The Beginnings

I was born an Indian..... in the hustle bustle of cosmopolitan Bombay (I refuse to call it Mumbai) in an era of glorious uncertainty.

Those were the days of the emergency when India was tasting for the first and decidedly the last time the fruits of unbridled ambition and delusionary power.... when rationing was the order of the day and taxation could be as high as 99%....

Maybe, you require such a time for a Devil to walk his first steps on Earth and so there I was walking the walk and talking the talk of the angst-filled 70s.. yet blissfully unaware of what 'angst' meant but still a part of the teeming millions that had a daily rendezvous with angst.

It has been 30 years since and life has since many ups and downs but somewhere deep down, the memories of those turbulent times remain firmly etched in my conscience.. as if like Abhimanyu in his mother's womb listening to the secrets of the Chakravyuh.. those days have been firmly etched.. nay, I would seared.... on my sub-consciousness.

So although the world of 2007 is vastly different from the days when I first ventured this world, many of the things still seem the same. Nothing changes more than Change and still nothing remains more constant than Change. That's the Paradox of life.

I sometimes ravel over the reasons I was posted to this urban landscape... Does God also have a lottery system.. Does he also a bureaucracy where every file is pushed for approval and rejection...I am sure the Almighty God must have also gone through a lot of personal heartburn to decide whether the devil that I was, I should be sent to the climes of crime-infested America, to the suffering continent of Africa or the lips-sealed dictatorships of Latin America, Soviet Union or China... but finally I think sanity prevailed and I was sent here.. to India....

India, the land where modernity meets ancient wisdom and where traditions meet non-conformism.... where tolerance is a way of life but there are sporadic outbursts of intolerance as well... the land of everything and nothing.. the land of simple complexes and complex thoughts ... a land where shanty slums live side by side with large palatial mansions.. the land is different ... .the land is beautiful....

Not that I mind it... in fact, despite the many frustrations that I have faced here I would still say, it has been a beautiful life in India.... and in Bombay.. .and I would not leave it for any other place anywhere...

So.. here I am ... in Bombay and occasionally and frequently out of Bombay as well.. but to be frank, the Bombay which lives in me cannot be killed.. it exists.... even when I am out, it's in.... and so I am a pucca Bombay man whether I am in Bombay or Singapore, NY or London, Tokyo or Zürich.