The new urban world order – symbolized by malls, multiplexes and high-rise luxury apartments – reached the dense shores of Mumbai only a few years ago. But it has already transformed a major chunk of the city’s landscape, both externally and experientially. A new generation of privileged Mumbaikars – still under fifteen – have lived life exclusively in these spaces. Less lucky citizens only feast on the neighbourhood ‘mall- multiplex’ on weekends but even they have already started to organize their energies and life savings to buy that dreamy flat in a happening complex. Middle-class Mumbaikars choose to spend their weekends in malls and multiplexes since they are the only public spaces that don’t have that bombed out, war-ravaged feel the city continues to exude – with its eternally dug up roads, half-formed buildings and dilapidated structures from another era, doomed for destruction by the new order. What else is there to do on weekends? But a choice as limited as this, means so many things. In a few years, a new generation of Mumbaikars will have exclusively experienced the special quality of Mumbai life only through such experiences in a hyper-real way – through the movies – maybe only through the movies. Since most distinctive neighbourhoods would more or less have vanished. And not only because of the laws of late capitalism, as the more theoretically inclined would have us believe. After all, in most capitalist societies the heritage industry is less embattled than it is in Mumbai and does manage to carve out special enclaves that remind you of individual urban histories. Here, the builder lobby continues to behave exactly like it did all through its existence, continuing its glorious tradition of treating it – the city’s history – like dirt. Only so that it can build on it relentlessly, like compulsive bees who make outsize hives that eventually start to leak and break. As the city morphs into yet more malls and multiplexes, the next generation of Mumbaikars will experience the city only in these dark, enchanted enclaves. They will be thrilled to see its vanishing landscapes represented on the silver screen in another version of Bluffmaster. They will laugh at themselves in the sequel to the fable-like Taxi No. Nau do Gyaraah. Maybe they will also see a much delayed sequel to Jaane Bhi do Yaaron – another fabulous city story made in the early eighties. In fact one sincerely hopes that JBDY either gets a re-release or is played forever in all the multiplexes. It still remains one of the best commentaries on the way the city builds and re-builds itself in its portrayal of the glorious, eternal dance of corrupt cooperation between the bureaucracy, the builders and the media. The cinematic soul of the greedy builder Tarneja, (Raheja?) still lives on in the city. It still inspires its descendents to continue with its glorious building traditions. But of course, in a more sophisticated way. The Tarneja of today may even open up a Tarneja Ecological School of Art, Architecture and Urban Planning (KRVIA?) to equip the next generation of the city’s architects and builders with very sophisticated theories about the city. Theories that may even criticize the city’s ugly architectural and planning history and which get discussed fiercely in classroom discussions. But at the end of the day the next generation of architects, urban planners and builders will depend for their jobs and livelihoods on Tarneja Associates and their ilk and life will move on. After a hard days work, students will re-connect with their city within the cozy confines of the movie-hall and watch yet another Mumbai-based urban-legend.