400 Days of Summer

About romancing the City of Dreams, you say so much and still feel you haven’t said enough. This post means to barely touch the myriad shades that rendered my life in Mumbai. Summer because it was almost always so sultry here– both figuratively & literally.


When I first set foot in Mumbai, I realized there was more to the air of this place. Of course the pollution was more and so was the stench of fish, but I am referring to food for thought. The notion is that air in Mumbai is really the stuff dreams are made of; I wholeheartedly second it.
My 13-month stay in Mumbai has been very very hectic and between adapting to the new place, coping with both work pressure & the insane pace of this place as well as stealing time to let your hair down a bit, I am not sure how close to or further away I stand from my dreams. In the wake however, the city had too much to offer and I had the capacity to absorb, so we fit along well.

I remember how much I disliked Mumbai when I first came here as a tourist, and that’s the whole point. It is not a tourist place and you don’t take a thing back if you are a random rambler. Instead it’s a place to stop, camp and experience.
The fact is, you either absolutely love Mumbai or downright detest it. If you rate it mediocre, you haven’t got a story, good or bad and you desperately need one.

Either ways, you can go on filling pages about Mumbai, and they do it all the time. The idea is that there are so many sides to Mumbai that you can love and enjoy that you can altogether forget about the sultry weather, or the rough monsoons, or the stench of the fish, or the scenes that you remember from Slumdog Millionaire, or the locals or the reckless high-octane life.

No matter where your Mumbai-darshan begins, or how (remember the classic scene from Bollywood flicks using Victoria Terminus to tell it’s Mumbai), there are many threads that criss-cross and make up the fabric of a typical life here:

Mumbai moves at a break-neck speed and there is always a risk of you getting left behind. The pressure such a lifestyle creates is definitely taxing at first and it’s only a bit later you learn how this keeps you spirited on your toes. To me, dealing with this blinding rush was a wake up call from the moss I had gathered during undergraduate days followed by the six months of free food back home. I haven’t worked as hard in the last five years as I did in the first five months of moving here.

The megacity that it is, distances here are excruciatingly long; anywhere to anywhere takes hell of a time. So when you plan to meet up with a friend, you don’t say you are two kms away, you simply say it would take half an hour. Gradually, to keep away from painful commuting and endless waiting on traffic lights, you start limiting yourself to a Hiranandani or a Wadala or Vashi or if you are lucky, like I was, to Bandra!

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call Mumbai a Land of Opportunities(*1), and it has been so hectic here that many a times, the only 30 minutes I got to think about myself were when I was traveling back and forth between my office and place, in the ladies’ compartment of the Mumbai Locals.

Again, at first, the sight of the compartments seething with people can (or will) make you jittery and claustrophobic even before you board them. After the initial resentment and tantrums, you should ideally make peace with them. You are allowed to feel scared of getting in or off at Dadar, or taking a Virar train et al. But if you have even a morsel of art in you, these coaches can be unbelievably amusing. I think I would have seen all kinds of faces, human expressions, and characters from helpful to ruthless in few days time. Traveling at peak hours is bound to distort your idea of ‘personal space’ and you should be prepared for it.

Of people there is such polarity! Bankers, consultants, actors, dabbawallas and fisherwomen are all together in the melting pot that is Mumbai. Old Parsi couples, young Christian dames and just so many women robed in hijabs are a typical sight. Shah Rukh Khan might own a place on the Bandra seafront, but so do many slum dwellers further on Carter Road. There are these BEST buses; the Marathi conductor would harangue you for calling Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) a Victoria Terminus (VT), stop the bus and throw you off (*2). Then there are the uncountable Audis, Mercs and BMWs that smell testosterone and make you swoon. The local folks are really kind and helping though, but if you want to see the bitch inside of anyone, take the 9 AM local to work or the 6-7 pm local back home.

You’ll know that the city never sleeps when you come out of Firangi Paani at 12 midnight and you still see the Linking Road crowded as if it were 9 pm! Even if you walk out of PolyEsther, Gordon House, Colaba at 4 am, you have a hassle free way to get back and you wouldn’t miss your own car too much. And importantly for girls, this place doesn’t have the negative vibes of North India. I have without an ounce of fear returned back from office in wee hours of the day. In stark contrast, I would not dare to step out alone and unarmed, of Sarojini Bhawan after 12 midnight, or of my Jaipur home post 10 pm or after 7 pm if I were in Delhi/ Gurgaon. Not sure if Shiv Sena has any credit there to take!

