Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Mumbai - The city of Dreams

Like Delhi, Mumbai is another place that I have visited on and off for various activities. But unlike Delhi, I have had some cherished moments and some disastrous ones at this bindaas place. Moments which have quite often made me speculate whether I would want to live here for sometime and get into the rat race; the so called struggle for survival.

The weirdest thing which I have always felt at Mumbai is that one could sense, that the city itself breathes. There is so much life and certainly so much exuberance that one couldn’t help but think that this place has to have something. For almost an year I had been thinking about this whole idea of moving to Mumbai; getting out into the open far far away from my comfortable and cozy three bedroom flat in Delhi. The idea of starting off all over again at a new place has almost always excited me; but at the same time there's also a risk of this drastic step being completely disastrous. So many thoughts popping into my head all at the same time; completely new set of people, new localities, lots of risks, et cetera et cetera….Hell, we get just one shot at taking a plunge and when we don’t we keep wondering our whole god-damn life as to why we didn’t do it when we had the chance. So here I am with all my bags packed and a months leave on me, to find a job in the city of dreams. Hoping, that I might get to relive my dreams; the ones that I have certainly foreseen.

I did manage to get a job in the first few days itself; and a great one indeed. Also, not to forget the various activities that I had indulged into, like roamed the plush streets of town; sat at the tumultuous CafĂ© Mondegar, with various cartoons on the wall narrating a tale of their own; listened to some great music at Toto’s Garage, with pals; walked down the beautiful promenade at Bandstand; traveled in the bustling local train, with profusely sweating people and yet I believe that there is more to come. I have been in Mumbai for over a month now and to be honest I feel that I haven’t seen a fraction of what the place is actually about. Right now, I couldn’t help but remember a paragraph from this poem I had once read –
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep”
So here I am moving on and at the same time waiting for more to come at this unprecedented place called Mumbai – The City of Dreams.