Amchi Mumbai! I can't say it. I don't even like the way they say it, the ghati marathi ishtyle. They have reduced hindi to a comic strip bindaas slang.... but a bindaasness that typifies the attitude and core of the spirit of Mumbai. Even the rickshewallah has an ishtyle.... Bollywood dream big ishytle. That is Bombay.
For Me Mumbai is not a justified name for the city... Bombay is it. Bombastic in the real sense of the word. Booming population, booming poverty, booming riches, booming city outlines, booming ventures, art scenes, coffee shop culture, bollywood, chawpatty, booming slums, booming night life. The city is very whole... in all perspectives !!!!!
I wasn't born there. I moved there as an outsider, but it doesn't take you long to own the city and become a part of the spirit that defines Mumbai. To realise that the city is a class apart. People who have been a part of it alone can understand what I am trying to say here. But those who haven't had a chance to experience the living experience called Mumbai.... well.....Freedom and ability to make anything possible defines the spirit of Mumbaikers. The city has this spirit running through like electric spark across anything that touches it. Mumbai is vibrant, despite its dilapidated infrastructure, pathetic hygiene and horrendous slums. You might have people brushing against you as you board the train, sweating as you walk through filthy roads, eat pav bhaji on the street right next to where the smelly gutters run... but you accept it all after a point with a smile, a hearty smile.
You will just have to accept how the city makes you feel alive, young, bound to people... just awake... maybe its the O3 from the beach air (even though there is only filthy sand on the beach)!
It is the fastest richest growing city of India. Not a Shangai in model , it far exceeds the enthusiasm, potential and prospects compared. Nobody goes hungry in Bombay is the saying. And that is true. We believe that MahaLaxmi overlooks and takes care of everybody from her temple on the hill that overlooks Bombay. For the teaming millions in the city, they all sleep at night with a hope and an unrelenting spirit that is so typcial. You really have to be there to feel this. The pride, the unity, the amalgamation of cultures, as if there exist no boundaries of race, caste, creed, color, money.... everybody feels a king in spirit, even the dhobhi ghaat man, the colaba machi market bhai who owns a condo at peddar road (the posh hub of the city). Its amazing how fine lines that divide and delineate people in other parts of India just fade away in bombay- in spirit, if not in riches. As if people wanted to be just this... without all the barriers that are seen every where else. The fact that women folk can live alone, live in, be out till midnight eating dinner alone, walking the streets and nobody really bothers them, says a lot about the city. Stray incidents apart.... nobody interferes in your life unduly or as side benchers. People dress the way they feel like, regale mediocrity or riches, your neighbour could be a marathi, bengali, punjabi, gujrati, malwadi, bihari, parsi, sindhi...whatever .... it is all acceptable. Harsh realties fade away in the dreamworld that makes Mumbai, as if evreything was happening on the sets of a bollywood mega starrer---Ready... Action!
For Me Mumbai is not a justified name for the city... Bombay is it. Bombastic in the real sense of the word. Booming population, booming poverty, booming riches, booming city outlines, booming ventures, art scenes, coffee shop culture, bollywood, chawpatty, booming slums, booming night life. The city is very whole... in all perspectives !!!!!
I wasn't born there. I moved there as an outsider, but it doesn't take you long to own the city and become a part of the spirit that defines Mumbai. To realise that the city is a class apart. People who have been a part of it alone can understand what I am trying to say here. But those who haven't had a chance to experience the living experience called Mumbai.... well.....Freedom and ability to make anything possible defines the spirit of Mumbaikers. The city has this spirit running through like electric spark across anything that touches it. Mumbai is vibrant, despite its dilapidated infrastructure, pathetic hygiene and horrendous slums. You might have people brushing against you as you board the train, sweating as you walk through filthy roads, eat pav bhaji on the street right next to where the smelly gutters run... but you accept it all after a point with a smile, a hearty smile.
You will just have to accept how the city makes you feel alive, young, bound to people... just awake... maybe its the O3 from the beach air (even though there is only filthy sand on the beach)!
It is the fastest richest growing city of India. Not a Shangai in model , it far exceeds the enthusiasm, potential and prospects compared. Nobody goes hungry in Bombay is the saying. And that is true. We believe that MahaLaxmi overlooks and takes care of everybody from her temple on the hill that overlooks Bombay. For the teaming millions in the city, they all sleep at night with a hope and an unrelenting spirit that is so typcial. You really have to be there to feel this. The pride, the unity, the amalgamation of cultures, as if there exist no boundaries of race, caste, creed, color, money.... everybody feels a king in spirit, even the dhobhi ghaat man, the colaba machi market bhai who owns a condo at peddar road (the posh hub of the city). Its amazing how fine lines that divide and delineate people in other parts of India just fade away in bombay- in spirit, if not in riches. As if people wanted to be just this... without all the barriers that are seen every where else. The fact that women folk can live alone, live in, be out till midnight eating dinner alone, walking the streets and nobody really bothers them, says a lot about the city. Stray incidents apart.... nobody interferes in your life unduly or as side benchers. People dress the way they feel like, regale mediocrity or riches, your neighbour could be a marathi, bengali, punjabi, gujrati, malwadi, bihari, parsi, sindhi...whatever .... it is all acceptable. Harsh realties fade away in the dreamworld that makes Mumbai, as if evreything was happening on the sets of a bollywood mega starrer---Ready... Action!
Talk to any one and they say, there is an opportunity that they sense that makes them be there, a freedom to just be what you want to be.
The 2005 floods in Bombay that were caused by 37 inches of rain in one day, in a city with choked drainage systems, created havoc. People couldn't get back home after work that night,most were in the first stories of their office buildings, cars were drowned with people inside, on the roads choked with traffic, in low lying areas.... any other city would have been disrupted for long, lived in the tradegy for atleast an year. But not Bombay. People were seen walking in neck deep Slurpee waters with people willing to just help and getto, anybody who could help with food on the way helped... whenever there is an issue the city will just get together with a spirit to figure it out and life will be restored back to normal as if nothing really happened. Everyone will be just there for each other. That is bombay. I love it for what it stands for.... I breathe it and feel the adrenalin pumping the moment i smell the city air.
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