My kinda drug - Mumbai!
Since there is so much going around about my beautiful city, I feel compelled to add my point of view too.
Mumbai is not a city.... It is a NARCOTIC! I shall tell you why...
You come to this city, a stranger from a foreign land. Any place out of Mumbai is foreign to us. No matter whether you have come in by plane, train, bus or even with a sack of clothes ties to the end of a stick, walking over the bridge at Vashi or trundling over the one at Thane. You may have even come in by boat or handcuffed in the back of a police van. No matter how you come or where you come from the moment you enter this island city you become a Mumbaikar; or a Mumbaite as some would like to call it. You don't have to wait 5 years or even 5 minutes to be called a Mumbaite and be treated like one. You already are one.
The first thing that you notice about the place is the amount of people and the speed and the synchronization at which we all move. I remember this friend of mine from Delhi, who had recently arrived in Mumbai saying "Man! Where the heck have all these people come from?" You may be amazed at the pace the city moves with as it seemingly ignores the slow you. You may feel left behind. I urge you to stand on any railway station in the morning waiting to get into a train to go to Churchgate. You are slow.... people are whizzing past you. Suddenly as the train stops, you notice the mass of humanity pouring out and then feel the surge and strength of the people getting in. You are swept off your feet and suddenly you are in the train. Not so slow now are you? Still not satisfied? But you have felt the first dose/shot of the drug. The effects are bad. The people in the train are all sticking to you and pushing you. You cannot stand it. You are nauseated. You stumble off at Churchgate and go about your business.
You wonder how you are going to manage this. This didn't seem like such a good idea after all. Or was it that you were transferred here? At night you are alone and the city is still abuzz. Trust me it never sleeps. The second day goes by... you are exhausted and frustrated by night.... Then comes the third and the forth..... it is the weekend. Well... well... a day of rest finally! You have it all wrong there. The city wakes up to a weekend of partying. So many places... so many people... as usual there is space for all. Everyone is accommodated. You are beginning to enjoy the high. It is two weeks that you are here and you are hooked on to the city. The pace of life gives you the high. The people give you the high. When you are late for work, everyone pulls you into that moving Churchgate fast. Then you realise that you are not alone. You chat and laugh with complete strangers in the train. Whatever happened to what your parents told you about not talking to strangers? All of a sudden you are not alone. You have realised that people are as friendly as anyone can be. Any part of the day or night there are people willing to lend you a patient ear. You can never be lost and more importantly you can never be alone!
There was this time I had to go someplace and didn't know how. I just asked a passerby on the street at Fountain and he said he was going the same way. Well I had a new friend for 10 mins. I have never met him since. Another time, while I was going back home from work, a friend and I got off the company bus at Bandra east. I was so annoyed at having had my sleep in the bus disturbed, but I had to go home and didn't really want to sit in the bus. This well dressed man comes up to us and asks us if we have change for a 100. I didn't but my friend did. He thanked us and told us that he would have otherwise had to pay the auto-rickshaw guy a 100 bucks for a 20 rupees journey. He asked us where we were going and it turned out that we were going the same way. So he offered us a lift in a friends car. In my sleep all I noticed was a shiny black 'big' car. I got in and promptly dozed off on the plush leather seats. I woke up when we reached and then realised that a complete stranger had given us a lift in a spanking new Mercedes. I have made many many more such friends. And I shall make many more too!
Live in the city and move with the flow to understand and I guarantee that you will be addicted. Once you are hooked on, there is no known cure or rehabilitation. But then who would want stop feeling the pulse of life in him. Feel it eating bhutta at Juhu, feel it in the splash of waves breaking over Marine drive, feel it in the people who come forward with nothing to ask back in calamities, feel it in the throb of Mumbai's lifelines... the local trains, the buses, the streets, the chai shops, the skyscrapers, the slums, the elevators, feel it everywhere. It is a city that you don't live in... it lives in you. It is the place at the end of the beanstalk that you dream about at night. It is a mess in the monsoons and oppressive in the summers - the only two distinguishable seasons made apparent by the lack of rain in the latter. It is a place where people in suits and auto rickshaw drivers dine at the same table. It is the friend about whom you wondered how you lived your life without. It is your solace when you are down and kick in the seat of your pants telling you to get up and move on. The smell might leave you holding your breath often and the speed will leave you breathless always. Feel Mumbai... it is already inside your veins. You are already addicted.
Just like the Eagles sang in 'Hotel California' "You may check out anytime you like, but you can never leave"
