city for possessing something that isn’t real
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A central Mumbai skyline. I dismiss references to the ‘spirit of Bombay’ whenever I come across them. I react with disbelief instead, and ask why the onus of inculcating this ‘spirit’ lies on those almost always at the receiving end of things. Pic/Pradeep Dhivar
They call it ‘the spirit of Bombay’, trotting it out like clockwork whenever something awful happens to us. When it rains and the city shuts down every year, it’s there in all the newspapers: our ‘spirit’ or ability to pick ourselves up and walk again. It has been mentioned for years, for as long as I can remember, after riots and bomb blasts, or when terrorist attacks have decimated communities and torn families apart. Always, ‘the spirit’.
I used to think it was true as well, because that is the nature of collective delusion. When something is repeated often enough, by many people, one tends to assume it is true despite evidence to the contrary. It is a strategy that has been honed and effectively deployed by politicians for the past few years, which is why so many of us now believe we are better off than we were, when the opposite is true. It’s how con artists become Prime Ministers.
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