Mumbai: I love and miss you!

[Discover the India of your dreams @ www.oddroad.com - The Way I Like.]

Mumbai is vast. When you think of the city you cannot narrow it down to one specific feeling. It is a gamut of them catching you by your throat. But one thing I can guarantee you is that you will fall in love with it. There have been generations trying to define love with myriad expressions, yet they keep changing. It’s anger, hate, adoration, adulation, overwhelming, unfathomable and yes vast. Just like Mumbai.

When you land here you find a purpose. You want to be better: maybe richer or faster or kinder or greater. But you always strive to be better. The city tests your mettle but at the end of the gruel you feel nothing but proud. Maybe the whole sentiment is Romantic in a vicious way but you will end up admitting even that bit of Romanticism gives your life a purpose of its own.

Visit Mumbai during the pleasant months of Kalaghoda festival and soak in the art, culture, tradition and well-dressed ‘Sobo’ people.  Visit it during the tumultuous monsoons, wade through the murky water, catch a local train, reach Worli sea face and get splashed. Visit it during the Ganpati season and go for ‘Visarjan’ on the 3^rd, 5^th, 7^th and 10^th day. Visit it during the summers, choose a café in bandra and sit sipping the coolest drink possible wearing shorts and let the world pass you by.

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The city makes you do everything. It makes you climb a skyscraper and lets you scrounge for the best leather boots in Dharabi. Lets you sashay through the high end retail brands in a luxury mall and makes you sweat it out for lovely floral motifs on linking road. Even though the contrast, neither the high nor the low ever rejects you. Eat panipuri from the local shop on a Saturday night while waiting in queue for entry into the recently opened gourmet restaurant. It is but natural.

Even though the brooding heat will make you swoon, you cannot resist falling in love with this enormous, difficult city. But hey doesn’t everyone love a bad boy?  And like true love, you cannot let it go. It sings in your blood and every time you close your eyes, just like that, you are back in your favourite ‘tapri’, holding a broken umbrella, waiting out a sudden September rain with your friend, sipping cutting chai and breathing into your soul Mumbai.




[Discover the India of your dreams @ www.oddroad.com - The Way I Like.]

Pune: always young at heart

[Discover the India of your dreams @ www.oddroad.com - The Way I Like.]

Do you know that the air of Pune is young?

When you pass by the myriad of sounds in the city, which lazy hums in the air your age visibly reduces. Maybe it’s the very high population of the young and aspiring, the lazy one to four siesta in the afternoon or the extremely friendly people that you bump into quite regularly. It’s difficult to point it out. But hey, who doesn’t want to relive the happiest days of their life. 

Sinhagad Fort

That’s what Pune is: A very happy city. Take a drive on the outskirts of the city to Sinhagad fort or the Mulshi dam and you realise that it is surrounded by the same beauty and happiness. Enter the city and that sense of beauty still lingers. Flanked by hills on every side, Pune makes it so easy for its people to breathe in its air. It’s pleasant, always so pleasant.

Osho Ashram

If you are a foodie this city will make you feel like the king. From the roadside daabeli wallas with that confounding mixture on the bread to the gourmet meals served in the five star restaurants, all of it is a sight, smell and taste to behold. Take a stroll down Koregaon Park and buy some Osho chappals, and then take a walk in them.  Reach the local Burger King and eat a burger, which becomes a task to finish sometimes.With the sensation of such liberties you may grasp a bit of the reason why Pune has refused to age. 

Dagdusheth Ganpati

Hop into one of the many Iranian restaurants with their rusting tables and incomparable caramel custard and reminisce with the owner about old days. Bow your head in front of the Dagdusheth Ganpati idol and then try to wall through the screen of crowd on Lakshmi Road trying to hunt for the obscure “Puneri” things you want to collect as a memento. Then stop on the roadside to have one of the best “sev puri”s and “gola”s in the world.

Mumbai Pune Expressway

And when you are leaving the city by the express highway there is one thing that is guaranteed. You will look back, more than once. 

[Discover the India of your dreams @ www.oddroad.com - The Way I Like.]

[Image Courtesy: Google]