Mumbai Diaries

I am embarassed at the title of this post co-inciding with a lame movie but then when in Mumbai, it does sound apt and right!

Mumbai is a great city. Am not quite sure of its heritage and stuff, but am amazed by the passion for life it infuses in people, the opportunities it opens up to people and the optimism it fills in everybody. This is one city where I have seen people have such a hard-working lifestyle. It has life in every stretch of it. It is all about people. Some working, some clubbing, some wasting their life and some making it!

But then, on the flipside, its goddamn expensive and unliveable. Dirt, filth, traffic all make it such a frustrating experience going out anywhere in Mumbai. The glitz and glamor of the city may inspire many people, but to me the negative points overpower them all. Delhi is anyday a much better place to live in.

The interesting and intriguing part of Mumbai is that it challenges the person in you to make no rooms for assumption, and look for achievement. Be it in the most mundane things like travelling in a local, or something related to a life-making deal at work, it always puts in front of you a group of over-powering, mean bunch of people who would deter you in any other part of the country. But in this city, the 'Ye to Mumbai Hai' feeling raises above all and instigates the fighter in you to realise your own potential. That is a major contribution something as unrelated as a city can do in your life, if you ask me.

Also, Mumbai is a city of night. As darkness engulfs the streets, the life in the city changes. The music, the people, the whole environment changes. It gives a whole new meaning for work hard and party harder. If you have the right bunch of friends, Mumbai is something that you can never get enough of.

The soul of the city is in making everyone feel it as their own and as they belong here. It is something I haven't seen in any other city I have been to so far. As far as my affair with it goes, I have loved my life in this city so far, but as a city I dont rate it high. The essence of a city to me is in making you feel like settling down in it, and Mumbai is far away from that point for me and many people I know. But then, there is something intriguing in Mumbai that makes you want to have some more of it.