After a blog that made as much sense to people as an Organizational Behaviour session on paradigm shift, I am back to cat-rat-bat writing.
My stint at Mumbai comes to an end today and I know the entire Mumbai chapter is going to play in front of my eyes much like a sitcom end! You can see the obvious positives and negatives, what could have beens and the people. The image of Mumbai I will carry is from Maratha Mandir where we watched DDLJ in its 758th week. Not that of conniving taxi drivers or scheming businessmen, but of romantics who cheer for Raj against Kuljeet, who plead Bavji to leave Simran, who grin when Simran sings “Chodo ji chodo, ab gaooge kya gaana” in antakshri, who hum (humming kind hum) tujhe dekha to yeh everytime the background score appears. And at the end of the movie we were all grinning! You can’t take bollywood (or kollywood or any wood) out of Indians
I encountered some of the best people i could hope to meet, here in this city. These people, I hope, unlike Ogden Nash’s hoped hopen, will not be just leaf in the book but the storyline itself. As Karan says in Hum Tum – “jitney choti ya lambi kyun na ho, humari koi kahani hogi zaroor”. Thanks to IIT DC++, I watched some of my old favourite movies again.
I need to make a mention of my luck with bosses. I’ve had people who have been extremely objective and a lot patient. Including my colleague, when people tell me, I’m a manager’s nightmare, I can’t help but gloat. My exit interview was probably the best learning about myself where the feedbacks were bang-on and constructive. Hope my luck continues (atleast at the corporate level!) As Woody Allen says in Match point “The man who said ‘I’d rather be lucky than good’ saw deeply into life”
The last one week in Mumbai, found me and my friend roaming the roads of Mumbai (not the tourist way). Mumbai heat is quite unforgiving! So when our prime food became ganne ka juice and vada/samosa pav, I was taking a thrill in such a living. There was a vibe that was just there, not the connectable one, but it is more like the feeling of a surgeon doing an open heart surgery, holding the beating heart in his hand. Ok, that was too much. I was just waiting for an AC room to get into where I can dry off, complaining – but in retrospect seemed more revealing! As Woody Allen says “Life is understood only backwards. It is only the movement that is forward”
These two months for me are not way different from my days at Bangalore, Shillong or Chennai. Seen the best and worst of emotions, hung around ice cream shops way after midnight, lived on 7Rs samosas and 8Rs Paratas, haunted the IIT campus in groups talking nonstop nonsense, caught the IPL finals and enjoyed the uncertainty of reaching back, gave gyan to people with brilliant potential, listened to gyan from people who thought I had brilliant potential, captured every tourist’s imagination, formed gangs out of thin air, toiled hard, grinned while toiling, opened up a bit, bit my tongue a lot, owned coffee house(s), found new places to love, new people to love, committed mistakes, realized mistakes, pointed out mistakes... (Tried out the voiceover of some ad that I can’t place – Mastercard?) OSO style - "Picture abhi baaki hai mere dost!"
As I was telling my friend yesterday, everything kind of comes down to “at-the-end-of-the day”. My Mumbai has too many memories – nostalgic and otherwise too. As i bid adieu to this place (for now atleast) I loved my time here, although it was not the city that I connected with. People make the city and I’m glad I had the people I had. I wouldn’t change anything about the last two months, not one frame!
