23 Days in Mumbai

Ever since I landed in this City of Dreams, my conscience got escalated to a new level of the realization that every single breath carries with it. The single breath in a way represents the sand in ones unique hourglass and finite quantifiable grains. As history stands, the one who’s ever succeeded in mastering the trickle of this sand algorithm holds a place in the city’s affluent bastions. The place respects competition and has bound more than 20 million by the single thread of its spirit.

Traversing on the snake roads across Sahayadri ranges, with windmills on the top and rain-washed greens on the landscape, I was cheerful when I encountered this signboard. After many days of feeling illiterate in Kannada dominated streets, I saw something which I could read and connect to. Written in Devnagari, it was a Marathi word “thamba” that made me aware, that we were very much into Maharashtra. Witnessing how the darkness lighted tunnels came and lasted for short anxious periods, we were moving across the beautiful place called Satara City, dwelling amidst lush green mountains under scenic cloud cover. On the roadside, I remember the sight of the bushes coming out of a car's skeleton dumped in front of a garage, saying that even this expensive smoke spraying creation could not withstand nature from turning it green.

Out of my particular interest in history of royals, I was wondering how once these rivers and mountains framed borders, and how I had just moved from a region once ruled by Tipu Sultan, into the strongholds of Chattrapati Shivaji. And along with several other things, how these two had a common enemy- the British. And that reminded me of a couple of news articles, of which one was about a document some British agency had created, listing the best Generals they had fought in the last century, and Tipu Sultan had his well deserved name there. The other was about bringing back a sword, named as Jagdamba Sword of Shivaji Maharaja that is well adorned in the Royal Collection Trust in London. I hadn't pondered enough over these antediluvian memoirs when I noticed the skyscrapers popping up in the direction of our travel. The sight of concrete bought me back into the vertical realities of this spherical world.

Occupied by the notion of wild jungles en route getting replaced by concrete jungles, I looked around my new work city. I knew the purpose behind my deputation to Mumbai and that of course dealt nothing with forests or climate of the place, but somewhere I had started missing the airs of Bangalore.

Soon started a life in the new city and sooner started the office and it’s been like flash of time to day 23. No doubt the treadmill keeps me running, but I have started enjoying it too. And that’s the trait of adjustment our evolutionary ancestors have bestowed upon us and how well have we learnt to live by it.