Ah! Mumbai. From the modern spaces to the filthy, ill-omened shanties – Mumbai is what it is! With each passing year, the city has pursued me and I have pursued the city. Between us, there is a perpetual exchange of give and take. I have shared in the glory of its place – starting many, many years back. I am also familiar with its most stifling atmosphere.
It is unfaithful not to mention the monsoons. The monsoons are a calamity for those who suffer the sins of poverty. For me, the wet showers with thundering are bright and beautiful! Stranger than death and life is their irony. Is it not? Because from the shores of my selfishness of craving for the seasonal rains – I also possess hidden distress for the street-dwellers.
Mumbai does for me, what opium must do to an addict! The metropolis’s feelings work quickly on me… each day over here has brought me into the folds of intense pain and long periods of uninterrupted joy. Mumbai is pressed to my heart: no matter what, I will always embrace it.
I keep returning to Mumbai because it is my home – the world of my roots, the world of my imaginary hopes and realized dreams. I drink happiness and bitterness from Mumbai – my cup will always raise strong cheers for it! I wish I had a further pair of eyes, to look into Mumbai… so that I may not be denied to know even more than I know of my beloved city.
Geeta Chhabra
From the book: Smash My Glass by Geeta Chhabra
