The City that never sleeps!

Mumbai, the city that never sleeps, is a saying so very true and I came to realize that during my tour around this magnificent metropolis a few days back.Even before the break of dawn to the last toll of midnight bell, the place is so alive all the time. Be it any hour of the day, the roads are buzzing with traffic; malls and other hangout spots are swarming with people, one too many. There are times when I begin to think that the city is actually breeding people!
Mumbai also flaunts of having one of the largest and the most well-managed local train facilities in the world. The locals provide a very easy means of commutation that covers the entire wide expanse of 608 sq.kms. at a very affordable price. It exempts you of all the traffic jams, the pollution and the heat albeit the rush of the local trains itself is very energy-sapping.
Mumbai is also a city of vivid contrasts. While it is known to be the home of Bachchans, Khans and Kapoors on one hand and Ambanis and Bajajs on the other, it is also the proud home of one of the largest slums in the world. There are the famous and there are also the notorious. You got it right! While there are celebrities and big business magnets, there is also the underworld industry which keeps the city abuzz through its kidnappings, extortions, threats and the like.
A horde of all the head offices of leading brands across the world, the Share Bazaar and a multitude of upcoming new ventures also makes this city the business capital of India. The city has its fair share of tourist attractions as well like the JuhuChaupati, the Marine Drive, the Gateway of India, the Taj and the Oberoi, the Siddhivinayak temple, Haji Ali, Hanging Gardens,the list is quite magnanimous! One very new dish on the menu was the Ambani house and believe me when I say that it is turning out to be one of the biggest tourist attractions of the city.
On this trip of ‘Mumbai Darshan’ I went a few days back, I got a chance to see all these places but in reality it was not these places that excited me. We were in Bandra and the tour guide was showing us the bunglows and flats of various filmstars and celebrities. I got to see ‘Pratiksha’, ‘Mannat’, ‘Rajan’ and many others. Hope you know what they are! This was exciting to me because I realized that filmstars are also people like us who live in houses made of bricks and stones, who eat the food we eat and go to work like any one of us. Earlier, I considered filmstars as people who are terribly difficult to get associated with or be friends with and one can only see them in movies or award shows! I don’t know why but somehow seeing their residences from so close made me feel that I can also be one of them some day …. A little naïve but I couldn’t help it!
I believe this post is something very different from any of my earlier posts in the way it is written and the subject it deals with. At some point it came out as a boring essay while at some it stated things very obvious. But I am writing after a long time, needed something simple to break the ice. This post is also, in a way, very satisfying! This is because I have always brooded over people who keep talking about their place of residence which to me doesn’t matter so much. Now when I can brag about the place I live, it is in someway pleasing to me, wat say!
All said and done, Mumbai is amazing and no city can compare with it in anyway. You wanna differ with me, be my guest. One can only enjoy what the place has to offer once one has been here so please give your mind and heart a little rest till then…..no hard feeling huh!
Cheers,
Piyush.

Thats all folks !!

It is 11 in the morning and I am slowly inching closer to my home. Yes, I am on Dehradun Express, lonesome on the upper birth, with a pounding pain in my heart and teardrops in my eyes, eaten nothing since yesterday and struggling my life out to pass this heat and reach home soon. The ambience could not have been more pathetic but I believe it synchronizes well with my state of mind and is ideal for writing this post.

Maybe I am being redundant, but I am so overwhelmed by this feeling that it deserves some space in my blog just to show that special place my friends hold in my heart. I have already written a post about how subdued I felt that this wonderful BITSIAN life was coming to an end. But this is something different. This is the realization of all those ideas and thoughts which I thought would come rushing to me when the D-day arrives.

And so it arrived. The cabs were bang on time and it actually annoyed me (I did the best in my efforts to delay the start, remember!). It meant that the time for the final good-bye was actually nearing. It was more sad for me because I was the one who had to go back all alone. I really felt jealous of all my friends for the first time just imagining the amount of fun they would be having together while I had to wait for 6 hours on some stupid railway station, accompany my 11-year old cousin home, face the torture of this scorching summer in a sleeper compartment and then reach home the next day at 3 in the morning. It was like I was losing the will to live anymore and I swear it was that bad.

I believe I have never been more sad in my entire life. Those last moments are flashing right in front of my eyes as I write this post and the vision has become all blurred (you know why!)….With the train about to leave,last hugs and goodbyes took place and I was the only one not on that train and waving my friends off from the platform. Every inch the train moved it felt like a knife was being stabbed right through my heart deeper and deeper every time. I was weeping at heart and didn’t even have the courage to face my friends in the very last moments (probably if I would have not done so, I would so have crashed of a cardiac arrest, then and there). It felt like my entire life was collapsing right in front of my eyes and I was helplessly watching it go away and believe me it was not at all poetic.

I knew that my four years of graduation, after this moment, would only be history and this made me even sadder. No more counters(!), no more dhabas, no more sharmas, no more ganga, no more medc…no more friends to hang out with....to me no more life. I can just hope that you guys are fine and not feeling so pathetic and out of life like me. Whatever people say this life is never coming back and I just hope all of us stay and bond the way we used to, for eternity.

To all those special friends,

Nothing in this world can fill this void. I am sorry if I ever hurt anyone of you, you know it was never my intention. Love you all.

Piyush.