’I felt personally wounded’

Mukesh Ambani writes a heart-felt essay on 26/11 in a new book titled To India With Love: From New York To Mumbai

'I felt personally wounded'

Mukesh Ambani writes a heart-felt essay on 26/11 in a new book titled To India With Love: From New York To Mumbai

I am a Mumbai boy. I grew up in this fishing village that's grown up to become the cradle of Indian entrepreneurship.

While my father struggled to make a name for himself in the textile business after returning to India from Aden, we used to play in the streets below our house in Bhuleshwar under the watchful gaze of my mother.

My memories of the faces, smells, and events of those times remain some of my fondest: rusty Vespas and Fiats, lumbering BEST buses, overladen trucks, hathgaris, and cyclists all competing for progress as pedestrians skillfully checkmated them. Mumbai began changing in earnest just as I was growing up. Suddenly "Chinese" noodles were as common on the streets as bhelpuri, dosas, and ragda pattice. The university's soaring Rajabhai tower, the stern-looking High Court skirting the Oval Maidan, and the gently derelict Colonial-era buildings were suddenly seeing new structures mushroom around them. But even as the new Mumbai Stock Exchange soared over the Colonial Indo-Saracenic buildings around Flora Fountain, and skyscrapers gave the city a new skyline, Mumbai somehow managed to retain its charm.

In the older quarters of the city, many cultures and generations coexisted side by side. Mosques, temples, synagogues, fire temples, gurdwaras, and churches stood just paces from one another. Apart from migrants, the port brought in all manner of visitors. When you passed people in the streets you could hear languages and accents from all over the world. There could have been no more stimulating place to grow up.

If our environments mold us, then Mumbai has made me much of who I am. On its streets, I learned to stand up for myself; in its roadside stalls, I learned to bargain; in its commercial centers, I learned business; and in its cinemas, I learned to dream. But more than all this, this city of contradictions has taught me how to navigate a world that is increasingly complex and global, while always retaining the best of our collective heritage. For no single thing has ever defined Mumbai, and while it welcomes every new influence and immigrant, space is always left for the old.

As kids, when we could get together enough money, we would take the 123 bus to Navy Nagar, where walking around gave an idea of Mumbai was like a century ago-leafy roads lined with garden residences and elegant stone buildings. Even today, while driving home from work I'll often watch in wonder as the Koli fisherfolk sail their Arabian-style dhows from their village, crammed between the office complexes at Nariman Point and the residential towers at Cuffe Parade, seemingly unperturbed by the world that has risen around them.

And what a world it is. Financial capital, home to Bollywood, military base, fashion hub, and cultural center, Mumbai is a multitude of things to a multitude of people twenty-five million at last count. Many of them never seem to sleep, for this city radiates an energy that perfectly captures the inner drive of Indians to create a nation that is one of the foremost in the world. Already, many Mumbai-based companies are renowned across the globe, and are serving as the accelerators speeding India toward entry into the developed world.

True, when passing through (or by, as many of us do) the sprawling Mumbai, 2009, shanties of Dharavi, the sight of naked children playing in gutters is enough to tear at the hardest hearts and hold up as invalid our dream of a great India. But the promise of change is everywhere in Mumbai, and what I love and admire about this city is the manner in which it overcomes all the naysayers and obstacles that try to constrain its ambition.

Riots, cyclones, protests, flood this city has seen it all and always comes through stronger, wearing its scars with dignity.

Its history of successful struggle against defying odds is etched into every corner. Mani Bhavan on Laburnum Road, Mahatma Gandhi's Mumbai residence, reminds us of the great man and that the call for Britain to "Quit India" was made at the August Kranti Maidan. On Marine Drive we can enjoy one of the world's finest collections of Art Deco buildings only because of a land reclamation project once thought impossible. And India's most iconic landmarks, the Gateway of India and the grand Taj Mahal hotel behind it, were funded and built by Indians during a period of Colonial rule.

When terrorists made the Taj the center of their vendetta against this country and its ideal of secularism on November 26, 2008, they hit us where it hurt. As flames licked the hotel's dome, and as the Chhatrapati Shivaji station, Leopold Cafe, and Oberoi hotel also bled, I felt personally wounded. Mumbai is the place where people come to forget their narrow differences of caste, creed, and culture and become part of something bigger, something better. In fact, the Taj was built to transcend human differences, as an "all races" hotel, after its founder, Jamsetji Tata, was denied entry into one of the city's "whites only" hotels. For a moment, I worried whether the fabric of the city would be soiled by the random violence of 26/11. But in the days following the attack, my faith in Mumbai was only reinforced as its citizens came out onto the streets-sometimes in common protest against politicians, sometimes in quiet remembrance of those who perished, but always together. This is what gives me faith in our city and our country, which I feel certain is on the cusp of a great new destiny.

This is why I love Mumbai.

300 rescued guests from the Taj Mahal hotel
250 the number of guests rescued from the trident hotel after the 26/11 attacks

Excerpt from To India With Love: From New York to Mumbai (Published by Assouline)