The Sights, Sounds and Smells of MUMBAI

NOTE: This is a blog version of my previously published article in our College Magazine. It's normally the other way around (i.e. print version of a blog), but hey.....it's my blog after all! So, here goes.....

As soon as you enter the street, a cloud of brown dust covers your face and before you have time to recover, you are toppled off your two feet. Welcome to Mumbai- a little sadness, some hardship, but loads of happiness and wonderful feelings!
Mumbai, the city where I was born, brought up and where I live. I am quite familiar with its sights, sounds and smells, if not entirely. It is the city I love: it lures me when I am not here. But I still have something to complain about- a perfect combination.
Mumbai, right from Churchgate to Virar, is a land of miracles. A land of extremes, a land of contrasts. The richest people lying on mattresses of money, live here. The poorest people lying on the muddy streets, live here. People flaunting their Versaces and Armanis, and people who only have a metre of linen to cover their body. People moving around in their chauffeur-driven Mercedes Benz rub shoulders with those (un)fortunate enough to have only their two bare feet to move around. There are people who live at Marine Drive in their ultra-modern homes and then there are those who live at Marine Drive on the pavements. Again, a land of contrasts.
The tallest of skyscrapers, the neon lights, the colour, the money, the richness of Mumbai drapes a cloth over your eye till you open your eye to the small huts; the darkness, the poverty, the hunger of Mumbai. It's all here and we all have to live with it.


There are people all around you, pushing you to the limit. They will push you and push you and push you some more, till one day your lungs cry out for space. In this city that never sleeps, even morning won't give you solace, what with the incessant honking of cars bringing you back to the real world. And when the morning paper arrives, you read nothing but bad news. Get ready to go the office, jostling for that inch of space on the packed local trains. In the evenings, come back all sticky and tired from work, wanting some peace and quietude. You expect peace at home, but then you probably haven't heard of television and the barrage of ethnic serials doing the rounds today!
But notwithstanding all this, this city has a lot to offer. If Mumbai didn't have the charm, would it attract thousands of people from all over the globe to come and try out their luck here? Mumbai has the glamour and lavishness, like a gold foil covering a stone. But even this gold foil is attractive enough to bring and more importantly, keep people here!
Mumbai might not be the best city in the world but which other city can compare with its extremes and contrasts? Mumbai might not be a New York, London, Paris or even a Shanghai, but it still is good enough to make me live in it, love it and sleep every night believing in a better dawn. . . . .