- Mumbai is known as a fast-paced metropolitan city and financial capital of India
- The film highlighted social etiquette like giving up seats and avoiding loud behavior
- Modern Mumbai contrasts with the past by having lost its pause button and slower pace
Mumbai is the city that never sleeps. Days blend into nights, months turn into years, but the financial capital of India continues to grow, evolve, and become home to more and more dreamers. It's a metropolitan city, like any other in the world, and it boasts a fast-paced life.
The emergence of the iconic vada pav is one such example of this fast-paced life. It's a snack that people can have on the go - on the bus, in a car, on a local train, or in an auto. But the Government of India had a different vision for Mumbai, quite different from what it is associated with today.
Mumbai Heritage, founded by Kunal Tripathi, is an Instagram page dedicated to the history of the city. It recently shared a clip from a 1954 documentary, Good Manners, produced by the Films Division of the Government of India. It puts forward a vision of a slow-paced city that, over the years, has lost its pause button.
Good Manners Documentary
The documentary begins with, "A nation's culture is a measure of its maturity." It further adds that a culture is represented by our daily lives-how we interact with others and how we treat our surroundings.
It then goes on to show instances where people are both kind and rude towards each other. "Consideration for others is a good foundation for others," says the voice in the documentary. The film further shows how some people are rude to others, especially in offices, where they don't have any regard for senior citizens or customers.
In another frame, the video shows a man, decked in a suit and hat, sleeping in a train with his feet up on another seat. While the voice acknowledges the fact that finding a vacant seat during rush hours is all about luck, hogging one like that is about manners.
It also includes restaurant etiquette, in which a man is shown drinking his tea from a saucer while making slurping sounds, another yawning with an open mouth, and two of them talking so loudly as if there were no one sitting around them.
People making weird sounds in their throat, spitting in public places, picking up a handful of chips at a party, and speaking with their mouths full of food are also touted as ill-mannered in the video. In the latter part of the video, the frame transitions to what is actually constituted as good manners.
A man giving up his seat for a woman with an infant in her arms, a young man giving up his seat for an elder, and a bus conductor stopping the bus for an elderly woman to board are shown. "Just as oil keeps the wheels of an industry running smoothly by eliminating friction, so too are the wheels of society kept smoothly running by courtesy and consideration," is the message behind the video.
Mumbai Today
While the video is about good manners, one thing to notice is the slow-paced life that comes with being considerate. The message was not only to be helpful but also to live life the way it is meant to be lived.
It teaches patience, which translates not to hasty movements of legs and hands, but to sitting quietly in one place, observing the surroundings, or reading a newspaper or book.
When we compare 1950s Bombay to today's Mumbai, it's not about manners but the pace at which life goes on. Ganesh Vanare, an influencer, shared a video of Mumbai and titled it, "Not just a city... but a million emotions in motion."
While the city is known for its good-mannered citizens, it has somehow lost its pause button.
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