Its been more than two weeks already and I have more or less adapted to Mumbai. May it be driving your two-wheeler thru' the Thane traffic enriched with heavily polluted air (both by emissions and honkings), or waiting at ANY station during peak hours trying to board a Mumbai local train, its amazing how ones' instincts take over and you no longer feel a pariah (as a matter of fact you never were). A blanket of nostalgia gets wrapped around initially but soon you warm up to the air around and fit right into the rich socio-cultural fabric of Mumbai. You honk, you hurl abuses, you give mean looks to fellow travellers and all this strangely makes you feel at home.
But there is another facet that jutts out - people are naturally warm, they help you out with the smallest of your queries to the biggest of your problems. While people standing in the long ticket queues at train stations would give you nasty looks cos you bumped the queue to get a CVM coupon book, they would also be kind enough to tell you how many stations it would be before you get to Bandra or Kings Circle and what side of the train would you get off. I guess they experience the same pulse of Mumbai as you do. And that's one thing about Mumbai that would never change. Articles, news paper columns, editorials, journal entries aplenty have been written about how helpful and warm an average Mumbaikar is but none of them would do justice to the actual experience of being in Mumbai and being a Mumbaikar.
In these past 10-12 days that I have been out "indulging" and meeting a lot of new faces, life has been enriched with a gamut of experiences, some bitter some sweet. Mumbai never fails to tingle your figurative taste-buds with its sweet n' sour flavors. Half-way through my joy-ride in the motherland, I am hoping there will be more to report after my trip down South.
So long...
--Sifar.
But there is another facet that jutts out - people are naturally warm, they help you out with the smallest of your queries to the biggest of your problems. While people standing in the long ticket queues at train stations would give you nasty looks cos you bumped the queue to get a CVM coupon book, they would also be kind enough to tell you how many stations it would be before you get to Bandra or Kings Circle and what side of the train would you get off. I guess they experience the same pulse of Mumbai as you do. And that's one thing about Mumbai that would never change. Articles, news paper columns, editorials, journal entries aplenty have been written about how helpful and warm an average Mumbaikar is but none of them would do justice to the actual experience of being in Mumbai and being a Mumbaikar.
In these past 10-12 days that I have been out "indulging" and meeting a lot of new faces, life has been enriched with a gamut of experiences, some bitter some sweet. Mumbai never fails to tingle your figurative taste-buds with its sweet n' sour flavors. Half-way through my joy-ride in the motherland, I am hoping there will be more to report after my trip down South.
So long...
--Sifar.
