BLT Diaries: Mumbai

Statutory Warning!! This narration is totally biased - seen, felt and expressed in the terms of a photography buff and a damn near quixotic essayist!

Having vowed to write/blog regularly, I’ve never really stuck to the resolution. But the whirlwind that is Mumbai has fascinated me into penning this one down

This is not my first encounter with Mumbai and it has most certainly not been ‘love at first sight’. My first impression of Mumbai was a capital lettered NASTY!! (Rains and a couple of sluggish dirty and smelly taxis are to blame!) A typical visitor’s reaction I’d say in hindsight. But this time around, I’m here to stay… albeit for a few weeks only (once again during July-Aug amidst the monsoon mayhem). I am now able to see Mumbai from the eyes of someone who lives in this city – freshly pressed formal trousers folded up to knees, laptop bag in one hand & umbrella in the other, rush hour morning traffic en-route work, a walk on the sea face while returning home, calling friends and meeting them over dinner.

Bustling train stations, striking malls and stores, Big-bazaar queues so long that they leave you teary eyed, the super rich, the visible poverty, high rise buildings fenced by tiny one room tin roofed homes (I know not if they can be called houses, but a bunch of rain drenched kids and granddads playing outside the curtain that doubles as the door, definitely makes ‘home’ a fitting description!), huge Victorian style Gebäude* so picturesque, that I risked getting out of my taxi at a signal during rush hour just to click a snap (*Gebäude just means buildings :P but if you’ve seen the ones I’m referring to, I’m sure you’ll appreciate me using a word that sounds more exotic), flyovers- one after another, buildings that have stood for decades (if only they could talk, what history they’d be able to recount!!), red buses sounding their characteristic horns, the unrehearsed ballet of the black-yellow taxis, the smell of the rains, the sight of the sea, the breeze, lights, noise, people, crowds!

Confounded… Drenched… Lost… Overwhelmed…Charmed!

And every step of the way, I’m told “Yeh hai Mumbai meri jaan!!”
To which I quote from Delhi 6, “Yeh shehar nahin mehafil hai!!”