# It has been less than a fortnight since I left Bombay. And in little over a fortnight, I leave to my next muse: Delhi. As a teenager, I wondered at the fascinations of people with their cities. Now, I wonder at mine. Cities and nostalgia coexist. You look at a city and you see phases of time captured here and there, blotched in different colours of different hues. People, dreams, and struggle of existence give a city its flavour. As for beauty, a city lies in the eyes of the beholder. It may mean nothing to you in oblivion and it may mean so much to you as a function of vivacity.
I can’t say with conviction if Delhi and Bombay shared different colonial past but they surely have a contrasting present altogether. Yes, they are the two most-talked cities of the country but it was only in recent past that I, thanks to my friends inhibiting these cities, came to know that an ardent lover of one city automatically christens you as a jeerer of the other. I wish the world was this simple as a place.
I do read a lot about Delhi. Prime source of my fascination infuses from its past and permeating present. Bombay was a place of cinema, business, Sachin, Rohinton Mistry, and a disaster called Shantaram. It is only now that week-end readings on Bombay occupy my shelf.
In India: A Portrait, Patrick French observes India to be a “melting pot”. And if we were to see India as a melting-pot, no place more deserving than Bombay is to be crux of that pot. Here everything amalgamates with everything that nothing remains just the only thing. Bombay does not intimidate you with its magnanimity like Delhi does but by its sheer pace and every second day changes. ‘Adapt’ is the ‘relax’ and movement is the favourite pastime. Washington, Beijing, Madrid, Canberra and Delhi may have been the administrative capitals but it were the NYC, Shanghai, Barcelona, Sydney and Bombay which ended up representing dreams of the populace.
While Delhi maybe my first love, Bombay is surely the new infatuation.
# This week-end’s readings include:
Vikram Chandra, Love and Longing in Bombay
Suketu Mehta, Maximum City
# My friend, moving to Delhi and looking for a roof to live under, asked me for some contacts. I recommended him magicbricks. Stupid people!
# An interesting article on the mongrelisation of English is here.
# An interesting website, a modern day Hobson-Jobson of modern day South Asia lingo is here. A treat to linguists. Do check.
©Rakesh 2011
