Footpaths

Footpath is a trail one walks on everyday but never actually
ponder upon what actually goes onto creating a legacy that it is. Stepping
on cracks to pass time, sitting on them with friends because standing is
boring. Footpath bears a lot of fruits in Mumbai’s underbelly, its
reclaimed land and its hip SoBo lanes.

From early dawn, idli and poha walas with their carts and boxes walk across
it setting up their wares for the early morning crowd who relish the
pleasure of a bit of hot food before going to work.
Some go to the Vada Pav wala too if there is dislike for the McDonald’s
cheap morning McMuffin. Picking up the crisp dailies of Times Of India with
a free Mumbai Mirror, the cosmopolitan working class of Mumbai is ready to
go work for the biggies of the world and the rich hordes of expensively
dressed joggers and aunties with their pallus tightened make their daily
journey from one footpath to another gossiping about who Ranbir Kapoor
kissed.



Cows are tied to the streetlights and the trees on the pavement, defecating
as the sweepers clean the path for the day, clearing all the untidiness of
the autumn trees and evening hawkers.

Vendors set up their tea stalls on the footpath and start brewing their
well-loved tea, dropping some on the side walk, dogs sleeping on the
footpath slowly get shoved aside and wake up. Homeless people gather their
blankets and sit on the footpath near the vendors for their morning
nourishment, once fed and happy they beg for wares from their shining
offices, the footpath.

Taxi drivers drop off people who've returned home, banging their bags on
the footpath they smile, having reached home. Pipelines puncture the newly
furbished interlocking cheap concrete footways because the BMC does not let
them stay intact for more than a month. Maybe they want people to
experience what plateau trekking is on the footpaths itself. Children walk
sleeping on it with their polished shoes towards the assigned bus stops,
often sliding their feet along, sometimes trying to skid, sometimes falling
down to get picked up by their worrying mums who don’t bother to change
their bowed nighties which bears the aroma of the child’s snack box and
dough marks on the fat-tiered belly. Some of those mothers also use those
paver blocks as a stand for their cooking utensil and the footpath being
their stove.

As the day takes its toll on the footpath it sees a horde of things it
usually does, every day the same thing but everyday something different.
The newspaper vendors are replaced by pirated video disk stalls selling the
latest movie cheaper than then popcorn.

After surviving the vagaries of weather and fickle footwear fashion for
over 70 years, the stones have disappeared from all but a couple of
footpaths in the past few years. Interlocking paver blocks that come off
within months of being laid have taken place of the Victorian Bombay stone
pavements.
For those that still exist, they are as sturdy as any other heritage
structure in Mumbai.

Life expectancy of a footpath has been decreasing.
Blame it on the stone, rain, cows, elephants, trees, garbage, homeless,
shanties, hawkers, hefty Mumbaikars, cars, birds, feaces, concrete, sound,
wind, Rakhi Sawant or even God.
Footpaths need attention, they need TRPs.

They’re there, almost everywhere, present and yet absent like the large
number of Mumbaikars that slowly and in their own way make Mumbai
their own.