Counting down to dusk...

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The attached picture is one of Mumbai's many famous landmarks. A neo-gothic wonder that rivalled anything the empire had back home- the Rajabai Clock Tower on the Bombay University campus. Rumour has it that they closed it off a few decades ago when it turned into a suicide magnet for students who did not fare that well in their exams.

The maidan (field) in the foreground, now cricket central, was once the vast open areas the Brits cultivated around their forts to have clear firing range on any attackers. Ironically the university was built on the footprint of the fort's walls, and the expanse of open space, once Bombay's lungs and emerald jewels, has been whittled into irrelevance by generations of land grabs, corruption and negligence.

Behind where I stand and take this picture stood a row of fine Art Deco apartments, now renovated into nouveau riche hell.

I decided to let my legs take me around the City today and walked and walked for a few hours along familiar routes, tracing the veins on the body of this city, breathing in its scents (loaded with nostalgia and emotions) as only a lover could. I touch with my nose, and today was like wrestling in/with every sense.

I'm home now. I washed myself down. The water was black with urban grime, my skin feels alive again, and my heart is very full.

I miss this City of my youth immensely, but is it the same place any more, and could I belong here again?

Comments

  1. AnonymousJanuary 25, 2010 at 3:59 PM

    tanzeel -writing must run in the family! I can understand your sentiments and the question that you ask in the last sentence.

    Keep writing..

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Chapati KidJanuary 25, 2010 at 4:21 PM

    Just because you don't live here any more doesn't mean that you don't belong here, or that this city is a fundamental part of you, part of the essence of who you are. Even if you never come back, you will always have this city in you, in your bones.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJanuary 30, 2010 at 5:16 PM

    Deep sentiments, beautifully expressed, Tanzeel. It is very much what I feel when I am back to Medellin. It is the syndrome of the inmigrant; we belong to many places, yet not fully to any...
    Big hug.

    Gloria

    ReplyDelete

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