Yaaron, Apun Mumbai Mein Hain ..!!

Its happening frequently nowadays..I start to write a piece-of shortstory, of poetry-and hold back from updating the blog until it is completed. Then I find I am sitting on it for too long and on the other hand there are so many other things that urgently want to be voiced. So shelving the stance of 'update-the-short story-what-may-come', here are my reflections on my current muse: Mumbai!

This city is big and at times, overwhelms. Like its train travels, the nattily dressed gents and sexily dressed ladies, the sights of Marine Drive, the amazing clockwork that the railways are, the explicit ads for innerwears you can't excape at the busy Church Gate station, the worklife whose timings seem to extend into wee hours of the night and whose travel, to and fro, could stretch beyond 100kms a day, ...so many things: this place oozes enterprise, sexuality, and energy.

Chennai is in comparison, what do I call it, innocent, preadolescent...? These constrasts are worth atleast a 15 min film, I say!! I even came up with a longish title for the film: Various are the Ways the Waves lap the Shores.

The title takes its inspiration from the contrasting beachlines of the two cities. For me they seemed to reflect the lifestyles of the two cities. Here sitting at Marine Drive on a full moon night I see the waves slap the rocks and crash against the concrete structures that bulwark the reclaimed land against the sea. In Chennai its as if the sea and the sand softly cradle against each other..!!"

I guess this is how commercial capitals all over the world shall look like. Always on the go, with a set of values that are designed to further commerce than anything else. Cities that are the lands of promise to the brethren from the hinterland. Cities that have enough moolah to support lavish cultural activities. Cities that are big enough to allow space for the different types of mainstreams, and hence for various fringe elements at its circumference. Cities busy and hence granting anonymity. An anonymity amidst the crowd that comes so close to freedom, because the others are too busy minding their livelihood!

As I am just into my third week I guess my eyes are still fresh to catch the nuances in my daily life. The city still feels like a dope and I like to absorb, through my eyes and in lesser degrees through my other senses, its wares. I travel from ChurchGate to Andheri by train and from Andheri to MIDC (East Andheri) by Bus. These account for most of my observations.

I have never seen such ferocity in people trying to board trains. Believe me, even the wretched crowd of Jallianwallah Bagh would have acted in a less frenetic way on their route to escape. Last night I and my friends were badly mauled at Dadar station and emerged with hurt ears.

We were wondering why people do this because there is always enough time for everyone to get in. Vijay who was accompanying me said, 'Simply, there isn't enough space for everyone to be seated. People travel long distances, nobody wants to stand the whole distance...the fight is for the seats'. Everyone in this country fights for some sort of seats I thought wryly-politicians, students, train commuters..! 'Vijay...I feel it has almost become a sport for them..I have seen
people doing the same even when the train had been empty and there were only a handful of people trying to board the train. Even then the behaviour was the same...to beat others into boarding the train first. Maybe people simply get a kick out of it or simply have got habituated to it, that they keep doing it irrespective of the change in the situation. Maybe this is an ocassion everyone can legitimately show aggression and who wouldn't want to let some steam off after a hard day's work. So the few seconds madness of train boarding becomes an alibi for agression...'.

It was evident Vijay, and Krishna who was with us then, were hardly convinced by my alternatives. We simply wrung our hands that this was one of those inexplicable things and shoved it into the deeper cellars of our mind for future cogitation.

To be continued...