This perhaps, is what makes cities in Europe and America hold cultural festivals through the spring and summer. These festivals, held in the open air and for free, are in a sense, a celebration of being alive and being human.

In most Indian cities, public spaces either don’t exist or are more like wastelands. What uptown Bandra has, are public performance spaces — and a highly aware public that fights to guard these. This sense of belonging to a place must be nurtured and kept alive, writes award-winning author, Radhika Jha

It’s seven fifteen in the evening in the second class men’s compartment of the Churchgate-Borivli train. Two hundred bodies are crammed into a space the size of a small bedroom or a large bathroom. My body tenses. Grant Road, Mumbai Central…. The compartment bulges at the seams. Ten men hang from the door, their rears floating over the tracks. I grow rigid. I try not to look scared and search for an inch of unoccupied space. But, around me there remains a sliver of air. I feel no burning eyes upon me. Suddenly, I relax. I look at the faces surrounding me. They are working men’s faces with the curiously blank look that comes at the end of a long day’s work. I ask the man in the red T-shirt beside me how much further it is to Bandra. "Two stations more," he says. "I’ll tell you when you have to get out."

I recognise Mahim creek by the stench. Then Bandra station arrives. A narrow corridor opens miraculously in the midst of the mass of bodies. "Thank you!" I shout to the floating rears, as the train moves off. I catch a glimpse of the man in the red T-shirt. He smiles.

I knew I would be happy in Bandra the moment I got off that train. Even at rush hour there had been none of the aggression that is a normal part of life on the streets of Delhi. The suburban train embodies the difference between Mumbai and Delhi. In the former, no matter how desperately poor a man might be, he doesn’t get his kicks from making someone smaller than him feel powerless. Delhi is a city that feeds on power. Everyone thirsts for it. Mumbai feeds on money and hard work. And yet it remains curiously human. On that ride out to Bandra I experienced the humanness of Mumbai — something that is hard to do if you live in the south of the city.

Every great city has a heart, an area where the human being is celebrated through art, music, food, theatre and dance. Being human is not about surviving, making money is. Being human depends upon the imagination. For without the imagination, the senses are not fully alive and without the senses, one is simply surviving. Everything that tickles the senses, touches the imagination — making an individual more human, more alive. In the Northern Hemisphere, where winters are so hard that people are forced to stay inside, the contrast between surviving and being human is very stark. This perhaps, is what makes cities in Europe and America hold cultural festivals through the spring and summer. These festivals, held in the open air and for free, are in a sense, a celebration of being alive and being human.

In the countries of the south, where sunlight is what people hide from, life is lived inside the house. The streets are meant, as the saying goes, for mad dogs and Englishmen. While people lived in joint families, the house was a village, a world in itself. But with the coming of the nuclear family, living inside the house means living in isolation, alone with one’s fears, sorrows, joys — and the television.

For me, being human is about sharing — whether it is food, music, a play, a smile or a look of pain. A television cannot give you the sense of recognition that sharing something with another human being brings. Human contact is also crucial in teaching children their limits, giving them a sense of what is right and wrong, what can be said and can’t. Parents aren’t enough. That’s why cities have to become communities. For this, one needs places where one can meet other people and share things. In short, one needs public spaces.

In most Indian cities, public spaces either don’t exist or are more like wastelands. Public gardens are badly maintained, lakes turn into sewers. But, more and more people flock to the metros each day and so the price of land keeps increasing. The more valuable land becomes, the less there is left for the community. In a city like Paris for example, or Berlin, half the city is a public garden. In Rio de Janeiro, the beaches have been carefully protected. It even has a natural reserve, an ancient forest, in the centre of the city. New York has Central Park. Apart from the public gardens, these cities also have restaurants, bars, cafes, art galleries and sports complexes — all supported by the city government. But, all this wasn’t enough to create a sense of community, because once uprooted from their places of origin, people in cities tended to take shelter within their homes and didn’t want to come out. And so these cities began to support public performances to encourage people to meet each other.

I can still remember the first time I saw a public performance. It was in Central Park in New York. Maestro, Zubin Mehta, was conducting Ravel’s Bolero. There were five thousand people sitting on the grass, picnic baskets beside them, listening to the music. It was a piece that I knew well but listening to it live, along with thousands of happy people, made the music come alive. At some point I realised I was no longer listening, I was feeling the music inside my body. I looked up over the trees at the grand old buildings peeping over their tops — and felt the city open and take me into itself.

What Bandra has that other parts of Mumbai don’t, are public performance spaces — and a highly aware public that fights to guard these spaces. As I explored these places — the remains of the Portuguese fort at Land’s End, the Bandstand and Carter Road promenades, the reclamation area — and learnt about how hard the citizens of Bandra had fought to keep those spaces, I felt that, that spirit had to be celebrated. The best way to do so, it seemed, given the number of creative people that live in Bandra, was to have a festival along the lines of those in Europe. The Celebrate Bandra festival was about that sense of belonging to a place, a feeling that is at the heart of what it means to be human — but which is hard to find in today’s big Indian city.

[Earlier featured in Verve,Radhika Jha is a writer and Odissi dancer. Her first book, Smell, was translated into several languages and won the Prix Guerlain in France in 2002. Her second book, The Elephant and the Maruti, Penguin India, hit the bookstores in November 2003.]