Zainab Bawa’s Blog

Sandwiched between Lovers – Examining Publicness at Nariman Point / Marine Drive

I proceeded to Churchgate from Grant Road Station. Along the way, news was circulating that India had lost the match to Pakistan and around Grant Road Railway Station, the shopkeepers were analyzing the match. I am beginning to firmly believe that the railway station is a site of circulation of news, stories, rumours and myths across the city. Urban talk is produced, reproduced and transformed around the railway station and it then circulates across the city. I must, at some point, attempt to map flows of information and circulation of trains, through sound and visual means.

I landed at Churchgate Station and made my way towards Marine Drive. These days, I also mark crowdedness. As soon as I landed at Marine Drive, I felt it was too crowded. The time was 6:30 PM. I have become fastidious about space myself. I managed to find a considerable portion of blank space and I sat down. I began watching the couple which was seated at some distance away from me on my left. The man was holding his girl’s hand between both his hands. As time went by, intimacy increased and the girl would touch the man’s face with her hand. But their space was theirs. Unlike me, the researcher, who took keen interest in watching their use of space, everybody else was engrossed in their own activity. As the two lovers talked, on the promenade, I found people meeting and talking. Everyone was talking, yet there was no noise.

Suddenly, a girl, young and evidently very upset, stomped her way to the wall of the promenade and sat close to me. A boy was walking behind her and he came and sat next to her. He started saying something to her and touching her face. She shouted, “Don’t touch me and don’t try to talk to me.” There was a fight which had taken place between them. In the meanwhile, another couple came and sat next to me. They were accompanied by another male who said that he was going off for a stroll while the couple could sit and talk. This couple on my right was looking for some space as they tried to settle down. My own space was now curtailed. This new couple was also here to talk things out. While the former appeared to have just come to the promenade ‘by the way’, the latter had made a concerted decision to come here and talk. The latter couple was discussing family issues. Apparently, the woman was upset with the man’s mother and the man, in his home was sandwiched between the mother and his girl. As both the couples were talking things out, I began to wonder about notion and practice of space in the city. Women talk things out in their groups in the jam-packed ladies compartments of the local trains; and men and women try to talk things out in the openness of the Marine Drive promenade. Then I think about ‘talking things out’ in the private space of house versus ‘talking things out’ in the public space of the promenade. I am curious about this interaction between private and public space.

Within about fifteen minutes, the couple on my left had made amends with each other and were smiling. They mutually walked off after satisfactorily resolving things – for the moment at least. On my right, the woman had talked out her problems, worried and insecurities; “you say whatever is in your heart”, her man had said to her. Sandwiched between the two couples, I was trying to examine my own notions of private-ness and publicness of space. There were times when I felt uncomfortable. At the end of it all, all’s well that ends well. So both couples went off happily.

I got up and began to parade the promenade, a usual exercise. There were numerous peoples and publics. I was marking the public into ‘residents’ and ‘outsiders’. Among the public, I was marking the ‘Sindhis’ and the ‘Parsis’. Across Hilton Hotel, a group of Parsis gather every evening on the promenade and talk. While walking by them, a strong whiff of phoren perfume entered my head. I walked up and down and by the end of the evening, I was feeling dizzy. So many people and I am trying to make sense of the publicness of this space. Am I also not indulging in marking the space and making it simpler for myself? What games the mind plays!!!

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