“This used to be a city of dreams, which beckoned even the most unfortunate under its shade. The warmth and the passion extended by the city was the one of incomparable magnitude. Things sure are changing, then again, are they?
A few weeks back I met Rahul (editor, Motif), when he came to Bombay. As we ran through each others lives over coffee, there were a few things he said about the city that struck me. He is not primarily from Bombay and what he said was, “”Yeh shaher se ghutan hoti hai mujhe“”. It was something I discarded at that very moment as a personal opinion. Over the next few weeks I met a few other friends who had come to the city for some work. When I got similar “”suffocating”” opinions about the city from a few other people, it really got me thinking. Has this city become too self-indulgent?
There was a time when neighbours were an indispensible part of the societal hierarchy. These are times when, neighbours are always unwanted and even if you have them, you wouldnt want to talk to them apart from once a year during the new year’s. And suffocating, well, we would never feel that way because of the attitudes that we have developed over the years. The attitude of taking things the way they are. Never bother, unless it affects you.
The city has turned into a gigantic metro, thats on the verge of losing its indentity in the labyrinth of wealth and indulgency. But I still live in this city. I love it. I’ll never curse it for what it is. It can be compared to main-lining. You do it once, you can never leave it. The city is addictive. But, I still think.
On quite a different note, I finished reading another novel today. Well it was one more of those espionage novels that I keep reading (The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett). Have you ever felt, that you get really attached to a character? I was reading this novel and I started taking sides with the guy who was technically supposed to be the ‘bad guy’. To that extent that I started justifying all his activites, while I was reading. Only to realise at the end, that he died