||Mumbai Diaries #1..

I woke up with an uneasy feeling in my stomach, the good kind. It was finally here - the day I had been waiting for about a month and half now. But to me it felt like this was what I had been waiting for all my life. I was moving to Mumbai with a new job in hand and a few dreams safely hidden beneath my eyelashes. I didn't realise these dreams completely yet, just felt their fidgety presence and the excitement they instilled in me. It seemed unreal, like a childhood fantasy coming true. Growing up through my childhood years, I'd seen pictures of my my friends posing in front of the Gateway of India or chilling in their shorts at Juhu. I only began traveling when I was fifteen and to places that I could easily count off on my fingers.

More than anything else, the writer in me had her hopes pinned to this change in my life. A part of me believed this was the answer to my increasingly frequent writer block issues. I was desperate for a fresh start, a do over. I had made too many mistakes in the last few years, none that I regretted much but it was still a tangible weight. I needed something good in my life, something that could rekindle hope. For hope, as we seldom realise is the fuel that keeps us moving forward. I remember the journey all too well, a cute little kid eager to play hide and seek, yummy food at regular intervals, the growing restlessness that is mostly encountered in kids on long journeys. After a relatively uneventful passage of around eighteen hours, I reached the LTT station.

It was early in the morning around five am, a slight chill in the air, November twenty second. Every step made me more and more nervous. Everywhere I looked, I saw people, a lot of them. Being a loner, crowds are something that could intimidate you beyond imagination. What relaxed me is that forty five minute ride to the hotel, when I pulled the windows down and let the wind hit my face. It was cold, too cold - it made my teeth chatter. But I couldn't bring myself to pull up the windows again, I was mesmerised by what I saw. There was this beautiful skyline that I can't put into words, we were crossing a bridge and the sun was just starting to peek. There was this myriad of really high  buildings, all different from one another but standing together creating a sort of art that soothes your soul. There were mangroves between the water and the buildings that seemed to be bellowing under the spell of the wind, in stark contrast to the water that was flowing at its own sluggish pace, undisturbed.

That one skyline has been the answer to all my questions since I came here. Every time this city has made me fall flat on my face(once even literally, but more on that later), this very skyline has pulled me up on my feet again. I'm living one and a half hours away from where I work and part of the reason is so I can see this miracle of a sight twice a day, every day.