Diary of a Lost Wanderer - Lost & Found

Dear Diary,

I fell in love with Mumbai when I first visited it in 1995. Bombay, as it was then known, fascinated me since then. 

If you ask me what made me fall in love with this city, I perhaps cannot explain. It wasn't that I was seeing the sea for the first time. It wasn't even the biggest city I had been to till then. Still, there was something so magical about this place.

The trip was a short one lasting less than a week but this city now had my heart. Years later, I arrived here all alone on my first solo trip in 2005 and fell in love all over again. I got my first job and was required to come to Mumbai frequently. The local trains, the chaos on the roads, the crowds, the humdrum, the salty smell in the air, the stale air- everything about this city was intoxicating for me. 

I experienced heartbreak for the first time in 2007 and I remember longing to be in Mumbai. I couldn't for various reasons but after that year, every time my heart hurt, I rushed to Mumbai. This city soothed me in so many ways. I wrote love songs to this city, scribbled sonnets, and gushed like a kid every time I took a taxi. Staring out of the window, this city appeared new to me every time I visited it.

Over time I made friends in the city who were surprised at my knowledge of the city's whereabouts despite not having lived here ever. I  blamed the books and movies I consumed. For me, Mumbai was an independent character. Be it Manto's Mumbai or the Mumbai Hindi films showed - Mumbai was my official love. 

Circa 2015 I moved to Mumbai and life took a drastic turn. Suddenly the charm and the magic of this city vanished. I lived 20 minutes away from the beach. I woke up to the chaotic music of this city and was a part of the very crowds I loved watching earlier. And yet nothing could make my heart happy.

This felt so much like getting married to the person you love and discovering a new person altogether. "You are not the person I fell in love with!" was what I wanted to scream to this city. My voice would have drowned in the noise of life that I had once found rhythmic. 

Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else. ― Italo Calvino

Somewhere in 2018, I moved out of Mumbai and that is when I realised that I had left my heart in that city. I briefly lived in Sydney a city I found so eerily similar to Mumbai because of the beaches, the salty air, and the crowds. But my heart still craved for a home.

On a cold January night in 2020, I watched Manto, the Nawazuddin Siddique-starrer made on the famous Urdu novelist, and realised, how much he loved Mumbai. He grew with this city, changed along with it, and pined for it till his last breath. 

That is when I thought do I feel the same for Mumbai? Though I fell in love with it in 2005, I came to live here in 2015. Almost a decade after my first solo trip and still I cannot call it home. What is that makes me feel so homeless constantly? I found joy in this city and yet it feels like an awkward stranger now. I used to have a huge crush on this city, like a pining lover I would write love sonnets and couplets for it. I even remember writing long letters addressed to it, as if, it was a real person. 

However, one thing that still remains constant is its ability to heal me. Today I can proudly say Mumbai healed me, like it always did. Like I always knew it would. It's just maybe my craze for it has gone down, now that I live here or perhaps, I don’t see that side of this city which I had fallen in love with before. Is this what happens when you begin to live with the person you love? Do you slowly fall out of love? 

Image Source: Unsplash

Home. A feeling I have always longed for and never found. Though in many ways this city gives me a sense of belonging, there is still something amiss. I cannot exactly point my finger as to what is it. I only know the abyss within my heart refuses to be filled.  

Last week I longed to be in the city where I spent my childhood and that is when I realised the feeling of missing isn’t about a place or a person, it is about the feeling of familiarity. You miss the comfort that familiarity brings along. The feeling of being known and to know. Every turn and twist on the streets are known, every pothole on the road seems familiar while every nook and corner seems to have places that are welcoming. The food and their aroma, the shops selling them, the shopkeepers, the autowallahs, the random strangers on the streets – everything is known. And it is this familiarity that you long for! There is no home per se, it is just a bunch of familiar feelings that you crave. 

I miss that sense of familiarity in this city. No one knows me. I don’t know anyone. I don’t have any favourite hangout places or favourite food joints. I have no friends or acquaintances. In a way, I don’t exist on the sociographic map of this city. 

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Time to get a new set of markers and turn into a cartographer. Create new memories. Discover new lanes. Spot new hideouts. Leave behind some signs for my future self to discover. And to let this city know me, the way I know it. 

Lost and Waiting to be Found,

Me

For those who are lost, there will always be cities that feel like home. ― Simon Van Booy