21st March, 2010
Bombay – the city I always loved to hate… and I hate to say I started loving
Posted by Navin Harish - 3 Comments
Since I hated Bombay even before I visited this place, I have to say it is prejudice more than anything else. The local trains, the overcrowded city and everything I knew about Bombay was secondhand information and I have to admit that Bombay lived up to its expectations except for the only positive thing I had heard – road sense.
Tata Interactive made me an offer and I guess my desire to work for Tata proved stronger than my dislike of Bombay and I landed in Bombay on 6th October 2003 almost exactly 6 years and a half before I leave it for good.
A while ago I wondered how thick this pile of monthly train tickets will get. Now I won’t be buying them again… at least anytime soon
If there is a thing called Destiny that the last 6 years are the manifestation of that. I took up a job which I should not have before coming to Bombay and I spent about an year and a half doing I job which was not the right fit for me but I guess that job, since it was in elearning, must have played some part in me getting the job at Tata Interactive.
This is the last session pass I have bought for Mumbai Local Trains.
For the past 6 years I have lived in one of the most crowded city in the world but I have always enjoyed a great view with green as far as eye can see from my window. In a city where people spend on an average 3-4 hours commuting to office I have been living 15 minutes away from my workplace for most part of the last six years. In local trains that are notorious the world over for being over crowded, I have had the good fortune of finding a place to sit almost everyday. Considering all this, it seems I was destined to stay in Bombay and destiny was kind enough to make it as comfortable as possible. Of course there were times when I felt like I was a repeat offender in my last birth so I am repeatedly being punished for that but largely I was lucky…sometime so lucky that I felt I was the brand ambassador of Lux Cozi.
A view of Aarey Colony from my bedroom
More than this, I feel I leave Bombay as a better person than I was when I came here. It is largely because I have come to know so many people – mostly nice, some not so nice.
Apart from all these, Mira and I reached the most important milestone a couple looks forward to – becoming parents. Manu was born after we moved to Bombay.
Few days from now, I will move on to where I came from – New Delhi the place I always call home. Just like I still cherish the memories of my stay in Melbourne, I will look back fondly to the days spend in Bombay and maybe sometime even wonder why the hell I moved back to Delhi.
Tags: bombay, delhi, R K SWAMY Interactive, tata interactive
3 Comments
Rahul Goswami
March 21st, 2010 at 9:12 pm
It is said that Bombay is a city that doesn’t let anyone go. You should consider yourself lucky.
Bruce DePenha
May 13th, 2010 at 8:35 pm
I used to hate a lot of things about Bombay when I lived there. But now that I have moved out I miss it more than ever. No matter where I go, it will always be home for me.
Kunal Bhardwaj
June 11th, 2010 at 11:59 am
I don’t think that one should comment without knowing anything.
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