The Mumbai-Software!!!

 Hey friends,

              This week while I was reading the newspaper as my daily breakfast side dish, I came across a wonderfully written piece by Anuvab Pal about Mumbai city. Reading that article compelled me to write about this city too and considering the fact that a lot of us take some time out for a annual vacation in this time of the year, it made even more sense for me to be writing this piece. The city, Mumbai, which is the financial capital of India, the city Mumbai which is a home to many dreams that have wings to reach the sky, the city Mumbai which, like a heart beat keeps on beating forever and never skips a beat, and the city Mumbai, which was my home for more than 3 years, which made me an Ophthalmologist, and gave me beautiful memories, which also taught me some very tough lessons in life. Overall the city Mumbai, which shaped my identity, as a doctor and as a person that I am today, and the city Mumbai, which has given me more than I could have ever asked for.

 

City of Dreams- Mumbai

 

              The article started with a very beautifully written line from a science fiction writer Isaac Asimov that states- “There would be a society in time in future, if taken out of their comfort zone of being always busy or chasing something, would not know how to socially function in other environments.”  Mumbai blesses or curses (depends on how you take it) us with a life full of so many things, making your hands so full that one always find oneself juggling things all the time. There is so much madness filled in each day that it makes it our daily routine, be it the relentless running about and always getting late to catch that 7.47 Ladies Special train, aiming to reach work on time, or rushing to the market to get reasonably edible produce before they run out of stock. Be it things always attracted to go the wrong way like an iron nail is attracted to the magnet. Be it more than one simultaneous phone calls with one juggling conversations between the ever demanding boss in fury and the maid burning the pasta and ever staring at the phone screen waiting for your spouse or loved one to send a message to make rest of the things seem alright, (which seldom seems to make it to you) or be it the pressure to keep up with your competitors where you always seem to be dragging yourself behind keeping up to their pace, wondering, how they always manage to sprint ahead of you, and still the flickering spark of ambition that creeps in even in the laziest and exacerbated ones of us, so much so that even the dead here keep telling each other to hurry up.

 

 

                Admist all this hustle bustle in life, if one would get a little time of sanity which is actually getting a seat in the local train compartment filled up with people and a chance to glance at your mobile screen for a while and if you happen to swipe through your facebook or pinterest profiles, you would find yourself drooling over those posts stating ’9 Incredible Places in India that would make you realize you desparately need a Long Vacation’, or ’10 Offbeat Hill-stations that would leave you loving summer forever’, or ‘List of 10 things that you must do before you turn 30’ and so on. We look at these posts and the pictures in them with greed in our eyes like a young child eyeing that candy table in the grocery store or a young teenage boy eyeing erotica.

 

                However when we do happen to actually visit these wonderful places after painstakingly taking a vacation from the grueling Mumbai schedule and making our boss realize how worthy we are of the much needed holiday and still begging for it like a beggar in the temple, our reaction to it is the most hypocritical. We would be fine for a couple of days, 3-4 days at the maximum and would appreciate the surroundings and the beautiful sunrises and sunsets, but then gradually the itch, the twitch, the wriggling and fluttering like a fish out of water, sets in, which is not due to anything else but sheer lack of pace of the hectic life of Mumbai. The peace and the silence that we yearn for while living our hellish schedules in Mumbai, drives us crazy in a few days that we are away. Two days of staring at a lake or a mountain range or a sunset by the beach is enough to drive us crazy to reach for our phones or laptops to check our mails and messages as though we are missing on something important in life.

 

 

               It’s like we have a software or programme installed in our heads that starts buzzing while we are at ease, notifying us that, "You have stared at this gorgeous sunset over this beautiful ocean for too long, it’s too much of myriad of colors of the sky and the sounds of the waves that your senses have absorbed, you are missing out on something." And with these spell-bounding sights in front of you, you start wondering, “What am I missing out in life? May be google will tell me, may be facebook will tell me, when is my flight back? Can I make it earlier?"

              No one understands how and when this programme gets installed in us and how can we save ourselves from it. I have been fortunate to have lived in different cities in India apart from Mumbai, be it Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Nashik etc., but no other city programs you the way it functions. The discomfort of the calm and the need of constant motion even within tranquility is something that you would feel only if you have breathed in the air of Mumbai city. Its like the city is a storehouse of nation’s impatience. We would be a restless, neurotic, antsy, constantly moving race. Having said all of this I have to add out of my love for the city that I absolutely adore the kind of energy that people of each age group in this city possess which is also lacking in people of the other cities that I have visited, but everything comes with a price I suppose.

                When I moved to Ahmedabad, which is a wonderful city in itself, the Mumbai software within my head kept buzzing for quite some time, until now that’s its about a year, since I have moved and the software has finally put itself on standby mode. Now the peace, the calmness, the slow pace of the ‘Not-so-Mumbai’ city has finally stopped to bite me. I don’t know whether it’s a good or a bad thing, but hey, who am I to judge!!!