Mumbai : The Mistress

My experiences with the mistress became semi-forgotten memories embedded somewhere in my sub-conscious hidden under layers of time and emotions till the day she beckoned again.

My first memories of mumbai are of my childhood, the part of life when we are oblivious to any difference between home and away other than in the amount of time we get to play. And so it was with me too. I screamed from various joy rides in Essel world on the top of my voice. We traversed the never ending roads, asking for directions from complete strangers to some mysterious place which eluded us. I looked forward to 2 a.m. home cooked dinners.

It didn’t soak in then that however early we left or however late we came back to home, the city was always awake. We always found public transport, we always were with a crowd, and we always found at least one vada pav stall open.

She called me again under the innocent pretext of employment. I had heard so much about her by then that I didn’t feel quite ready to face her charms and thats why I settled for the next best thing. I travelled to her cousin navi Mumbai and stayed there with an uncle of mine. But you just cant stay when she calls, so I surrendered to her wishes and boarded a ‘local’, as the life lines of Mumbai are fondly nicknamed. In the 90 minutes of travel which ensued, I tried to understand why so much had been written about the mistress. I tried to fathom what makes this place so special.

Initially to my inexperienced senses, everything felt and seemed the same as my hometown, or for that matter any other city in India, with the same kind of people, with a few variations owing to circumstances. The truth couldn’t be further. Over many 90 minutes to and from the temptress, the real nature of the city dawned upon me. I absorbed the generalities gradually without even realizing it then.

The very people who had pushed and crushed each other trying to board the train, would squeeze themselves to make space for the 4^th seat traveller.

The same people who had cursed and yelled at each other, smiled and laughed with each other in a matter of minutes.

I am very much affected by the handicapped people, or using the politically correct term ‘differently-abled’ people. I just don’t know how to behave around them. When a hawker with only one arm boarded the compartment, with a heavy bag on the leftover stub of his other arm, I didn’t know how to react. Should I be sympathetic to him? That would be degrading. Should I ignore him? That wasnt much better than sympathy. While my mind was caught in this debate, my eyes registered a group of pukka mumbaikar girls, barely out of their teens, haggling with him about the prices and designs of the trinkets he was selling, giving him a status everyone craves. The sense of equality. Of course they  didn’t know what they were doing. It was a way of life for them.

I once saw a couple on marine drive, the lady dressed in black burqa, the man in sherwani and skull cap, a picture perfect orthodox muslim couple; French kissing. Nobody other than me noticed this, I guess cause it was Mumbai.

But if this was the only face of Mumbai I had seen I would’ve called her ‘my-lady’ and not my paramour and its many other synonyms.

I am yet to see the many burqa clad women talk in the language of the soil.

I’ve seen men beating up youngsters for travelling in the first class on vadala road station. People stared, but nobody tried to stop this. I too kept walking with the crowds. After all, the connecting local to andheri was due on platform 1 in 3 minutes.

But I have also seen a man wearing rags, totally drunk, raving about his experiences in the states and Switzerland and hongkong.

I have heard dirty shirted and unslippered men discussing lakhs of rupees in the locals, on their way back to their homes in slums.

I have sensed that more than any good or bad side to the mistress, there is a sense of possibility. Thats what makes her the temptress. Because she tempts you with a feeling that nothing is impossible here. Maybe thats what drives so many people here every day, to the city of dreams. Literally the woman of your dreams. And she waits with her arms open wide.