Mumbai Joins Stadium Art Movement World Tour for 2016

16th Decemeber, 2015 (Montreal) Mmmmmmmmm...

....So I am at this party and there's this bloke from Mumbai.

(He duzzint know my sister was born there when my parents lived there or that half my mates are Indo-Canadian or that I studied the history of Mumbai Architecture in detention as a kid)

Basically his way of contributing to the party was to wow us with stories of Mumbai. And we were wowed.

Basically (going by composite reports) it's like New York City: the peninsula is exact size-ish as Manhattan.
Then you throw in London: coz ya know, wickets and cricket.
Then add Sao Paulo for endless hi-rises unplanned yesterday.
Then throw in Rio coz of beaches and favelas and hot monsoon street party fiestas with hot rhythms organized by criminalized gangsters there for your “safety”...
Then bung in Hollywood coz Bollywood, yeah?
Then Chuck in a heavy rail transport network from Tokyo...
Then imagine Paris coz the traffic and similar attitude to expatriates taking pics of the Beaux Arts Palisades.
Then throw in some Detroit-style political crime wave.
Some Stockholm waterfront.
A Copenhagen “liberalism”.
Then add some Moscow style posh place terrorist threat...
Then sprinkle a bit of coriander for a Bhang Lassi you find in East Vancouver (if you know where to hide)...
Then throw in some Victorian dialect that now constitutes the world's biggest English subset to take us back to Paddington Station and the Golden Age of Steam...
Then throw in Berlin coz the art scene.
Then throw in San Francisco coz it's the upside-down version of it on a map and coz hippie clothes and western interest in Ancient scriptures that need smoking equipment in order to “get”.
Then throw in more criminalized activities coz this guy from Mumbai was emphasizing the DANGER of the place and frankly, kinda over-selling the script coz I am now impressed any of my family survived. It's more dangerous than Caracas and has more food fights than Mexico City and more words for “cop” than Canadians have for “cold”...
And so yeah I'm really feeling it off this dood at the party, blowing us away with how tame Montreal is compared to this violent jungle of opportunity and iniquity amongst paradise and polluted paradox that he called home...

When all of a sudden one of my Indo-Canadian mates arrived.

Mumbai guy starts going off about Mumbai again, kicking up how crazy and unpredictable the place is and not all chill and easy like here. And my mate says,

“Oh, I lived in Mumbai.”

And Mumbai guy says, Oh wow, where?

And my mate tells him. (Some place name only a Mumbaisian would know…)

Mumbai this Mumbai that... It wouldn't end. I was so proud of my mate Alok finally saying yeah yeah big fucking deal I lived with my uncle in his back shop between two shacks where the cops shoot stray dogs at night for practice. We ate well.

And Mumbai guy falls off his chair sayin: “No way. That's the most DANGEROUS part of all Mumbai.”

And I'm like, so. We're done with Mumbai, yeah?

(Yer never done with Mumbai)

...I rolled that story out to prove I have once had a social life.

Hi-Rises are the order of the day while beach food vendors sell you a fry-up on the beach. What else do you want from life?