city spirit

I don't know how long you have been in mumbai but i did not really like it very much. Saw the riots, the flooding and then the train blasts..and what disturbed me most was the fact that most Mumbaikars turn "Comfortably Numb". Nothing wrong with the people, it's just the ruthless city life. But i admire how much they love mumbai.. i always used to get into heated discussions if I ever said anything even remotely bad about mumbai :) then I made peace with my frnds. By the end of my 9 month stay, i started appreciating a lot..

well talking of mumbai, people say Dubai is just like mumbai (albeit a lot cleaner and a much meaner version)... I can see why people say so. Both are a city of dreams. but not really a place you would like to live for ever. People from around the world come in here to make a quick buck, and I think they do. They change a bit in the process and think they have hit that equilibrium but the city keeps working on them and they keep changing ever so slowly without realizing. Some face their moment of truth and leave, but others are consumed by the spirit of the city. I could never understand the people who used to wake up at 4am and take a 3 hr journey in a local to work and spend the same number of hours to go back. But then I was to see the same thing over and over again. Whether San Francisco or Dubai, or if I may say so any big city, the conditions are not vey different.

People start before the day breaks and reach late in the night... at least 4 hours spent in traffic/commutation. But still they swear this is a good life. My reaction when I first saw those slums in Mumbai was that of disbelief and the only question that kept nagging me was that 'Cant these people find livelihood anywhere else". Even if they go back to their villages at least they would be able to get food and at least a decent place to live. Something simillar works on my mind when I hear of the hard life in these "city of dreams"

May be it is not easy to understand unless you live through a simillar experience. Afterall, here I am in Dubai and my life in Banglore seems like a kings life compared to this. May be people in these crazy cities create their tiny universe around them and do everything to preserve it. How someone rationlizes it is really a wonder of human mind, but i think everyone strives to reach an equilibrium between what he thinks he wants and what has.