Bombay Dreams & Mumbai Screams – Finale of the trilogy

The city of contrasts

Till I went to stay in Mumbai, my definition of the word ‘contrast’ was limited to fashion where if a blue trouser and light blue shirt were a ‘match’, a sea green trouser and a navy blue shirt was a ‘contrast’. But welcome to Mumbai where contrast is omnipresent. A row of sky-rocketing glittery ‘over-branded’ buildings on one side of the street and a stretch of rickety dilapidated huts on the other. One man in a 15 square feet cabin in an office on one side and 15 men residing in a single square feet of garbage area on the other. A Jacuzzi bathroom on one side and no place to bathe indoors on the other. That’s contrast for you.

One may call it a cosmopolitan culture, but Mumbai also has this extreme contrast in culture and lifestyles. There’s this vendor on one side in one of the suburbs for whom Mumbai is as local and regional as the area where he lives and trades and there’s this global new generation of ‘cool’ Mumbaikars who think that swaying to rock music has brought them in the global league and hence even a hindi gaali (slang) needs to be pronounced with an angrezi accent.

After all, it’s not the cultures you ape that will define your lifestyle; but the deeds you demonstrate that will build the culture of your generation.

Coming back to my personal story, I was also experiencing a contrast. A contrast of writing but not writing creatively… a contrast of editing but not editing something that originated from my mind… a contrast of being too much practical but not imaginative which actually makes the true me. In simple terms, a contrast of being a copy editor in a newspaper and not being a creative writer and conceptualiser. Hence, after some re-think, I decided to quit DNA and join a not-so-big brand but a local agency that allowed me to pursuit creative excellence. And I was back to Ahmedabad.

Today, there’s this love and hate relationship that I share with Mumbai. I hate the crowd there, but I love the people that make that crowd. I detest the commotion there, but admire the commotion of opportunities that the city offers. I abhor the artificialness of the city, but I’m in love with the prospects it gives me in being original.

However, knowing mistakes but still committing them is something that our species is blessed (or should I say cursed) with. Why? Don’t we still cut trees, pollute and happily f**k with nature even though we know it is our ass that’s going to suffer in the end! Don’t we go on with our nuclear weapons developments knowing that it will take less than a day to turn the world into a junkyard if WW III erupts! And by choice or not, I fall into the category of humans… So, be it today, tomorrow or the day after, I know I’ll have to land back into the place where dreams and screams are twin brothers that never get lost in Kumbh mela but always stay together – you guessed it right, MUMBAI (I still love to call it Bombay though).

(The trilogy ends here)