Mumbai: Maximum Shitty.

Dream city : The oxymoron used for the worlds largest sewage system. I mean come on, how can anyone call a place where the majority lives in matchboxes, a dream city? And no, by that I do not refer to the matchbox like apartments in which majority of the human population of Mumbai s human populace lives in. I meant that the mice are the majority stakeholders of this city. It is no wonder then that filth seems to form an integral part of the social fabric here. Which is why when a broker( now apparently called Consultants – I cannot decide if Mckinzey employees should be sad or happy about that) calls a house earth-shatteringly good, you can expect a hellhole with an asbestos sheet for a roof, built sometime in the Mughal era and last cleaned before the British left India.
Let us not dwell on filth, let us turn instead to rain. For filth brings us invariably to rains. Or at least in Mumbai it does. Trudging through all the filth of Mumbai, conveniently dissolved in rainwater so that the absorption by your skin and clothes is facilitated, is the richest experience this city can boast of. What can be more fun than getting stuck in office, because you do not feel like stepping into diluted imported dog shit, and playing antakshari with your Boss? Also, just FYI- it rains horizontally here. So just crossing a road with an umbrella in hand meant that I was soaked from shoe sole to spectacle frames. And by now that has happened so many times that I fully expect to find fish living in my shoes. So when in the city in Monsoon season, be sure to look up the Met predictions before you leave for anywhere( And I mean anywhere. Even that panwalas place next door) If it says Heavy to very Heavy( Oh how I miss the “Habby” pronunciation of Calcutta(No, not really)), you are safe. All trace of moisture will be wiped out by the sun. But if the prediction says Sunny climate expected, it will rain enough to bring the trains of the city and hence the city itself to a standstill.
Everything in the nightmare realm called Mumbai is 5 minutes away. Stand somewhere near Colaba( the southern most tip of Mumbai) and ask how to far off Borivali(the northern most tip) is, the average friendly Mumabikar will tell you,” Borivali? Bas 5 minutes. Walking.”(You’ve got to get the tone right.) OK so I am exaggerating. But seriously, if someone in Mumbai tells you that you have to walk 5 minutes to get somewhere, TAKE A CAB. Otherwise you will walk for half an hour and spot the building where they asked you to make the first of 5 left and 3 right turns.
But then you convince yourself that this is only because the people here walk fast. Really fast. Infact they seem to scramble like ants. And essentially, Mumbai is a city of worker ants. For I doubt the travel leaves much time for anything except work. This shouldn’t really bother me since I don’t really have a life, but what troubles me is that now I don’t even have a chance to have a life.