Temporary doors

Every city has a metabolism, its own growth and decay, as I wrote earlier this week. But the human body is only a metaphor for it. A city metabolizes humans: adding or eliminating them from its mass. And like a body taking too much nutrition, which stores it in fat cells, a city has its own fat cells, new or refurbished buildings. It extends its circulatory system of roads to accommodate them. And all that building and rebuilding takes place behind these metal sheets, so easy to erect or dismantle.

Every wall must have a door. These temporary walls of convenience are not different. They have doors, as flimsy and temporary as the walls themselves. I am always attracted to these signs of a city changing, and like the man in the featured photo, curious about what goes on behind them. Most often it is either a hole in the earth or a lot of dust and noise. Pity the people who live next door.

But sometimes there is nothing behind them. The wall is a sham, just a billboard dressed up in the fake finery of true industry. Imagine my surprise when I saw the first of them. Even in this completely artificial ecosystem there are easily disposed of species which survive by mimicking more robust ones: a clear case of Batesian mimicry. Sometimes though, the mimicry fails and you see the door open to show that there’s no space for activity behind it.

These boards which blocked off half of Mumbai’s most iconic road, the Marine Drive, were not like that. They were true to their function, showing that the road, once the setting for many Bollywood movie songs and scenes, was now going to become a shadow of what it once was. But that’s what a city is, you must be mad if you fall in love with its circulatory system.

This photo shows what flows in the veins of a city. Not a pretty sight at all. But a city has no face, and you must see in it what you might begin to love just because it is familiar. Some talk of the spirit of a city. But it takes someone more etherial than me to love a spirit. Give me the concrete any day, even if interspersed with metal.