Love Affair- When did it happen???

I am not sure when it happened or how.... but somewhere along in the 2 weeks I got to spend there, I fell hard.. for her charm, her spirit, her character, her beauty ( though shrouded in smog most of the time).... I'd heard of people being mesmerized by Mumbai, now I know what they mean

Its a city of contrasts in the extreme.... even more so than any other metropolis I think.... New York or LA or any other... The city vibrates with energy that is palpable, it throbs with hope, perseverance, grit, enthusiasm, optimism.... So do many other cities I agree... but what I find amazing is that it isn't just the rich & affluent , but the middle class and the poor alike generate this energy...you will see all walking with a spring in their step (figuratively speaking).... not because life is beautiful all the time (in a sense that we know of).. but because they refuse to be complacent or give up.

I don't know when exactly the city's essence seeped into my pores, but when it was time to leave, I knew that I was in love ....I realized that I could appreciate the city & its people, and feel at home, despite the poverty, pollution, population, the stench and the heat ... Isn't that what love is all about?.... unconditional acceptance , overlooking the worst and absorbing the best of the whole.

As Romola Butalia editor of India Travelogue, has expressed so succinctly :

Little boxes, people on people, concrete humanity. A city where it all works, a city within which people strive for excellence or they could not stand the pace of desperate living here.

A city of crime, where the crime is not visible. A city where you feel safe no matter who, where or when you are. A city that respects money...where to be a 'seth' (obscenely rich man) is not an insult, but a title that replaces any that the old aristocracy might have had on offer.

Bright lights, neon signs, fast cars, beautiful people, the city never sleeps. Mumbai, the commercial capital of India, the home of Bollywood that churns fantasies and dreams and unreality.

Local commuting trains that belch out people into the underbelly of the city. Sardines are packed less tightly. Street urchins so street smart they actually reach adulthood smiling. The dirt and the squalor...one giant slum of a city. And within it, each individual respects the personal space of another. There are no divisions, no differences, no advantages, no qualifications : only your ability to deliver.

Throbbing with the vitality of dreams and the will to realise them, of reaching for the stars, it is a city of instant changes, constant changes, a city of opportunities, a city of fortune. It is where tomorrow stands today. If you have the guts and the gall to live in Mumbai and survive, you have arrived. Welcome to the real world.

Mumbai is where the intrepid traveler sees yet another face of India...the Caterpillar during chrysalis...the strange transition from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first.