By the way, women don’t just have it safe here, they are over the top! You can catch a popular species of them in action at a certain Vera Moda or Mango sale on Linking Road (mainly Bandra Chicks) or High Street Phoenix (assorted Mumbai chicks).
Girls: planning to catch up with your boyfriend at Phoenix on Sundays is a no-no; your boy might get too distracted, given the skimpy wardrobe of the uptown dames. Boys can take home the obvious message.

And like in any nice place to be, your lifestyle is dictated by where you live, eat and shop, and maybe how you talk.

Living (important): When you move here, you have lots of tantrums and you want to live life King-size. You start looking for a place in Andheri, to your dismay they are pigeon holes. And you start looking at apartments in and around Bandra, and you realize how shallow your pocket is. But you cannot get Bandra out of your head and you decide you will be okay living a paying guest and also sharing a room. And then you bend backwards, making a series of right compromises till you get lucky and find a nice place in Bandra. With this new found ‘You are here’ signboard, all your miseries fade and your life takes a turn for the better. You start loving your life in Mumbai. Because Bandra is where the action is. And Bandra is where you amongst other things fine dine.

Dining (Very important): Mumbai, especially Bandra is a delight for us foodies, with the variety and the class it offers. No wonder, when you are sitting at Salt Water Café, there is Soha Ali Khan on the next table, or Sri Devi and family on your right and Ekta Kapoor on your left at Café Indigo or Preity Zinta at Pali Village Café, or Mallaika Arora at (our favorite), Moshe’s. And if you feel like being yourself, you just walk into your friendly Eat Around The Corner. Or travel down South to Mondegar’s and the much-romanticized Leopold’s. Alternatively, you go to Taj at Land’s End to learn how much you still have to achieve or Hyatt to plain feel big!

Shoppers Paradise, for fashion is defined here! My mother and sister could spend whole two days only at Linking Road and around shopping stuff. If you are new, just remember, when those shop keepers flying-kiss or cat-call in their weird ways, they don’t mean any harm, they’re just seeking attention. Then there are the likes of Zara and other exclusive outlets and of course, there are so many malls too and you get bored of them soon for the lack of culture. Food to fashion, in general Mumbai is shit expensive. It’s unsustainable without enough money here; how much money is enough money, depends.
And you mind your tongue! I have been humbled many a times in restaurants when I tried saying something to the guy cleaning the floor in Hindi, only to hear him reply in very smooth English. I have understood that English is a rule in Mumbai and that Mumbai accent tells you apart. However, I wonder if the official language of communication in my office was Marathi or Bengali (and not English or Hindi).

And then when you are full of these things above, there are a thousand other things like theatre, gigs and stand-up comedy amongst others that keep you hooked to the city. If you chose to venture out, you could take a two-hour drive on the glassy tarmac to Pune. Or take a weekend off in the hills of Matheran (only remember that Nerul and Neral are two distinct stations). Or go take an evening jog at the promenade. And if you have nothing else on the list, you could just plain go explore a new eat-out.

Having said all that, I aimed to freeze every aspect of the city life in one snapshot for memory; didn’t really knowing how else to put so many things together under one title in a better way.

Last night after the rains, as I ambled along those beautiful Victorian-style tiled roads in Bandra, I could not help get nostalgic, how soon the past 13 months slipped away. And then I looked at all those charming apartments that tease you and make you want to own a place here. I knew I had so much to learn and earn and that a few sunrises later, I would be leaving Mumbai, for good.

The script introduces an Autumn after 400 days of Summer! Not sure if even the Spring of Bangalore would match what the summer of Mumbai had to offer. But I am hopen against hope and wish to make the most of the new place and the new life that awaits me.

So far, so long Mumbai. And thank you for all the fish.

References:
(*1) Courtesy Neerav Verma
(*2) Courtesy Vikesh, Rishabh