Mumbai meri jaan!

Has it ever happened to you that you bought a book and after reading a few pages (as few as first 2) fell in love with it? As if the book gripped you and wouldn’t let go, as if you knew this was something you were looking to read in a while, but couldn’t find anywhere. I brought Shantaram recently and that's what it feels like. I prefer not to directly pull text from a book but rather interpret it in my own words, in turn sharing what I feel about it. But the text in this book is so precise, so much on spot that I wouldn’t find better words.

I was born in Bombay (later named Mumbai). Every person has a different perception of the city- Bombay. There will be those who find it arrogant, those who find it magical, those who find it loathed with greed and some others who find it a city of dreams. For someone who is born in this city, I would say it’s a bit of all. Does this city have a soul of its own you ask? Yes, it’s a soul of 13,662,885 people combined. It’s the soul of a little girl who waits by the side of the road for light to turn red, when it does she runs to your cab and knocks on the window, shining her marvelous smile and puts on a grave act and yet it’s the soul of the same girl who runs back to a bunch of kids on the footpath when the light turns green, laughing, playing and simply happy- that sheer happiness which you keep looking at from the back window of the cab, till only a speck remains. It’s the soul of the hawker you haggle with whenever you purchase the veggies and it’s the soul of the same hawker who ensures to greet you everyday, even when you are in a hurry to get to work and don't notice. It’s the soul of those hands that hold you to get in the train compartment which has no space even for one foot to step in, protect you from a fall and it’s the same soul of the hands that push you ruthlessly when you reach the desired station to get out. It’s the soul of little kids who hold their grandparents hands and walk to school and it’s the soul of young teenagers, people in 20s-30s-40s who walk their parents, grandparents to the park in the evening. It’s the soul of the "chakki wala" who is bathed in white grinding all the grains to flour who smiles at you when go to get the "atta" (flour), showing his teeth which merge with the color of his skin, eyes, eyebrows, hair, eyelashes-all white and it’s the soul of the maid who realizes you are late to school/work and packs your lunch,puts it in your purse. Its the soul of Diwali, Ganpati, Eid, Holi,Chritmas,Navratri,Gudi Padwa,MakarSankranti,Pongal and its the soul of Shraddh (ceremony after death), Shanti.

You can either lose yourself or find yourself in Mumbai. You will be cheated, robbed, betrayed and yet loved, protected, cherished here. You will hate it for the crowd that crushes, pushes and squishes you everyday and yet love it for the hellos, nods and smiles you'll receive everyday. The stranger in you will disappear, the ambition in you will rise, the energy in you will push you to the extreme and the joy in you will survive. So friends today I post text straight from Shantaram, this one is for Mumbai- Mumbai meri jaan.
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"The first thing I noticed about Bombay, on the first day, was the smell of the different air. I could smell it before I saw or heard anything of India, even as I walked along the umbilical corridor that connected the plane to the airport. I was excited and delighted by it, in that first Bombay Minute, escaped from prison and new to the wide world , but I didn’t and couldn’t recognize it. I know now that it’s the sweet, sweating smell of hope, which is opposite of hate; and it’s the sour, stifled smell of greed, which is the opposite of love. It’s the smell of gods, demons, empires, and civilizations in resurrection and decay. It’s the blue skin smell of the sea, no matter where you are in the Island city, and the blood-metal smell of machines. It smells of the stir and sleep and waste of sixty billion animals, more than half of them humans and rats. It smells of heartbreak, and the struggle to live, and of crucial failures and loves that produce our courage. It smells of ten thousand restaurants, five thousand temples. Shrines, churches and mosques, and of hundred bazaars devoted exclusively to perfumes, spices, incense and freshly cut flower. Someone called it the worst good smell in the world. But whenever I return to Bombay, now, its my first sense of the city- that smell, above all things-that welcomes me and tells me I've come home.

The next thing I noticed was the heat. I stood in airport queues, not five minutes from the conditioned air of the plane, and my clothes clung to sudden sweat. My heart thumped under the command of the new climate. Each breath was an angry little victory. I came to know that it never stops, the jungle sweat, because heat that makes it, night and day, is wet heat. The choking humidity makes amphibians of us all, in Bombay breathing water in air; you learn to live with it, and you learn to like it, or you leave.

Then there were the people. Assamese, Jats, and Punjabis; people from Rajasthan, Bengal, and Tamil Nadu; from Pushkar, Cochin, and Konarak;warrior caste, Brahmin, and untouchable; Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Parsee, Jain, Animist; fair skin and dark, green eyes and golden brown and black; every face and form of that extravagant variety, that incomparable beauty, India".
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I miss you-Mumbai! Miss you India!