Bombay Blues
7th July, 2000- The day I landed in Bombay. Santacruz’ Airport – 1000hrs IST - The infamous monsoons of Bombay had already set in. We collected our luggage and hopped into a taxi for our destination-‘Andheri’. The first thing to hit me, once I was out of the airport, was a stench. It was a smell unlike any other, an unremitting odor that grows from weak to strong and vice-versa but never ceases, a peculiar reek, a stink atypical of the city. I was to realize it much later that it was the smell of the sea, of the fish left out to dry in the open, of the waste of 10 million people, and of rats that far outnumbered the population. I didn’t want to come to Bombay but my Dad’s transfer forced us (me, my sister and my mom) to make a shift. So here I was- ‘A Reluctant Citizen’ of the Juggernaut called Bombay . The cab glided through the broad roads and flyovers in the relentless rains. I stared out of the window at the other cabs and auto-rickshaws whizzing p...