Today we complete a week in our new city, in our new home. The week before last, as our boxes got packed with our things, and we emptied out a home we had lived in for 6 years, the feeling was wistful, bittersweet. We were packing our belongings, but also our memories of a wonderful time in our lives. We did our many #lasts ; last walk in the verdant Pune university, last misalpav at Bedekars, last chocolate lava cake at JWMarriott, last series of lunches and dinners at friends' homes, friends we will hopefully carry in our hearts forever, but can no longer meet on a whim. Pune is just two hours away from Maximum City Mumbai, and yet, it might be in a different country - so different are the two places. Pune was languid, verdant, hilly, but also proud, cultured and -like it or not - closed to outsiders. Like the walled city Shaniwar wada at its centre - Pune's walls between its insiders and outsiders were high and unbreachable. The insiders all knew each other, or were one connection away from knowing each other. The outsiders were tolerated at best, often just ignored.
Mumbai - fast, pacy, buzy, and unapologetically commercial, has no time for pride. It is loud in many ways, kitchy in so many others, lacking you may say, the cultural purity of Pune. But Mumbai doesnt quite care. It is too buzy living, wholly and fully, to even notice what anybody thinks about it. Like the ocean it sits beside, it is an ocean of dreams. It is where Indians run towards, if they want to make it in the world, or sometimes to just escape their own. It pulls you into its embrace instantly, but dont expect to be mollycoddled. You immediately join the many millions of anonymous, irrelevant folks jostling for their bit of sunlight in this mighty ocean.
Just as the week before last, was about wrapping up our memories, last and this week have been about unpacking them, and beginning to create our series of #firsts. Our first walk down to Foodhall for an intimate mother daughter meal, our first dinner at home with friends, that first morning walk in the quiet bylanes of our neighbourhood, first stop for pani puri at the world famous in Santacruz Ram & Shyam- chaatwala, first visit to the local Santacruz market, slowly but surely understanding the contours of our neighbourhood, our new home.
Home is a feeling I have realised. Sitting in that empty house, waiting to hand over the keys back to the land lord, the home that had hugged me when I cried like a baby after my dream for my start-up ended, and the home that sent my mother away on her last journey felt like an estranged friend. I knew its spaces, its contours intimately, but it was no longer mine.
But when I sat in the empty house in Mumbai, a house that was a complete stranger to me, waiting to welcome my beloved belongings, I felt I was home already. Feeling embraced, like the millions of dream chasers in this Maximum City.
Mumbai - fast, pacy, buzy, and unapologetically commercial, has no time for pride. It is loud in many ways, kitchy in so many others, lacking you may say, the cultural purity of Pune. But Mumbai doesnt quite care. It is too buzy living, wholly and fully, to even notice what anybody thinks about it. Like the ocean it sits beside, it is an ocean of dreams. It is where Indians run towards, if they want to make it in the world, or sometimes to just escape their own. It pulls you into its embrace instantly, but dont expect to be mollycoddled. You immediately join the many millions of anonymous, irrelevant folks jostling for their bit of sunlight in this mighty ocean.
Just as the week before last, was about wrapping up our memories, last and this week have been about unpacking them, and beginning to create our series of #firsts. Our first walk down to Foodhall for an intimate mother daughter meal, our first dinner at home with friends, that first morning walk in the quiet bylanes of our neighbourhood, first stop for pani puri at the world famous in Santacruz Ram & Shyam- chaatwala, first visit to the local Santacruz market, slowly but surely understanding the contours of our neighbourhood, our new home.
Home is a feeling I have realised. Sitting in that empty house, waiting to hand over the keys back to the land lord, the home that had hugged me when I cried like a baby after my dream for my start-up ended, and the home that sent my mother away on her last journey felt like an estranged friend. I knew its spaces, its contours intimately, but it was no longer mine.
But when I sat in the empty house in Mumbai, a house that was a complete stranger to me, waiting to welcome my beloved belongings, I felt I was home already. Feeling embraced, like the millions of dream chasers in this Maximum City.
