Bombay. Mumbai. Megacity. And what it does to you. An intimate look

A decade and a half, if felt after a fashion, can indeed sometimes feel like a penis. Quite long but never quite long enough. I do not normally begin writing something with genitalia but this one (the piece, not THE PIECE) was like a bulge against the fabric of my mind. Straining to jump out and state its mind (once again, and possibly for the second last time, I am talking about the long piece here and not the schlong piece elsewhere).

A decade and a half spent thinking about and thinking in Bombay. A decade and a half going about, going around and going for it in Bombay. A decade and a half of eyelashes, whiskey and sea soaked Bombayana in Bombay. And a decade and a half of turning older, turning a new leaf and turning around in Bombay. And all so the fish stays crisp and the salt dry. So the armpits stay at arm’s length and the pits have expensive shock absorbers negotiating them. So that movies like ‘Gravity’ and ‘Interstellar’ can be watched in a 3 BHK. So that commerce and semi colons don’t get mixed up in the grammar of business.

A decade and a half, if seen after a fashion, can indeed sometimes look like a broken piece of glass. Capable of reflecting but broken nonetheless. Disrupted by a billion pieces of shrapnel coming from an exploded imagination. Interrupted by a hundred million shapes that spill out of the geometry book and become oddly shaped sunsets. Punctuated by so many ampersands that counting the convolutions becomes a revolution by itself. Rites of passage and left of centre, parabolas full of paradoxes and hyperbolas with a calm epicentre — they have all been met and befriended, all been seen and gleaned and all been heard and proclaimed in a decade and a half.

Bombay from the outside looks like a tall can of slightly rotting sardines kept in a long hall where half the ACs are working and the TV is constantly changing channels by itself while being on at full blast. You need to be near the top, in the cool zone and away from the visual and aural cacophony, to make it. Bombay from the inside feels like a goddess' vagina or a machine gun’s chamber. Upto us. Either way, there is wisdom in here. And a decade and a half is a fantastic teacher. Or a phenomenal con job.

So why am I writing about this now - about 15 years in Bombay after a decade and a half? Why was this 'half' thing straining fully at the fabric of my elastic imagination to meet the universe and script its destiny? Why, of all times now, was there a reason to do this? Because a decade and a half of education written in marathi, noise, some blood and many late nights, fairly good English and pretty phenomenal silence should not have to go to waste. If there is one someone who can make something of this, its purpose would have been met. It would have graduated from maadar to mother and sit at the table of testimonials. Otherwise, after a decade and a half & 15 years, buss kya.