Cutting Chai, Rain & Mumbai!

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The first shower of rain is grace, it’s the sky descending to the earth, when rain kisses the basalt arch of Gateway of India and it beats upon your head with silver liquid drop, you hear it singing you a lullaby. Also it may be saying- Kasa Kai Mumbai!

Mumbai to me, for some reason seems appropriate name for a city in which though I lived only for three years but fell in with (bitter sweet) love. I can’t love the city the way I love Jabalpur, because Mumbai doesn’t admit of mushy romance, her love is kind of tough love. It has no place for weak kneed. To even live in Mumbai, one has to exchange most of the dreams for some cynicism. Degrees may differ but everyone from a laborer to a modest clerk; artists, academicians, bourgeois, even the filthy rich have to learn their lesson.

The Tinselcity called Mumbai cuts no slack for those who are not up to it. It is a testimony of countless disillusioned poets and bitter poems. Yet the cynicism of city is not morbid, it has vigour. It comes not from decadence of some corpulent cesspool of greed, but from wariness of the man aware of the everyday traps, some innocuous other dangerous. The average resident tempered by his mistress faces the life day by day, getting his way, losing his way, in celebration, in shame and ends up loving the city, like couple married for a lifetime do.

Getting habituated of their existence with life and its challenges. Speaking of challenges, 
 monsoon which the Mumbai Manus calls Mumbai ki barsaat. Is an alarming problem. When it pours it swells. Water clogging is not new, unless the drain system is addressed right & proper. Mumbai ki barsaat will every year leave a bad taste.

Another reason adding to this problem is migration. People measure Mumbai by GDP or such statistical jugglery, I say this is bollocks. Mumbai for long has been the last refuge of dispossessed and starving, the beacon of hope for those who have not conceded anything.

 This dwelling of cynics is an invitation to those who insist on having their way. Mumbai has always been the city of enterprise and resilience and will remain so. But there is a limit to all cities and their absorbing and fulfilling people’s need.

Unless the poverty of  Indian villages are rectified, B grade tows and cities are developed with proper amenities the metros will be taxed forever.

Mumbai notwithstanding the page three types remains a city of hardworking and stubborn people. So Mumbai Manus remain so.
I don’t want her to be Shanghai, Tokyo, New-York, I don’t want her to be Singapore. I like the way she is. She may be a bitch at times, but she is the kind of bitch who nurtures life after its bitchi-ness.

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