THE inspiration to write this article comes partly from my own experiences and partly from a friend of mine who left for a certain beautiful european city for a little while (the city of love and romance: guesses, anyone?). The title of this post does not give much away, and the feeling I am writing about here is hard to describe to someone who has not experienced it- but here goes!
Quite often we feel trapped by the circumstances we are stuck in or the (physical) place we are stuck at. There does not seem to be much we find exciting in either our professional or personal life, and there always seems to be something we find lacking in both. To make things worse, there could be people around who do not appreciate us for who we are, or for what our choices in life are- and being in their company or vicinity brings us down and weakens us to such an extent that we are unable to do anything to improve the quality of our life.
It is then that we need something special something to happen. Perhaps we need something so big that we and our problems are small in comparison. We need something so dynamic that we have no time to stop and brood. We need something to connect with that gives us pleasure, and this pleasure is free of all conditions and uncertainties because we do not rely on anyone else to give it to us. We are at the source of pleasure, and there is nobody between us and the source. We can just drink in what the city has to offer in it's many special places- I suppose each city has one such unique place. What comes to my mind is Marine Drive in Bombay, Times Square and Lower Manhattan in New York, or the banks of the River Seine in Paris (this I have only heard about, never visited).
This special thing can sometimes be a city. It could be any city in the world- I have found the size and dynamism in Bombay, but it could as well be the artisitc, romantic touch of paris. When it is just Me and the City- something special happens. We find something in the air that gets us going, that sets our pulse racing and makes us appreciate and value life. We find something that makes us forget the issues we almost enjoy complaining about every single day. There is a reason to actually start getting the most out of each day.
Bombay (or Mumbai, same thing!! :) is where I have been able to live alone with the city. It is so enormous that I am just a speck of dust in the millions. Nobody knows who I am, nobody cares how I am living my life (in fact, they are least interested) or what I am doing. I have complete freedom to live according to my choices, as long as I obey an unspoken code of conduct in everyday life that is observed for the common good. At the cost of a digression, it is worth mentioning here that Bombay was (absurdly) voted last year as one of the "rudest" cities the world-I am no globetrotter, but it is one of the places where I have seen, on an average, people behaving in a much more synchronised manner to keep life moving, and certainly the best response to unforseen natural or man-made disasters. People complain about the hustle,dirt, crowd and costs of big cities, but I find a certain peace in them when it is just Me and the City.
