It has been a year and a half since I started college in the states and every time I return to Mumbai, India, I liken it to the ever-changing face of a Kardashian. It is a particularly polluted December and I am met with a flurry of new infrastructure projects, as well as a myriad of new restaurants and stores rendering parts of the city I’ve grown up in confusing, if not entirely unrecognizable. It is for this reason, that, when visiting places previously unknown, I prefer to take an Uber. I’ve always thought Ubers were great — there’s no need to distinguish quaint gullies [1] from each other on a Google Maps screen, you’re protected from the heat and pollution unlike a regular cab, and best of all, no parking stress! Unfortunately, on this particular afternoon, the Uber waiting time exceeded what I was willing to waste, even with the endless stretch of the day ahead of me. And so, wanting to quickly run some errands, I decided to hail a regular cab.

With an air quality index of 146 — for context, New Haven hovers around 30 — and allergies that had been flaring up like Fourth of July rockets, I quietly resigned to closed windows in 80-degree weather. That decision was quickly overturned, however, when I remembered I did not, in fact, enjoy the droplets of sweat that were beginning to form on my forehead. With the windows down and my AirPods dead, I quickly felt like I was actually experiencing the people around me.

By putting down my windows and taking out my AirPods I subconsciously broke down a barrier between me and the city. I heard snippets of conversation: a girl and her friend, both with red-ribbon woven braids, trying to decide where to cross the busy intersection because there was no crosswalk for where they wanted to go; the slap of chappals [2] against the concrete of little boys playing a game along the edge of the main road; and a man trying to sell English novels at the red light, amidst all the scooters that trickled through the gaps in the cars like water through pebbles. I learned that the cab driver had come to the city from Uttar Pradesh and that he sent money back home every month to his wife and two kids. Used to frequenting air-conditioned spaces and traveling between those spaces in air-conditioned vehicles, I felt how hot the city really was, noticing the way the sun caused the air to shimmer in the distance. Within 15 minutes, I had exposed myself to the stories of so many different people. With it came the realization that we so often and so easily isolate ourselves in bubbles of artificial realities.

These bubbles exist in big ways, like architecture. Mumbai is unique in the way that wealth and poverty are not geographically separated; instead, nestled in the valleys created by skyscrapers and towering glass buildings are slums and chawls [3]. The bubbles are then reinforced by optical separation. Each high-rise comes equipped with a garden, a pool and a walking area. It has a tall boundary such that there is no interaction with the reality around it. Think a shrunken, transplanted version of New York, but a little more charming. Subsequently, public spaces that are supposed to act as equalizers become less economically diverse, thickening the bubble. And these public places are beginning to shrink anyway. The park in which I used to play as a child, collecting a new set of friends every day has now been converted to a metro station. It has returned with some benches and grass, but the orange swing set and large almond tree are missed. The empty building lot where I used to play lagori [4] with the children from my building and the basti [5] across now has a 10-floor building. I wonder, do we leave this common ground behind in childhood, or has development stolen it from us along the way?  

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a college student. Stereotypically, we love blaming The System or The Man. But I too recognize that I contribute to the bubble in many ways. I have lived in a city of close to 22 million for two decades. A megalodon of melting pots if you will. I literally, if not figuratively, run into hundreds of people a week. But how many times do I make an effort to seek out and actively participate in spaces with different people? To treat people I encounter along a journey as ends in themselves, not a means to my own ends? To really listen to the richness of life around me and start small-talk with strangers?

It’s not the poverty or the oppression that we need to absorb with our eyes wide open — but that too is important on some level. It is the vibrance of the stories constantly buzzing and evolving around us. I realized that I was genuinely missing out on not approaching my commute with curiosity. To me, the beloved Mumbai streets seemed noisy, a sound I tried to drown out with the handy noise-canceling feature of my AirPods. But if you really zoom in and focus, each person sings their own tune. And each tune is worth knowing.

[1] A narrow street or lane, especially in an urban or crowded area.

[2] A type of flip flop, sometimes made from leather. 

[3] A chawl is a large, low-quality residential building in South Asia that is divided into many apartments and is typically associated with poverty.

[4] A popular outdoor game played by two teams with a ball and a stack of flat stones or wooden blocks.

[5] A small settlement.

SAMAA BURTE NADKARNI is a sophomore in Pierson College. She can be reached at samaa.burtenadkarni@yale.edu.