It's been a year now since I have shifted my base to Mumbai. Mumbai the land of dreams as many would say and the financial capital of the world, yet many have been disillusioned by this very city as has many been disillusioned by their dreams. This huge city works like a gigantic machine and it will just suck you in even before you know it, your are a part of this mass crowd in trains the crowd that must catch the overcrowded local train to work to fulfill their dreams and endure life in the city of dreams. Very soon your life becomes a struggle for a seat in the train, a piece of bread and a whiff of fresh air while competing for the same with millions like yourself. Mumbai humbles you as it does humble your dreams as you must wait your turn, as you do at the ticket counter so too for your dreams. Yours dreams do not take flight as you had wished it would but slogs to work every day with you and so with the country. Mumbai alas also the city of the largest slums in Asia and you just cannot avoid the filth, the rot of the city which glares at you from the from every corner. On your way to work and everything you step into the city station, the filth is everywhere. The poor, the helpless and the needy and all those who have been left behind stare at you though the open window of the local, all ready to take your place. People who are now looked upon by all as less than people and the scum of the earth which we have learned to willfully ignore like the stench of the overcrowded train or at most to endure like the treacherous monsoon. The middle class running their lives along predictable paths much as the locals in which they commute to work everyday. Too hassled by the ever increasing cost of living in the city and too afraid too loose the imaginary race which they have already lost even before the race started. Wait now, was there a race at all? So was it dreams that we were talking about? So where does this dream fit in now? We feel it will now rise out of its ashes much as the phoenix and much as the city itself. So we wait for the auspicious day while we take our 9'0 clock local to work. There is hope as we forget about the dream eventually much as we forget our nights dreams in the moment of wakefulness, only a show remains to haunt us on those rare monsoon nights when ours thoughts pour in on our souls much as the rains pores upon the city streets, a discomfort. We wake the next morning forgetting the night before, but ever wakeful of the chase. And in this ever elusive chase as we continue to trample on the sacred earth, a paradise is lost maybe forever.
