Mumbai (Slight Return)

This week I spent a few days in an old haunt.

Strange, wonderful, electric Maximum City, arriving here six years ago I boarded a train with my wife and sons destined for Mumbai’s iconic Victoria Terminus and, from there, the Gateway of India.

Strange city then, you hustled us into the railcar, we all full of newcomer thrill, you a blasé metropolis of 26 million rolling these rails day after day after day.

Titters and giggles in the railcar led to a secret between the women on board: “Ma’am, this is ladies car only.”

We swapped into the car behind at the next stop then carried on our way, the silvery overhead handles swinging with the train’s pulse toward downtown.

A walk along Marine Drive, site of the evening and night-time queen’s necklace.

From then the city embraced us to her bosom through four years, in good times and bad: elementary school years and the bittersweet leaving of them behind; the raucous crowds of Ganesh Chaturthi and the protracted, silent hibernation of strict pandemic lockdowns; family milestones coming of age, the ageless passing of family to the beyond.

We came back into this hive of human motion, tolerance, and diversity on a Saturday night and took up a table at our favorite pizza joint in the shadow of our former residential tower. We strolled the old sidewalks and glimpsed the modernization taking place in the neighborhood we called home.

We returned to Marine Drive during a brief dry break in a heavy monsoon, retracing our first steps in a city that would shape us, ordered up dinner at an old Lebanese haunt.

We ate biryani lunch with the people who made the first time feel like home even when official duty exacted its toll, a great reunion and reminder that service to the republic includes service to each other, relationships forged riding the grind with empathy, compassion, and humor.

We celebrated our anniversary with a revered dish and flowers from our sons who navigated new streets and linguistic barriers to surprise us; met old mentors, coaches, helpers, and friends.

We marveled at miles of new-poured concrete, new flyways and a coastal road tunnel, a city propelled to rebuild at fourfold its frenetic pre-pandemic pace.

Old vendors greeted us, our two-year absence no match for four years of stopping by to sample treats and say hello.

Six years ago we first arrived. Two years ago we left. Five days back we returned, and tomorrow we depart again.

And when our flight ascends over old Bombay, we’ll look upon the bustle below knowing we remain a part of it, our place in that familiar, driven, jostling city as secure in our minds as favorite lines of verse, the dreams we harbor, the inside stories that make us family even when time is tight, space is narrow, and the food too rich for our stretched bellies.

Mumbai, you strange and wonderful and electric city: we miss you again already. But not for long!

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