Amchi Mumbai??

When i first came to mumbai and was searching for jobs, I had met a senior who told me during a candid chat. "This city is a great place to work, but this is not a place to live". What he probably meant was that this city gives you an opportunity to show that you are unique and can stand out, but then it gives that opportunity to many others as well and as a result many people do stand out. He was heading a function in his organization, had earned himself an apartment and car over a decade and a half, but still he had to travel by local trains because he had to save time on travel. This place can't give you a comfortable life. At least for someone who is new around here and is looking to start from the scratch.
I didn't mind slogging as i came with nothing to loose and thus didn't think much of what he said, but over a period realized that the statement had an implication on the mindset that people have, which allows them to slog so hard. Sometime back our maid went on a leave and the next day she came and said that she couldn't come because "meri behen ka aadmi off ho gaya.". Though I understood that she was mentioning about someone's death, but the phrase she used was new for me. Today, when I look back, this phrase is what seems to define this city that never sleeps. The show just goes on and you exist as long as you are part of the show and once you are no longer part of the show, you don't seems to exist. You are a cog in the wheel that has a function to perform and when you no longer exist then then have been unplugged from the socket. The pie may be huge, but still not enough for everyone and thus you cant exist, you need to survive.
It is commonplace to hear everyone say "Aamchi Mumbai", which means my Mumbai, but what strikes me now-a-days is that "Yeh Sheher kisi ka nahin hai, par jo yahan aata hai woh isika ho ke reh jaata hai"(this city is of no one, but everyone who comes here, becomes a part of it). Though it may be true for many big cities, but may be it is the flavor of chaos that Indian life adds to it, which makes the experience unique.

Midnight Music

Some lingering thoughts keep me awake and restless tonight. As always, I don't know how to shut them up. I started some music on my mobile and started playing some music. This somehow brought back memories of more than a decade back of a CD player. This player was a bright blue colored 3-in-one that we had bought after getting rid of the old black two-in-one that had been around for more than a decade and had been the companion apart from a walkman, that kind of introduced me to the world of western music. I remember that I we had bought a dance non-stop party album on a audio tape that we could listen to when we travel. As a kid even though I was decent enough when it came to speaking english, but i never understood what these western folks used to sing. So I was kinda frustrated when my sister used to listen to those songs and i couldnt make much sense out of it. thus when we bought a cassette, then there must be some hindi songs on it as well. So those were the days when there was a hit punjabi song "gur naal ishq mitha", and not that I could understand punjabi either, but atleast i could listen to something I could connect to. That audio cassette had about three or four hindi songs and then the rest were all western songs, that too not peppy senseless number but some classy numbers like jamaican farewell, macarena etc. So that was my intro to western songs, and I got comfortable listening to this music, to the relief of my sister I believe. There after she got some assorted numbers from her friends and cousins and some albums like backstreet boys and boyzone. Those were the times when there was nothing like a playlist or shuffle. The songs were there recorded in a sequence and as I used to remember not just the songs but the whole cassettes itself, expecting one tune to play after the other. Then slowly i started understanding more songs and started to listen to the best of me album of bryan adams, who remained for a long time my favourite artist. I developed a liking for those songs to the extent that I even picked up a diary and started writing down the lyrics as I understood them, unaware of the fact that there was a whole world on internet which had all the lyrics i would like to read. of course the album that i fell in love with head over heels was a collection of ABBA. it came with lyrics on the cover and I listened to the songs carefully and picked up those songs and finally realised how songs can have meanings and feelings.
Anyways, that was when we had that 2-in-one, then we got a three-in-one on which I started to listen to a program on AIR radio station that played different english songs between 8 to 10 pm. When my family was outside watching those soapy daily soaps, I used to be inside listening to a variety of english songs. I also used to record songs on an audio tape and play them later, trying to know more about the various bands and the kind of songs they played. by that time I knew that internet was a source to find out more about such stuff.

Where the thoughts started to flow from was when i remembered how I used to position my single bed to be exactly in front of the table that had the CD player. Then I would put in a CD, mostly one CD that had a mix of more than a 100 english songs, plug in a headphone and listen to songs all night long on a shuffled playlist... listening and sleeping at the same time.