Mumbai… it’s a sentence in itself. Its essence is resonating and its fragrance is capturing. Just the word Mumbai makes people in India aware that he/she is from ‘The City’. It’s got its own identity; the difference in this city is amazing. M.U.M.B.A.I (My Unknown Most Beautiful Amazing Inn), that’s the name I give Mumbai, the reason I call it an inn is because everyone wants to come here but not all can stay.
Including its dry humor and its mesmerizing population, it’s a city of DREAMS… no doubt but it’s also a home to more than a million aspiring souls who have successfully found a home in the unrealistic infrastructure of this city. Once a part of this beautiful city, it’s difficult not to miss this so bashful city that has found a place for me in the core of itself.
A year ago I left this city and country to go to the United States of America for an exchange program funded by the government of the US. AFS intercultural student’s exchange program was the organization that put me to the most ultimate journey I would ever take in my life. For one year I stayed in the small town of Banks in the state of Alabama and tried the funniest and most amazing stuff ever. Living with an American family was the most exciting part of the program. This program served me well and taught me a lot of important values that I could not have possibly learnt staying home in Mumbai. But each day I woke up to a sweet sound of birds chirping and trees rattling against each other, heaven as it sounds and as it seems, I have every day missed the hassle and noise that I left behind in Mumbai. It sure didn’t sound good to be back in India in a week but sure didn’t want to come back to the hassle of Mumbai.
As the August Kranti express touched the railway station in Bombay central, that was it. I had left US and had come back to Mumbai. Loaded bags and the smell of the open Gutter nearby was all that Mumbai greeted me with. It was disgust to begin with. It was right then that it hit me that how much this city means to me, how much I missed it when I was in the US. I started to look around, people walking and looking the same and sarees and salwar kameez was what I saw. And in a while I reached home, and I saw as they say this ever changing city had not changed a bit in 11 months, same faces and same places amazed me and surprised me at the same time.
Beginning of college and studies took its place. 7th floor of NMIS university and I looked out of the window; and had a camera in my hand, the pictures I took made me realize how beautiful this city really is. I just stared at the city for a while before I could fathom the fact that this was MUMBAI. It was my home, and still is. It gave me my childhood memories and provided me with the education I wanted. But this city is more than just infrastructure and rich people living side by side with middle class people and its more than just job opportunities, it’s a product of time, it’s a emotion in a far away Mumbaite that keeps him connected to this city, it’s the sound of cars and honking horns that wakes up people in the morning and it’s the sound of a vegetable vendor screaming at all times of the day trying to make a living, it’s the spirit during the terror attacks, and more than any of these it’s we the people of Mumbai who have made this city into what it is. The shelter to homeless and the temple to a Hindu and Mosque to a Muslim, a Church to a Christian, and tolerance to all the other religions is what makes this city home to us all. Waking up every day to a sound sweeter than a bird and more mesmerizing than trees ratting, I feel home in this city and I have surely once again fallen in love with this city that I call home.
So it’s a request to all Mumbaites to not wait till you have to go away for a year to realize what you already have and to appreciate what you have not till now. Make the city that makes you something in the outside world proud. It’s an opportunity it’s a comfort that not many people get, relish it and preserve it for the generations to come. It’s a present and so wrap it for other so it’s a surprise to them, and for those who would love to join us in this; most fantabulous and mesmerizing, home to all, fast paced, never but ever changing city in the beautiful country of INDIA.
MUMBAI MERI JAAN.
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