Life salutes Mumbaiites

Mumbai – the city of dreams, the city of countless emotions, the city of ups and downs, the city to be loved, the city to be hated, the city to live all realities and the city where fiction has perhaps no space. If Mumbai is to be juxtaposed with a person, I would call Mumbai a “Woman”. Like a woman it lives all emotions God has made a human being to observe. It is not like that I am born and brought up in Mumbai or I have spent a great deal of time in Mumbai but it is only Suketu Mehta’s (author of Maximum city) words that have taught the true air of Mumbai to me.
Yesterday I paid my third visit to Ms. Mumbai. I am always excited to go to Mumbai as it gives me chance to travel in local trains, place where you can actually see all class of people – middle class, lower middle class, upper middle class, people below poverty line but not who are over wealthy. It is a smarter way to travel in Mumbai as it is the only way to surpass the traffic jams, encounter with very poor faces at traffic lights and of course to reach in time. No doubt Mumbai's Local Trains are called “Life line of Mumbai”.
This time goal of my visit was to attend my colleague’s, a very dear friend’s ring ceremony. She is Maharashtrian and I am happy that I have very few but very nice non-North Indian friends. I used to tease her many times that I would like to come to your home this weekend. But every time she used to end up saying that my house is very small, you won’t like it. Listening to these words I used to tease her even more. Yesterday only I realized the severity of her words. To me small house for a person who is educated, very good to talk to, honest in paying and sharing money, working in a reputed company is as small as 100 yards house. How can a 5 member family live in a house smaller than this? This question of mine may haunt my North-Indian friends who belong to an average economical background but is a very very normal fact. All in all a multipurpose house, one room is drawing cum dinning room cum bed-room cum guest-room cum and other one is kitchen cum bathroom cum washing room cum room where woman of the house keep finding all sort of work to work out the tensions embedded in her mind.
I and my friends entered the house, the bride’s house, my friend’s house. Like any bride’s house all the women were standing with all the make-up paraphernalia making my small, thin but yet sweet looking friend sweat because of confusion caused. I was happy to finally reach to attend her ring-ceremony function, a very important day in a normal Indian citizen’s life as it is supposed to be once. You may fall in love several times but you are supposed to marry once in your life-time under normal circumstances in “India”. I was happy to be with her, more happy because she was getting married to a person whom she loved and chose herself and above all a person whom I actually appreciate, a true gentleman to the best of my knowledge. One corner of my heart was sad and the processor of that corner was running so fast calculating every second - Oh My God she was always true telling me that her house is small, that I would not be very pleased to be there, that how she is so normal, infact all her relatives, they joke, laugh, smile, express regards, like there is no problem, absolutely no problem. She has always shared her problems and listened to my grudges, now I realized how silly all my reasons to feel down were. Suddenly, my mind became a mobile diary where I started writing all the moves around me. Now, I wanted something to write.
Maharashtrians are very simple people. Unlike North-Indians they believe in non-exuberant celebrations. In North-India marriage functions means, latest fashion clothing, dazzling attires, lot of commotion, loud music after pandit ji’s tasks, long meal menu and a share point for the bride-groom seekers as friends and relatives talk at length about their experiences of finding or not finding matches. For Maharashtrian wedding, only last choice is valid not others for sure. My friend’s ring ceremony was also very simple but lively. I kept staring at ladies wearing navarri (Maharashtrian saaree), men very simply dressed with Gandhi topi covering their heads. After the ceremony was over we sought the permissions to make a leave.
After the whole day of the continuous struggle my mind was experiencing I felt relieved. Somewhere inside I was happy now. It was really nice to see different people and experience what they do. Since childhood, in my vicinity, friends and relatives, people struggle to seek privacy. Siblings don’t want to share same room and they get the opportunity before they get married. A couple wants to move in to new house different from their parents’ with the thought of getting privacy for them once they expand family. Even two pets don’t want to share a single room and they get their wishes fulfilled. But 40% of Mumbaiites cannot even dream of a word called “privacy”. No doubt why parks in Mumbai are no more a place for children to play or elderly people to have a stroll rather these parks are the result of search for “privacy”.
Life is like a multiple choice question with options – (a) you choose to live happily anyways, (b) you choose to be sad for a valid reason, (c) you choose to be sad for no reason, (d) you choose to live anyways, (e) you choose to live for no reason.
If you have chosen option (e), I’ll recommend you to meet a Mumbaiites to change your choice to option (d). Truly life salutes Mumbaiites!!!

I am the “Unknown”

I am visiting my home town- Kurukshetra yet again. But this time only I realized the strange feeling of being an “Unknown” in my town. This feeling used to blanket me earlier also when I used to come back home after 3-4 months. The fact is that I have diagnosed the problem now only.
Whenever my mother asks me to bring some grocery or some other stuff from the Sector-7 market, where we have our house, I am hesitant. I am proud that such big house like ours in Sector-7 may not be matter of surprise people living here but such houses are called as bungalows in Pune and Mumbai. Space problem is gulping these cities down and under. Coming back to the problem and the probable root cause of the same. The feeling of being an unknown is partially developed by the people of my town, my native place. When I walk down the road, they look at me with such a sight like trying to find the resemblance of my face with someone known to them. Why? I do not understand. I am forced to think that are they able to smell my deodorant that is a costly one and probably can not be found in any of Kurukshetra stores or is it my hair length or may be the tattered condition of my hair is strikes there eyes. I am not obviously not as beautiful as the people belonging to my belt that their brain demands a second sight at me. May be there eyes have the same sensors like dog’s nose that can distinguish the stuff belongs to which place and because some different waves coming out of me that there eyes capture and they start calculating how distant my current location is. This way I can guess thousands of reasons of the strange angles of eyes and heads people manoeuvre to crop the feeling of being an Unknown in my hometown.
But this feeling never makes me feel proud rather nostalgic. The feeling is more like the strange nervousness that captures you when you are introduced first time to a group of intellectuals who look bright and can tell you zillion reasons that your mental level does not match with the pile of degrees you owe. I end up in a dilemma that something in me has definitely changed. It is acceptable or not…..

Loosing an identity in a known place…
Finding your self in a strange race…
Asking myself all this just in case…
Just in case, I forget one day who am I
And plead myself a little liberty to pry…
To dig out my self from the self made wrappers…
Do it before I see failing my tool to unwrap, my drillers…