INDIA GROWTH STORY: BANDRA-WORLI SEALINK’S READY TO ROLL

FINALLY, YOU CAN ZIP ACROSS THE SEA

NO MATTER how dramatic the opening ceremony for the Bandra-Worli Sealink, it's unlikely to match the drama that surrounded the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932. The physical prominence of bridges and their (usual) utility make their opening ceremonies irresistible for grandstanding politicians, but on this occasion their glory was stolen.
    Just as Jack Lang, the premier (chief minister) of New South Wales, was about to cut the ribbon, a man in military uniform charged on a horse and cut the ribbon and declared the bridge open in the name of the people of Australia. Immediately arrested, he confessed to being the member of an ultra right-wing paramilitary group that was opposed to Lang's leftist policies, and was also angry that the King of England had not been called to open the bridge. One can imagine sundry local chauvinists kicking themselves for not thinking of doing the same.
    Such theatrics should not be surprising; the symbolism offered by bridges is too tempting to be ignored. Mythology is replete with symbolic bridges to be crossed, like the Zoroastrian bridge over boiling metal that all souls must cross, with the crossing becoming harder or easier according to their load of sins. The European Union made full use of bridges when the euro was launched; the first images on the notes were of bridges, partly as rhetoric about bridges between countries, but perhaps also to emphasise them as images of stability over the rough water of financial turmoil. Occasionally, the symbolism can be charming, like the folk tradition of Ram thanking the squirrel that helped build his bridge to Lanka by stroking it, and forever leaving the mark of his fingers on its back.
    More often though, the symbolism of bridge openings is sinister. The water spirits, which must submit to the bridge being built, demand a sacrifice, and these have been made. When an ancient bridge in Germany was demolished, the skeleton of a child was found in its piers. The nursery rhyme 'London Bridge is Falling Down' is conjectured to be an echo of this, an unsettling thought as we watch our children catch the last one through their bridge of arms. Bridges stand over the untamed forces of the natural world, and these are prone to demand their tribute, either as the bridge is being built (they are notoriously dangerous for workmen), or after in the form of suicides that are always drawn to bridges.
    Rudyard Kipling used this idea to powerful effect in his story 'The Bridge Builders'. In it, a British engineer of a bridge over the Ganges is caught in a flood that threatens to demolish his work. In an opium-fuelled daze he imagines Ganga, in the shape of a great river crocodile, demanding the bridge fall, and the great Indian gods — Shiva, Indra, Kali, Hanuman — debating it, before Krishna comes to tell them that they can't halt progress and that the bridge will stand. Sealink set to change the lives of local fishermen
    IT IS typical Kipling, combining a positive imperial message, with a visionary understanding of the eternal forces that underlie the vision of order that the bridge represents.
    Not surprisingly, most bridge opening ceremonies extol order. Some elements are common: long speeches, the presence of presidents, kings and queens, musical tributes. Flotillas of boats, usually accompany openings, to underline how their element, water, is being superseded by the earth which the bridge represents. Sometimes people are allowed special permission to cross on foot, but the Sealink's makers seem adamant about never allowing walkers on the bridge.
    Runners might be different, since apparently, there's a plan to take the Mumbai marathon over the bridge. This was done for the opening of the Oresund Bridge which connects Sweden and Denmark, the longest border bridge crossing in the world. A special half-marathon was held to include the bridge's 7,845 metres, the longest road-rail bridge in Europe. An ever more testing crossing was done on the Brooklyn Bridge, not exactly at its opening, but a week after, when rumours spread that it was about to collapse, causing a stampede in which 12 people were killed. To reassure the people, the great circus impresario PT Barnum led a parade of 21 of his elephants across the bridge!
    Fireworks are common for the practical reason that bridge spans provide particularly good platforms for fireworks that can be seen by people on the shore. Some bridges are known for their fireworks, like the Sydney display, which traditionally ushers in the first big chronological New Year celebration of the year, seen on TV screens around the world, as other places prepare for midnight. But there also seems to be an elemental appropriateness of using such a tremendous display of fire to consecrate a symbol that pits two other elements, earth and water, against each other.
    What would have been appropriate for the Sealink, other than the standard laser and firework display that took place? Perhaps, a moment of triumph should have been allowed for the most unlikely victors in its building — the small fishing community of Worli. Thanks to their objections, the whole structure was radically changed, to raise the bridge enough to let their boats through. And rather than landing at the logical place, at the Worli end of Mahim Bay, in the middle of their village, the bridge now shoots past, at immense added expense, to jut into the sea, and then turn abruptly to meet the road on Worli Seaface.
    The actual benefit to the fishermen is somewhat ambiguous. The bridge's piers have probably ruined their fishing, and their lands will probably soon be overrun by entrepreneurs eager to cash in on the bridge view with hoardings or sea-facing restaurants. Whether their lives will benefit or not from this is debatable, but it's unlikely ever to be the same again. Perhaps after Mrs Gandhi opened the bridge, the fisherfolk could have been allowed one special trip across to savour this peculiarly Mumbai solution, muddled and costly, replete with murky monetary schemes, and yet somehow impressive in the end.
    vikram .doctor @timesgroup .com