Mumbai, or Bombay

The only thing worse than falling in love with a person is falling in love with a place.

There is a city that lies on the west coast of the Indian peninsula. It was once a major port and a centre of bustling financial activities. Today, it maintains its stature and stands tall as the only city in India with a skyline. If you were to look at it from the skies, it would appear to be a soda-bottle-opener with the inner curve popular for its sea-facing promenade and a beautiful road that stretches along its length.

When I first moved into the city, the first analogy I could think was Anthill. Like the lives ants live, insignificant in a larger scheme of things, people lived here in similar vertical colonies, stacked upon others’ ambitions. Two years later, the analogy still holds true, but with an understanding of the significance of such a life – with an understanding of how every ant is important in an anthill.

Of the times I lived there, the memory that I am sure would stay with me forever would be evening walks on brick-streets wet with a heavy afternoon rain. The memory of seeing lives getting reflected on the streets, ready to hide under the umbrellas would remain etched in my mind forever. On one such streets, is held an annual art and craft showcase named after a historical black horse. While the name is monochromatic, I clearly remember the shades of a thousand colors emanating their vibrance in the wind that blew. Happy people everywhere. However, what I would remember more than the colors is the absence of the same after the showcase ended. It was then that I realized how that small street had actually attracted the showcase and not the other way around. Lined with trees on both sides, it starts from a small esplanade that has now been turned into a parking lot, which in turn faces a Public Library across the road, an Art gallery on the right and a Music Shop in the front. As you walk down the street, on your right, beyond the line of trees, you would find stairs meant for sitting and on the left you would see art galleries and food joints in sequence. At the far end of this street, a Navy Base of the Indian Army stands secured with its walls donning beautiful graffiti. I remember the graffiti especially because I was threatened by a Navy Officer at one of the gates of the Base when I tried to capture them with my camera.

– Hey! What are you doing?

– I am just taking a photograph.

– Why? It’s not allowed.

– It’s beautiful.

– Go! Go away or else I will snatch your camera.

When I walked a few metres ahead, right to the end of the street named after a historical black horse, I saw the notice – Photography Prohibited.

If you kept walking on the road, you would end up on the Causeway which my friend had once described quite perversely as a place oozing with female pheromones owing to the uninhibited crowd of girls out there shopping on the streets. On this Causeway, you would find a Pub that became famous in popular culture for reasons quite opposite to each other – for being gunned down during one of the deadliest terrorist attacks the city had seen and for being the hangout place of one of the biggest gangster-turned-author that the lands beyond the sea had witnessed. Till now it stays the only Pub I have visited that sells a book – just one book. Shantaram is a book I intend to read sometime in the near future.

In the crowd of the local railway, I found the solitude. It turned out to be my favorite place of uninterrupted reading and I remember finishing a 500-pages thick book entirely on my train journeys within the city – from my Guest House to work and back. There is a personality to everything associated with the city. The mornings are better, with hopes of exploring something new. The evenings are beautiful, with memories of the day to rejoice upon. The nights are alive till the breaking dawn, with life and love and rising mirth. So, when I came to know about my transfer from this city, I was not sad, I was just afraid of losing it all.

When you fall in love with a person and then part your ways, it is a difficult process to get yourself through the melancholy of the absence of possible and erstwhile togetherness. But when you fall in love with a place and then move out, it is the mornings and the nights and everything in between that you start to miss. You start to miss the sun-rays piercing their ways through the curtain of your room and falling on that one book that you had been reading with a sound of the crowd specific to the surrounding. You start to miss the possibility of going out of your home and arrive in a familiar, comfortable place where you can be yourself. Each and every second that you had spent starts to appear in front of your eyes and you can’t help but realize your inability to experience them, again.

In the city, I had the comfort of going anywhere as my mind wished, or the soul demanded. I could go on a walk along the sea-side, watching the enthusiastic walkers and joggers fighting their ways through the fat absorbed in last night’s food and drink escapade. I could go to umpteen bookstores scattered across the city and find a new, hitherto unexplored book, in each of those stores. I could go to a National Park situated at the centre of the city, take a bicycle and ride up and down the Historic Buddhist Caves, crossing the herds of deers and dears, stopping midways to read that favorite chapter of the book under the shade of a giving tree. I could go to watch the finest of stage artists perform their hearts out to entertain us, to express themselves. At nights, I could be part of the shimmering lights of the clubs and explore the possibility of vibrant laughters and seductive gazes of beautiful women. To take things to an extreme, I could carry an easel, riding a pair of roller skates across the street and a majority of onlookers would only appreciate. While it is just the indifference of the people around you for you, it is in the indifference of others that you find the ultimate freedom.

Today when I sit back and reminisce, all I am reminded of are the lines below, that once I had written sitting at an Irani Restaurant, overlooking a bunch of cheerful people through the window.

To the land of bursting hopes

I bequeath the hope of permanence

A windburn of memories then

Leaves a mark, a call of the lights

To shine upon.