“Ashfaq, Ijaaz, Zarina, Meghana, Rakesh, Chaitanya, Hemant, Amandeep, Harpreet, Ryan, Munni, Suzanne, Kayzad, Parinaz”

Do you know them? _____ Do I know them? _____ What are their last names?

Aren’t the first names obvious enough?

All of them have one thing in common, they are all around you. Either sitting next to you, talking to you, standing beside you, some with their headphones on, hauling a taxi, a rickshaw or standing at a car window with a bunch of colour books, who aren’t even aware of the spelling of the word “colour”

We find all of them at one place every day, someone sitting, someone standing, someone hanging. They know what they all are to each other, but none of them know who any of them are.

They are us and we are them and I am them. I, They and We is Mumbai. From the school buses and the “Drive Slow” yellow Omni Vans taking to school to A crowded local train with the daily mix match of aromas. Parachute Coconut Hair Oil, Ponds Powder, a whiff of a drunkard lying at the door of the compartment, contrasting with A pierre cardin cologne and a head and shoulder’s conditioner. This is Mumbai, where people aren’t classified by their faces, names and surnames but by the wide diversification of smells.

A late night open jeep night out with a group of friends alongside the Marine Lines on their right and on left an empty BEST bus with a fatigued driver and conductor on their way to the depot, its last stop.

An over speeding Mercedes coming down the road with a stack of hundreds in the glove compartment, and a patrol car waiting at the end of the road with an officer on duty standing with an empty wallet in his uniform’s back pocket. This is Mumbai.

A man with tears in his eyes, while receiving the keys to his new sea facing flat, for which he had been saving his entire lifetime. And a woman wipes the tears of a man with her tattered shawl who just lost his home where he stayed his entire lifetime to a high tide. This is Mumbai.

They say Mumbai is a city where your dreams come true, but even today the majority is of broken dreams. The Necklace gives you hope and the sea swallows your rejection, that’s why after the mandatory panorama pictures of the Marine Lines, you have a one on one conversation with the sea. This is Mumbai.

And the GVK barricades passed by, and finally came to a halt. I had my headphones in my bag this time. My phone on silent. It was our last time together before I left. She had promised not to cry. The moment I took my passport and ticket out, she couldn’t hold it back. It rained in December.