You know it's time to leave for good when the excitement of seeing your favourite city again has now waned to almost nothing
Nostalgia can be a killer, because it twists your mind and changes realities
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I made a short trip to Mumbai last month, for a friend's wedding. I didn't tell too many people because I didn't have the time to see most of them. Nor did I have the time to visit all old haunts, to do my favourite Mumbai things.
And, as I didn't do any of those things, I made a terrible realisation. That Mumbai, my city for most of my life, had left me. I should have had a clue when that pull of excitement as the plane flew over the lights and landed didn't happen. That's for the first time in my life, counting from when all those trains pulled into Bombay Central or VT (long, long before Mumbai Central and CST).
The city that once embraced me wholeheartedly, with its smell of drying fish and expectations, now looked at me fondly, like an old love who knows you look familiar, but can't quite place you. And, fondness, as anyone in love knows, is like a death warrant.
When did that love begin? When I was five years old, learning about bed bugs in a company-owned guest house near the Colaba post office? Which I would learn, many years later, was in the same building that film star Nutan lived? And, close to the Women's Graduate Union hostel where I spent a few of my working years? Or, all those monsoons when my sister and I waited at the bus-stop on Altamount Road for our school bus, kitted out in our new rain gear from Crawford Market, from gumboots to pink hoods? Or, when we had those "rainy day holidays" and came charging back home to surprise our mother?
Or, was it at Walsingham, not waking up in time during our nap in pre-first and being rolled into the carpet — almost, they always woke us stragglers up at the last minute! Standing on the pavement outside Greenlawns, requesting people to walk on the pavement, as part of Road Safety Patrol? Or, even better, going to the traffic park at Cooperage and being instructed in traffic rules by a smart and awe-inspiring police inspector? That was when the Bombay Police was the Bombay Police, o my! While at Cooperage, there were those Sunday evenings, with the band playing and various rides. Beat a corporate amusement park any day!
Maybe I should jump a few years to the YWCA hostel in Colaba, celebrating New Year's Eve on the terrace with the rest of the women who had no dates, drinking coffee and listening to the ship's hooting the next year in. Later, living in Andheri, trusting every auto driver, bus driver, train driver, taxi driver, because this was Bombay and everything was always right.
Yes, the riots shook that innocence. Yes, Bombay became Mumbai. But, the rain and the drying bombil and the food and the instant camaraderie remained. Maybe the trust was not quite what it once was, but it was still there.
I am not going to play the better-than-worse-than game. Mumbai was not home because some other place didn't match up. It was because it was. Walking along Marine Drive in the pouring rain, eating boiled peanuts and sugarcane. Watching the rain walk in sheets along waves, towards you. Yes, of course, after two months of incessant rain, you wanted the sunshine again, but for those two months, the monsoon was the height of romance. Slush, splashes, idiotic auto drivers and clothes that never dried notwithstanding.
I had some of my most historic monsoons, working at mid-day. From the old office in Tardeo to the Sitaram Mills compound, where we closed editions with water spurting out of the tiles like fountains. The edition had to come out, what was a little water to complain about? We've all been through those days and nights.
Nostalgia can be a killer, because it twists your mind and changes realities. I left Mumbai four years ago for good, knowing I would never return. In spite of my desertion, it nursed me through illness when I asked it, and gave me whatever I needed. Who could ask for more?
And so, as this is my last column for mid-day, I have a choice between looking back and looking ahead. mid-day will always remain part of me. And, so will Mumbai. In different ways. Therefore, in those immortal words, "So long, and thanks for all the fish"!
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist. You can follow her on Twitter @ranjona Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
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