What a short, strange trip it’s been. Strange to go back to a place so completely familiar after so long. I grew up in this great city. I have traveled most of it by foot – in school shoes and flip flops, in autorikshaws – dirty torn ones and pimped out ones with high treble music systems, in cars, in taxis, and in big red BEST buses.
The hugs of friends is always a beautiful thing, but after a decade indescribable. I saw the changes in them all – new lines on familiar faces, some gray in hair, and some hair gone altogether, some no wiser, some larger, some just as loud but not so sure, all as beautiful, and all changed in some way, like the city, with the city.
I don’t know who said “you can never go home again” – but I did, and am glad for it. Though everything is different, it is still the same. Most of all, I found, it is I who have changed, and reflected in the city that was once my home, and the people who were and still are my friends, I like those changes.
Tags: mumbai
Good for you Umi
So good to have you back!
hello, i too grew up in bombay in the 70s and 80s, then moved away. Recently went back after many years, saw many changes, cellphones, malls, more buildings, in teh first couple days, thereafter crept in the feeling of never really having left. Peepal cracks in old houses, faded mossy roofs in dadar, the old gargoyles grinning away on DN Road, smell of flowers in trains…you put it nicely. Peace, fellow bombayite