I have been a Mumbaikar for over thirty years. The city is in my body now – the pace of my walk on its treacherous footpaths, the tilt of my head in the rain. I have known it as a public servant, as a citizen, as a customer, as a critic.
It is familiar, yet undiscovered. There are so many interesting people I have not met, corners I have not turned, stories I have not heard. A café hidden behind a shuttered shop. A studio with the smell of turpentine. An improvised theatre where the stage waits in the dark. An art gallery which had popped up over a tiny coffee shop. A hostess who creates with Love and tolerates Fools with a smile.
I have spent enough time with the rich, the powerful, the glamorous, the ‘ connected’. Enough to know I need less of them.
I look for the others and find them. Men and women with sparkling eyes, trusting smiles, dreams and ideas. Those who can tell an original joke. Or talk fondly about their ancestral home in or near Mathura, Amritsar, Panipat, Ajmer, Hazaribagh, Solapur, Parbhani, Sliguri, Puri, Baripada, Darjeeling, Imphal or Pallakad… Or about pickles their grandmother made. Mostly young, not yet jaded, not yet broken.
I guess they speak to me because I am interested. I ask. I listen. Sometimes I nod or smile. Sometimes I mumble. In those moments, the city slows. Its noise falls away. And I am in love with life.
———
An ordinary life 
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