Concrete Jungles

"me gusta la ciudad. También me gusta el campo."

View of Mumbai from Kanheri Caves, Maharashtra.

During a particular monsoon in Goa, the greens started turning grey. The bright blue sky became dull. The fluffy white clouds started feeling heavy. The soothing sand by the beach bore the face of hardened rock. The night wind became a stagnant void like vacuum.

I needed to breathe. So, I took a vacation to the busiest city in the country - "Bombay."

Who takes a break in the city, you ask?

Those who dance with time.

Night sky, Marine Drive.

When time slows down unbearably, it stretches past your bones and gives pain to your body. It aches to walk, to talk or sometimes sit upright. The pain spreads from your back muscles right to your finger tips. Your mind stays awake; active, but unable to utter a word before swallowing it back whole like a heavy stone in your chest.

To free yourself from its arduous clutches, you sometimes have to escape to a place where time slips through your fingers. Amidst moving people, moving trains, moving stairs and moving traffic. The digits of the clock flicker and make minutes hours disappear into minutes.

I recently visited Bombay again after that trip four years ago. The first thing that surprised me was staying in my dad's friends house in an apartment called Twin Towers Society. The 25 floor building was 50 years old. Second surprise. We were staying on the 13th floor. Third. The clock in the house was set ten minutes slower. Who ever sets their clock back in time? I asked.

Those who dance with time.

I'm kidding. When I asked why the clock was slow, our host replied that it sometimes just ends up running slower even when they set it right. I was confused and found it hard to believe. On the third day of the trip, the time on my mother's phone set itself back by 10 minutes. I then realised I was in Bombay - a city where time runs faster than the clock.

I recently called my friend, Mayuresh who lives in Bombay. I apologised that I had a tight schedule and couldn't meet him during my time in the city. He said that it's okay and was usual. "So many things to do in three days", I said. We had visited a visa office, a dance performance, many Buddhist Caves, a national park, a shopping mall, a church, an art gallery and a museum. Leave out the cafes and shops on the streets and the famed Gateway. "So much to do in Bombay", he said. But sometimes there's so much to do that you end up doing nothing, and have no idea how the three days pass. I laughed. I had no idea how the three days had passed.

I love city-watching, and Mumbai is the best place to do so. The blinking lights on the skyline, the pigeons and parrots flying around at dawn, the ant-like joggers pacing by the shoreline, an occasional watchman sitting on the 13th floor terrace like a lonely warrior and the sound of the sea lapping over the shore tirelessly as night falls and the tides retreat into itself.

Mumbai.

Cities are cultural artefacts of our time. I live in one of the oldest living cities - perhaps in the country. It is bustling with activity from morning to night, and is called the city that never sleeps. It reeks of the smell of garbage on the streets, and has little to no pedestrian space. It is also renowned for its world famous jasmine flowers that power the fragrances of fashion houses like Dior and boasts of a beautiful temple at the heart of it. It exists between binaries, an oxymoron of sorts. Sometimes I feel proud to live here, sometimes ashamed enough to want to escape. I invite my friends from all over the world to visit, even flaunting its historicity and beauty. I take them around to all the cultural spots in much gusto. When we have wandered around these streets, my friends have asked me if I ever feel lonely, or out of place. "You wouldn't be the same if you had stayed here all your life" they would say.

These remarks send a sense of chill down my body. What is it that makes someone belong to a place? A place is simply a place. Where you are born is simply determined by chance and where you live and move around by more chances that are more under your control.

However, places are also storied and heavy with feeling.

Houses moved in, schools sat in, markets shopped in, parks sauntered in, beaches played in and roads driven in.

The first ever house that we lived in was in an estranged corner of a wedding hall. On days when events didn't happen, the whole hall was mine, and I would cycle inside, run around skipping the black and white tiles and even just sit zoned out on the stage playing pretend with my mind.

The second house we moved to, I apparently went and spit inside the corners of each room, when we went house hunting. I was only three.

Many houses later, we have a place to call our home, and one that feels home.

In the whole of my city, my house is the only place which feels like home. I rarely step out.

However, I've felt at home in many cities more than mine. I can walk the streets of Bangalore with hardly a map and still remember the bust stops and bus numbers. The electric trains of Chennai rattle in my memory. Sightseeing in Mumbai feels like I'm stepping out as a resident on a lazy weekend rather than as a tourist.

In this way, I find that cities offer a place of belonging more than smaller towns. Migrants walk past every corner making you feel like a common alien on an extraterrestrial planet. In my town however, I always get stared at. Do I even fit here?

Over the past few years, I've come to wrestle with these identities and have started enjoying the perks of the both. Of a closer hearth and of faraway homes. It's funny that I travel to a city whenever I feel lonely, because it becomes thrilling to feel one among a river of people walking by the metro station, crossing roads and shopping in supermarkets. Cities are a crazy invention of cohabitation space by humans. For all their pitfalls, they offers a great way of social organisation.

All this talk and why?

I am set to move to a new city very soon. I have learnt the language, seen the streets on Google Maps and watched movies filmed there. It feels vaguely familiar and even appears in my dreams. However, dreams are very distant from reality. I am really excited and am looking forward to seeing the dust on a windowsill and the heat of the sun in a strange land.

Will it feel like home?

Even if it doesn't, I'm going to take home wherever I go.

-- Swarna,

Madurai, India.

24/08/25