I call her the witch, the sorceress,who entices you, incites you, allures you and then completely engulfs you.And you in the whole while have not realised that you've been bewitched.Yes, you've hated her when you came here if you came from outside..yes, you've called her names, you've been suffocated but you've slowly but steadily become a part of her..the witch..mumbai..the witch..
People normally lead two lives. One their personal, the other their life at work or a school or college if you still haven't started work. But if you live in mumbai, you lead a third life. The mysterious affair with mumbai. A life that's only your own, with its own secrets, fantasies, dreams, complications and those amazing moments like every affair..pre-marital or extra-marital...it's as guilty, as pleasurable, as angry, as the secret rendezvous with your beloved.
This city has been my city for a year almost now and i still haven't put up a blog on her. (even when people have been wondering out loud, that i've lost it..). The truth is, it's because it's mumbai. It's because paeans, odes, essays can be written about the city and still not be done with it. Because there are places you visit in your life and when you write about it, it barely makes it to a page...but mumbai? I could write an epic on just on one of it's aspects..thicker than an Ulysses..i could just create another blog that would have daily updates about the dichotomy of mumbai, or i could write an hourly journal on the people i meet and places i go..it's mumbai.
What could i write about ?
The local trains? That keep you on your toes literally. Where your time runs parallel to the mumbai locals. The daily fights and shouts in the compartments, the running over your feet, mausi whose legs are swollen with pus oozing out and still carrying a load a few times her body weight and girth..the designer wear clad fashionistas who cringe when someone passes them by, the kohl eyed eager college kids, the burkha clad women who tear off their naqaab in the safety of the women's compartment, the men who are courteous if you've accidentally gone into a the men's compartment(not really theirs technically but you know what i mean) The locals where relationships are forged for lifetimes, having travelled are the same time, in the same compartments for years.
Mumbai, a country of it's own..it's neither india..it's neither maharashtra and nor can any community from any place in the world claim it has not a counterpart in mumbai. Mumbai is its own world.
Mumbai where nothing is still, nothing is static. It's always in motion. Mumbai is fluid. It runs, in trains, on roads, in cars, in buses, in rains and in your veins.
Nothing divides in mumbai and then you lose count of the divisions.Whose mumbai? The Thackrey's mumbai, the migrant mumbai, the ex-pat mumbai. The night life mumbai, the morning of mumbai. When one life in mumbai goes to sleep, the other gets into action, scrambling to plays, to theatres, to cinemas, to pubs, to discs. And as they loiter back home inebriated in the wee hours, the other half rises, getting ready for another day in mumbai. Mumbai.
In mumbai every body who is somebody somewhere is a nobody and every nobody is the mumbaikar, it's soul. Where a bhaiya drives mumbai to its destination and a maharashtrian taxi driver may just dump you if you called him a bhaiya. The bais with their super fast time management skills could give many corporate honchos and our politicians a lesson or two. Mumbai where every community has a clan, where every clan moves with a pride and sense of identity.
The children who run away from home anywhere in india reach one destination. Mumbai. They sell books, combs, knick knacks and then they sell themselves. Looking up at models and role models in juhu, in taj, at nariman..they sport their style, the hairstyle, selling themselves bit by bit but the dream in their eyes alive. As alive as the fluttering clothes at dhobi ghat.
Mumbai , where houses are more precious than your life. If you have one, you're god. If you haven't, you dream of becoming one. Mumbai lives facing the sea and the creek..The west sea faces the rich and the famous, the west, the slum dwellers of colaba, BPT and Mankhurd, Mumbai. One side pays a million to get a sea view, the other half choses to stay away from the sea, the stink, the junk floating, the debris, the defecation grounds. Mumbai.
Mumbai where you spot a someone somewhere every other day, a filmstar, an activist and then they vanish into the cloak of anonymity. Where the children grow up in the schools of BMC where you fight for a four hour slot, fighting for a place even to sit or in a school like American School of Mumbai where you've an indoor airconditioned stadium , a cafeteria that sells coke at double it's costs.
Mumbai where a woman can chose to live alone. Mumbai, where she can break all rules. Live the dream of other women . Where a woman can travel alone any time of the day . Or Night. Mumbai, where a woman is safe and so walks with the confidence and poise of a tigress.
Mumbai where every story on celluloid in someone's reality.Where every reality is so unreal. Mumbai where every dream is within your reach. In a mall, just steps away.
Mumbai, where everyone is filled with so much of passion and mission. Mumbai where every eye has a dream, where every dream is shared. And in mumbai, i too dream, of being back, in my native land.
Mumbai where you suddenly look at the sky from the train at night and see a twinkle in the sky, you wait for it to move because you think it's an airplane hovering but laugh at yourself when you realise it's a star. You laugh because you'd given up hope of seeing a star in its polluted sky and you laugh at yourself for giving up hope in mumbai. In mumbai, it's life . And life is hope.
