Bombay/Mumbai

In the mornings, if you look out of the window, this city is like any other city. Underneath the roads that choke with engines and human engineering, the unbearable noises and that hum of a kind of impending doom, because this city can never sustain this pace, it will collapse on itself, there is a slow moving force, there are the last remaining vestiges of birds and trees, a glimmer of peace like a desert farce, a mirage, you can only see it when you are thirsty and hungry, on the verge of death, clinging to the air for sanity.

In the mornings, this city uncoils itself from the night and propels itself forward, throws itself like a desperate maniac into the future, like sagging guitarists diving off the stage and into the hands of fawning fans because the glory of the past is too far away, the present impossibly filled with teething pains and questions. Everybody wants to prove something and nobody knows what it is they want to prove. So, they go about their plans, when the traffic lights turn green, they devise little strategies, they create and destroy, it’s an endless cycle. The slow moving force, what to call it, a snake maybe, it slithers benevolently through its subterranean routes, hissing, whispering secrets and dreams into the ears of this city’s million souls. Starved, they feed on this hallucinogen; it keeps them from slashing their wrists. This city is like any other city, the only difference is, it’s not.

Coping with Copy.

Swati.