Mumbai is a land of opportunity. If it’s the rich who get glued to the place then the poor are equally get bonded to the place. Paradox is at its pinnacle. The palatial sea-facing bungalows to ultra modern sky rising flats at one end then the dark dingy cluttered cloistered pigeons holes dotted along the tracks are the dwellings for the downtrodden.

The swanky car to sparkling houses splurge with wealthy are the indications of the future of India than the clumsy cubicles covered with torn tents and broken titles intermingled with the drains and dirt are sad tale of the past legacy.

The highflying executives immunize themselves from the pollution and the public by shuttling between conditioned cars and a customised office. The low-lying labourers are embedded with the pollutants from the factory to that of the pollution created by the vehicles. Life is a grind for them but cherish and cheer the moments of pleasure maybe on a lower scale.

Certainly they have carved out their time and enjoy the good things of life. By watching a movie or exploring the dishes of a restaurant of their standard or lavishing the walk along the marine drive they have their day out. Sometime it literally shake you and shock you, the partially naked children in innumerable numbers sleeping on the dirt to taking bath in the drainage the sight is agonizing and feeling is loathsome.

Cleanliness is abjectly missing and is a foregone conclusion. A compulsion to dwell in a place devoid of any means and ways; to avoid and ameliorate from the dirt. It becomes a habit and continues unabated with gradual prevalence of complacency it becomes an integral part of life. The extremes compels people to adopt the extremes of life like the flesh trade to fraud to fake means of earning money to taste the occasional betterment of life.

Mushrooming the city landscapes are the ill practices and have acquired gargantuan proportion engulfing the length and breadth of the city. Whether it is a good habit or bad habit, once you get into the groove and break that mental block, it becomes a routine affair for you. Easier said then done, the temptation is at the flash point; a slight slippage puts you on the wrong voyage. A journey with momentary pleasure but unfolds a saga of pain in retrospection. A place has its own way of attracting people in the process inflicting pain and inducing pleasure making it’s uniqueness universal.

Normally you are hand to mouth as far as time is concerned in Mumbai. Man works like a machine, mind is keyed and automatically gets activated with the ticking of clock. Being an outsider to Bombay and after the scheduled work I had the precious time in ample amount to while out amidst the ocean of crowd in the VT.

Literally waves of people continuously barging into the massive façade of the station, it was the dusk and shutters were down in the office. People could be seen embroiled in a desperate urgency immune to the hustle and bustle are headed towards their cosy home. In fact the home becomes cozier after such hectic day’s engagement.

I happen to stand at one corner, which almost was a vantage point. Ceaselessly the motion of human flow was continuing unabated. Variety is the spice of life…. colourful dress and look of myriad people is a definite representation of the statement. But everything has a limit and monotony becomes drudgery. Couple of hours later, I started seeing a predictable pattern, more of close similarity than of any distinct dissimilarity. The curiosity of staring to the new waves gradually subsided perhaps by the fag end of the couple of hours…it had almost become involuntary. I was just gazing without any stimuli, no trigger in thoughts.

Of course I realised in matter of time that my observing ability has suddenly become comatose. After that wakeup call, made a conscious decision to explore this opportunity…. to observe the normal days happenings that are customarily abnormal to an outsider like me.

Absolutely insulated to the bizarre dresses and funny look of their counterparts shouldering and elbowing during that marathon walk…are the ocean of people. I could see an excessively beautiful lady with silk saree could become the cynosure of a party was just another figure in the crowd. Perhaps I was the only onlooker who stared with an appreciate eye during that phase of the stretch.

People criss-crossed her without turning left or right; forget about giving an about turn look. People have literally no time to spend for others, they enjoy eating charts to Gol-Gapa to Bhav Bhaji…picking few artifacts, newspaper to groundnuts… the hands and eyes were busy in something or other…. primarily a constructive activities. Unlike the idle man with devils mind behaves like a Devil’s advocate.

It’s scary, sometime gives a feeling that it would lead to some kind of a stampede…but apprehension remains in the thought & never gets seen in action. No mishaps, no disturbance…in fact there is some order in chaos, there is some discipline in the ostensibly disorder. Not the case of a single day.

A scene that happens 6 days a week, almost 25 days a month and 300 days a year and decades the unusual scenes for the outsider has pulled into vortex millions of outsider. A surrounding initially appears to be horrendously agonizing and murderously asphyxiating.

Like the bitter taste of hard drink lies underneath the intoxication that pulls like a magnet and subsequently there is no such process as demagnetization. Make a cursory glance at the way they work and the type of work they do is simply mind-boggling and vision blurring.

For instance, Bombay has a unique supply chain management system for the delivery of food. The group collects food from respective houses and delivers to the owner during stated lunch hour. The houses may be spread over miles and miles apart in remote location but the delivery is done with impeccable perfection. It’s not the case of few hundred but in thousands and the delivery is done with riveting perfection.

For a first timer, the whole operation would appear to be touch of magic band. How can they not mix around the almost similar looking teaffin boxes? How do they manage to collect and serve at the stipulated time with unerring perfection? All your question gets automatically answered when you hear the procedure they follow even a corporate doesn’t adhere to such stricter rules…it’s a matter of commitment and honesty in their effort that gets reflected in their work…the Magic of Mumbai

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