In Delhi you hear people say - “Do you know who my dad is?” and in Mumbai – “You know which celebrity I saw today?”

The differences run much deeper than that. From what we eat to what we breathe, from what we see to what we hear and the list goes on and on. Let’s sketch out the life in these two most important cities of India.

If Delhi is green then Mumbai may boast of blue sea owing to its geographical location. The green belt in Delhi may showcase many a shade of green but the coastal zone of Mumbai is blue only from a distance. As you go closer, you will find multi-coloured polythene, blackened dirty rubbish, red spittle from the betel leaf, green of the algae and swarms of people dressed in sundry colours.

Although there is a strong opposition in Mumbai against immigration from northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and although Delhi is closer in distance than Mumbai for such labour, Mumbai happens to be a more preferred destination. To add on to the population woes, Mumbai claims to be financial capital of India, thereby attracting many professionals from other parts of the country.

The ever-growing crowd demands more resources than Mumbai can offer. There would be a family of five surviving in a 1 BHK flat, there would be slums in the centre of the city and average rent for a decent sized flat would be close to a lakh.

Once out of the house, a Mumbaikar will have to board the local train. The local trains which are the so-called lifeline of Mumbai are also cause of death of many commuters. And mind you, these are not wilful suicidal cases but fatal accidents waiting to happen. The coaches are packed more than twice beyond capacity, forcing people to travel on top of the trains or to stand at the edge of the entry/exit doors with no foothold and only a centre pole to hang on to. So a Mumbaikar sitting in a local train opens up his newspaper and reads about commuters falling off the local train and thanks God for the seat he got that day.

In contrast to the local trains of Mumbai, Delhi Metro is the pride of the city which halves the travel time and doubles the convenience to travel long distance in and around Delhi. It keeps the city connected to the airport, railway stations and the inter-state bus terminuses. Apart from few and far between construction and maintenance issues, there are not many known cases of fatality involving the Metro service. Furthermore, security checks ensure a safe journey (remember the bomb blast on the locals of Mumbai) and the ticketing system ensures that the commuters pay for their trip (think of the ticket checkers struggling at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus).

Delhi also reminds me of wide tree-lined roads which lead to a wider road with so many road signs at junctions, roundabouts and flyovers (think of Dhaula Kuan!) that you cannot miss. Mumbai is more of a labyrinth of narrow lanes wriggling into the western/eastern express highway running lengthwise on either side of the city.

Nearly everyone in Mumbai travels to South in the morning and comes back to North in the evening, which makes crowd management a problem. On the other hand, Delhi is a lot spacious and has a number of well-developed commercial centres scattered along the length and breadth of the city. This is true not only for office complexes but also for entertainment zones. If the entire Mumbai runs towards Parel, Bandra and Andheri for nightouts, Delhites are spoiled for choices from Kamala Nagar market in the North to Greater Kailash in the South, from Janak Puri in the West to Noida Atta Market in the East.

One of the factors usually cited to commend Mumbai over Delhi is safety of women and the resulting freedom to move about alone late in the night. Personally, I don’t think that men in one city would have lesser degree of libido than men in another city. Though Delhi reports more rape cases but incidents of molestation are not unheard of on occasions like Dahi Handi festival and Ganpati Visarjan in Mumbai where the crowd is massive.

If there are sport stadiums in Delhi then there are theatre auditoriums in Mumbai, if there people who try to show off in Delhi then there are people who have no time for one another in Mumbai, if Delhi has political power, Mumbai has financial power. Both cities are big and modern with their own sets of concerns but Delhi surely has come a long way from being the historic capital of the Mughal Empire to being rated as the ‘alpha-world city’.