The Maximum city

by Bhargavi Balachandran (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find India

“What if I get raped and murdered?” I mumbled to myself as I walked into the oppressive, sultry night. The warden that ran the hostel where I was staying in South Mumbai had just turned me out as I had come in an hour late after the curfew time. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have any friends or another place to spend the night in. I had exactly hundred rupees in my pocket, not enough to get me a hotel room. “Come back tomorrow!” she had told me sternly., turning me away. I had come to Mumbai in search of an adventure. While the rest of my batch mates had found internships closer home, I had wanted to experience the thrill of discovering Mumbai. Having grown up in a conservative South-Indian family in Chennai, Mumbai represented all the things that was anathema to my middle-class upbringing. Mumbai was fast. Mumbai was glamorous. And Mumbai was home to my favorite Bollywood star, Sharukh khan. Mumbai was the maximum city that I needed to experience. It was only my first week in the city and my wide-eyed enthusiasm had been prematurely punctured. While travelling on the local train a mentally unstable man had pulled his pants down and masturbated in front of me. My fellow travelers had trashed him in a fit of apathy. A few days later a fish-seller had pushed me aside with her foul-smelling basket brimming with Bombay duck and climbed into the train. She had looked at me triumphantly from inside the train as I gawked at her helplessly from the platform. Things hadn’t been much different at the internship either. I felt excluded in a way that small-town girls in big cities often did. What was wrong with this city? People were shoving each other just to make a living. There was so much angst and struggle that the hip and glamorous Mumbai that I had wanted to experience seemed like a mirage. This was an unforgiving city that would chew and spit you out if you didn’t move fast enough. Now I was homeless for the night. I decided to spend the night at the railway station as I knew I would be safe in a crowded station. I found a spot on one of the lesser crowded platforms, spread out a few sheets of newspapers on the dirty ground to sit on and dug into a pirated novel that a boy, no more than ten years old had sold me for fifty rupees. He told me that he hadn’t eaten all day. All my ethical dilemmas at buying a pirated book melted away in a moment. As I tackled mosquitoes, scampering rodents, loud announcements, and waves of people, I noticed a noisy family spread out on the platform next to me. The men were playing cards, while women were feeding their kids roti and pickles. Suddenly I was ravenous. I tentatively caught the eye of an elderly gentleman, but looked away quickly, feeling awkward at the intrusion. I glanced at my watch in boredom. An hour had barely passed. “Didi, do you want to join us?” a voice interrupted me. The voice belonged to a little girl with buck tooth twinkling eyes. She was holding the hand of the gentleman who I had exchanged glances with. “Do you want to play antakshari with us? he asked. The old man’s eyes were so kind that I couldn’t refuse. The next few hours we sang, laughed and ate as we waited for their train. I played with the kids and swapped stories with the women, all in rudimentary Hindi. Our lives couldn’t have been more different. Yet that moment this rat-infested platform felt like home and these people felt like family. That’s when I realized that this was Mumbai too. This is the Mumbai that I chose to fall in love with.It’s been twenty years now, yet I haven’t been able to forget the old man’s smile of inclusion. Glossary Didi- Sister Antakshari is game of songs played between two groups. The second group needs to sing a song with the end letter of the first group’s song.