Zara hatke, zara bachke

The wet road glistens like diamond and gold pellets as the streetlamps and advertisment boards lighten the way ahead. What is it about this city that sends me plunging into my own mind looking for just the right adjectives. Nothing else would do, it has to be just fitting. As i stepped out of the station, into the open, I smell the salt in air, the humidity rubbing against my skin. Bombay has a dull, pulsating charm about it which induces dreams of being a part of one of the NCPA productions, a commercial sailor or some corporate bigshot with a private cabin in BKC. While people usually define cities, its style, standard of living. Bombay defines its people. It drives them to work day and night and still finds them chilling on marine drive after hours. 

The very sight of the sea inspires some hidden side in me and I want to write and fly with the eagles over band stand. Bombay is so mysterious.. so enigmatic. Like a woman's moods does its weather change. Like the curves of her body, the waves rise and fall. Like the folds in her saree, the city holds strong, scented secrets. Whispers of bedside lovers, of manslaughter, of a child studying by the candle light fills its nights. It is a city of eyes. Listless eyes of the homeless man, his curly, matted hair, his little sack that holds the sum of his belongings. Stoic eyes  of the working woman in a suit who breaks for a quiet lunch at Mondegar , scan the newspaper. The only hint of emotion is given by her pursed, red lips which quiver with excitement as stocks rise. The lonely writer and his bloodshot eyes linger over a burnt cigarette butt, drawing inspiration from the oddities in life.

 Bombay is like a living organism, slowly inching its way to nirvana. It contains all of its history, all the families that have been here since it was given as dowry. With traffic doubling as blood, its slowly moving lifeforce and sea as its external shine. I have said this before and I won't hesitate in saying it again. Bombay is a city of contradictions. It hides dirt under all the glamour. And under the dirt is where you find more glamour. This is a city where if you shun something because of the looks of it, you're doomed to experience only a fraction of the city. Forever. It is the city of rich imagination where if you merely think it, it comes true. And whatever is the truth you would probably never think of it.

Im in love with this city. And I always will be.

Into the night

Im here, on my way back home from manipal and I just crossed a place called ansoti, which probably doesn’t even figure on the map. Frankly I’ve had a history with trains, when I was a kid and a train would come on the platform I would be amused how I felt that I was moving and train wasn’t. Then physics happened and I realized that it wasn’t something magical about me, but something called relative velocity. Then came a time when, whenever a train came on a platform it was time for vacations to end and it was time to go back to hostel. Back to my friends, back to what we called ‘central jail’ but wept like, well girls, when we left. Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya.

Then came a phase when the whole meaning of travelling in trains changed for me. It stopped meaning what it usually does and became travelling in locals in Mumbai. It meant fighting for place to stand even when there were seats available(who am I kidding-they usually weren’t).It meant hanging out of the doors and reaching the destination in one piece, it meant earrings for Rs.5 and vada pav for another 5.

Trains have always brought about a rush of memories to me, and at the same time, creating new ones- real and hypothetical. Now, when I sit in one, I realize how miniscule I am, there are so many different lives, so many different peoples and their own different world who come and travel together. When I was a kid, at the end of a journey I would probably have made friends with people in mine and next two compartments. Now,  here I am, sitting on my own little berth and writing. Trains are like an intersection of so many lives completely different from each other. It is that common point where everyone exists in equilibrium with others. They have different backgrounds, different reasons to travel, different destinations, but at that point they learn to co-exist. That is human nature, I think under all the fights and everything we are as ONE. We are like grass blades, separated at the tip, but conjoined at the very root.