"An ode to Bombay" is a mini series I intend to write and share here for two primary reasons -
1. To get back into the habit of writing
2. To document how the city made me feel
(Disclaimer - This is mostly a fictional travelogue. Although, it is a first person account not everything here is a true account of my life especially the characters in my story. Any resemblance to you or anyone you know is absolutely coincidental. That being said a lot of it certainly is inspired by real life experiences of people I know and myself.)
As always, look forward to your thoughts and criticism on this if you get through to the last line. Would want to know if it's absolutely terrible too, so do leave me a note.
Chapter I - Jab we met
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Growing up books, movies, people glamorized Bombay in ways that were attractive beyond the display of wealth in the South Bombay skyscrapers or the modernization that came with the city's women's shortest of shorts or larger than life haircuts. The inherent romance of Bombay rains stirred in my teenager heart a longing. Longing for places I had never been to, people I had never met and rains I had never felt on my skin. The brilliant photography of the marine drive, the bird's eye view of the city, the ocean waves splashing the shores and the people relentlessly, treating everyone equal; an Indian city with a skyline, the TV and Bollywood's portrayal of Bombay was the only Bombay I knew.
For I had Calcutta, the city I lived and breathed and took with me wherever I went and I knew no real people from Bombay after-all. What good could they be anyway?
Because I had Calcutta and what more could one need I questioned myself? When I moved to America a decade back, the part of not knowing any real people from Bombay changed forever.
I met a guy and then I met several others. Maharashtrians, not Maharashtrians. People who walked and talked Bombay, the Bombay-ites, the Mumbaikars, people from the Bombay suburbs, Bombay marwaris, Bombay Gujaratis, the Pune-it's, the people from Nasik and Solapur who introduced themselves as being from Bombay, the girl from a small town in UP who at the young age of 19 had left home to make it big in the city of dreams, that thoroughbred Calcuttan who had moved to Bombay to study and sold her soul to the city, announcing with pride how much she loved Bombay. I met all these people and then some more. But that first guy I met, lived and breathed Bombay just like I did Calcutta and when we fell in love, it was like two cities, nothing like each other, colliding. It lasted not too long and went up in flames but the burning embers scorched tissues, bones and dreams for a long time to come. This Bombay love of mine and I had made uncountable plans of traveling to Mumbai and Kolkata and many other cities together, none of which to our utter dismay ever happened.
But more than half a decade later, here I was boarding a plane to go to this new city all by myself.
A friend's sister and her husband met me at the airport and drove me to their apartment in Santa Cruz. This is where I would live for the next couple of days. I quickly changed, ate a bite and called it a night. But the jet lag had kicked in and I lay awake all night trying my best to catch the quiet sounds of a sleeping city. Sometime in the wee hours I must have fallen asleep, for I awoke with a jolt. There was loud rain pelting on the windows panes. Ah! The famous Bombay rains, I thought to myself and craned my neck without moving my body to look out of the tiny window above my head, to catch my first glimpse of this fabled city.
Fresh washed gorgeous green leaves and bright smiling red petals of a Gulmohar tree in bloom, sounds of chirpy crows and bulbuls, the noise of the downpour splashing on the tin roofs below, everything a verdant green, like new life had been breathed into every leaf. My first look of Bombay was a movie, a painting, an orchestra all of it together and to say she had caught my attention would be a gross understatement. Bombay already had my heart.
