I’ve lost count how many times Mumbai trilled me. It didn’t matter if I visited her or thought of her, she happens to be my ever-evading love! Yes, I am still talking about a city. Its no ordinary metropole as BBC likes to define, a shelter to million poors or home to filthy riches. Its a city with many aspects, may be a whole world in itself. No wonder, she wants independent statehood these days. If she can, she can even have countryhood I say.
Image: wikimedia.org
Mumbai is extremly dynamic at the core, even if she likes to stay subtly silent, making no news. And if she does get the attention, she likes to keep going back to the equilibrium, which I call “dynamic equilibrium.” The roads buzz with traffic untill the wee hours, the gullies chime with children playing their favourite sports, the apartments, the sky-scrappers each compete for its space, its existence, its own little identity. Its like each element in Mumbai, including people fight a single core fight at the bottom, “existence”! And those who have successfully carved it, enter the next stage, “identity!” Its a perpetual seek, because Mumbai is about multitude.
Its not that Mumbai strives for celebrities from every sphere, politics, business, entertainment, or sports. It just that people like to believe that Mumbai is because of her people. Its wrong! Mumbaikars are because of the city, and without her they are all the same, men in blue pants and white shirts, all alike! Mumbai makes them deliver 120% of what they have, each day of their lives, for each year as they live. You think that the routine bomb-blasts, the terror attacks, the rampages do not deter Mumbaikars from getting back to normal, and that they are brave. Its a myth everybody wants to believe. They get back on their feet, because they don’t have an option. The battle for survival is so fierce here, that if they miss the bus, they miss the fortune that awaits them for that day, for the next day (but not the day after!).
And you know what fascinated me the most, each time I visited Mumbai, the zeal of the middle class. It truly exemplies the spirit of life, and its almost as if it is without any philosophical support or justification. It comes natural, just how it has to be. Yes, it has been sometimes on the wilder side, but what can you expect in the jungle. Nevertheless, Mumbai’s beauty never looses its lustre, when it comes to its middle class. The famous locals, the dubbawaalas, the BEST, and the yellow-cabs, they are all parts of the grand design of the city, and more so of Mumbaikars. The prominents have each their say in how the city works (and parties). For them, she offers challenges to contemplate and an outlet to exude their creative energies, in every which way!
It has been, in the past, criticized that Mumbai is becoming pale, and things have started to move northwords. Look, in my honest opinion, Mumbai never begged for anybody’s attention. She is in herself so busy that she barely gets time to hear all this. I am not defending, I am not even a Mumbaikar! If you like her be with her, if you don’t leave her. She is what she is to a Mumbaikar, a sparkle in the eyes, a hope for tomorrow, and a dream forever!
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