My first day in Mumbai, i came down from Mumbai Rajdhani and within 16 hrs I was in the city of dreams, ya the world is definitely getting smaller. We (my father accompanied me, probably the effect of Mumbai’s horror stories, which I am sure you must have also heard). The two infamous and yet lovely cities Delhi and Mumbai have there share of stories, which all of us love to tell each other. Anyway we made our way to the Army Mess, Colaba and on 12th July I was supposed to shift to YWCA guest house. we decided to go around Mumbai and check out some places there, and obviously our first visit was at the Mahalaxmi temple and Sidhivinayak temple in Dadar. My dad prayed for my well being and I thanked god for coming in this city, I loved Colaba the moment I saw it, an amazingly royal feel, reminds you of old British Raj.
My 11 months stay in Mumbai showed me a new world of opportunity, cut throat competition and don't care attitude. I was of the impression that Mumbai doesn't sleep and so are the markets/malls. But to my surprise Colaba closes at 10 pm except few pubs like Cafe Mondegar and Leopold Cafe, which are most of the time crowded with phirangs (more so it was out of my budget).
I shifted in a 4 seater room in YWCA, a huge room with four beds, cupbords and 4 tables in it, two days I was like a queen their, four beds to my disposal. And then on the 3rd day a girl from south shifted in my room, she was a virgin marry, away from guy's shadow, and those sick bad girls, who think and do all the things in life they shouldn’t do(I am sorry for using sick, but that’s not my connotation). she also heard lot of Mumbai horror stories, which were even more horrifying then my stories, so she decided to be in hostel after office, the 2nd girl was Avantika, a safai freek, the day she came, I saw her busy scrubbing the table making me wonder, that the tables skin will come out. After cleaning the table she covered it with a table cloth and then put a money plant on it and some more stuff which I can't recollect, later we became good friends, but unfortunately I lost her number and we are no more in touch now. The 4th and the last girl was an invisible woman (hardly in hostel) completely in love with Mumbai, thou this was her first visit, she was most of the time out of hostel, so we hardly had a chance to interact, except that she had a family friend in Borivalli whom she used to visit in weekends.
The working women hostel life is very different from student hostel life, everyone is busy in there own life, everyone is seeing someone and someone is seeing everyone, so everyone is busy. I was also seeing someone, so I was also busy (infact my reason to come to Mumbai).
I went around checking out places in Bombay, Bandra bandstand, Linking road, Colaba Crossway became a 2nd home for me, everyday after office I used to sit at gateway of India with Shantanu (my boyfriend then and husband now) discussing about our future in the city, where will take up a house in Bombay and how much we have to travel everyday (I think this is a main cause of concern in most of the big cities for working couples).
After five months I shifted to the main hostel where I was paying much lesser as compare to the 6000 bucks that I was paying for just lodging in the guest accommodation. By then I was pretty much settled in Mumbai(thanks to one of my colleague Sangeeta Lalwani, who agreed to be my local guardian), made some Good friends, and was earning reasonable money. Mumbai has a magic to it, it takes a lot from you every day, but it also teaches you something, I always wonder this is one city(if you manage to stay here for 10 years) it can either make you rich and famous or it will make you a saint. But whatever it does to you will carry this city in your heart.
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