The Realization

He walks, but you mostly see him run in the morning. He never exercises, but when you see him you realize that he hardly needs it. His words can probably melt a woman’s heart, but all you can hear is his own heart panting.

This is not your metro-sexual model on a jogging trip on a big green sprawling garden.

This IS your average mumbaikar on the run to catch the office bus/local train.

This situation is repeated daily in the life of this particular mumbaikar. As his office timings have changed he is still in the fine tuning mode of maximizing his morning slumber vs. catching the office bus. He does not make it usually, but he says to himself that things will work out eventually and catches an auto-rickshaw. It costs him around a hundred and fifty odd bucks for a one-way ride most of the time.

He realizes that it is a sorry state of affairs and that it cannot continue. But he takes out his wallet, checks the cash and leaves his worries for another day.

The next day he makes it, the following day too, but not the third day.

He has been observing this particular girl for a better part of the week. She is not pretty and neither is he eying the girl as he is already committed. But he has no choice as they cross their paths daily, albeit in the opposite direction, on the foot over bridge.

In the meantime he misses the bus three times out of five in a week.

As he is traveling in the auto, suddenly it dawns upon him that there is a connection between him, the girl, the foot over bridge and the office bus.

Maybe this realization came because he was reading too much Dan Brown, Frederick Forsyth and John Grisham throughout the month. But maybe he had suddenly experienced his faster than Darwinian rate of evolution with regards to his observation skills. He reasonably surmised that his observation be put to test as the meter in the auto touched a hundred rupees.

He got up early, wasted less time and he knew he was in time to catch the office bus. As he was walking towards the over bridge along came that girl, he saw that he had crossed her while he was more than halfway towards the length of the foot over bridge. He caught the bus that day. The next day, although not deliberate, he succeeded in getting out just in the nick of time. He saw that girl again, this time she had the lead while they both crossed, he missed the bus.

Throughout the week he had put his idea to test, and he came to realize that whenever she had the lead on the foot over bridge he ended up missing the bus and paying a hundred and fifty odd rupees.

One can keep time here without looking at the watch, he said to himself.

Glowing in the warmth of his new found revelation he crossed the girl the following morning, this time he being in the lead, and gave her a small but genuine smile.

Why had he smiled is a mystery to the girl even today.

He makes it to the bus usually nowadays.

Life goes on in the city as it used too.

Home again

Bombay

City of dreams

The more I find reasons to hate it, the more I realize how unique this city is, how this city is like no other. You may hate it, you may abuse it but the soul of the city never hits back. What it does though, is slowly engulf you around with the same soul you curse and find faults with, and lets you breathe it ever so slowly, and within some time, before you realize, you are in its magical spell forever.

I had gone to Gurgaon for fifteen months, could never settle, the economic crisis filtered down into my professional and personal life and my subconscious like a little scared child asked me to run back to Bombay where I knew, it will find sanctuary for sure.

So with a new job I came back here. The difference in me almost immediate. I have started,writing again, to listen to music again, to crib about the water problems again, to loudly abuse fellow passengers in the local train again etcetera. I was slowly becoming whole again because I was home again.

Welcome back! The city says, and I silently oblige.

It's good to be back.