Amchi Mumbai

Aamchi Mumbai

It’s been more than two years in Mumbai since I landed on this land in November 2012. Now the time has come to leave this wonderful place which I found very accommodative and lively.

 I had come here earlier also but for a very brief duration. First, when I was in my 10^th class and we visited Mumbai for a day with family. My father is in Postal department and like other government departments, preferred way to visit any place is through LTC (Leave travel Concession). We on-boarded a bus and for a month that was our house. We visited west India, south India and Mumbai was one of them. My childhood fantasy about Mumbai was created through bollywood films. I still remember gateway of India which I visited then. It was not that much crowded at that time than I found this time. I now experience that we have a billion+ nation.

Second, when I was returning from Oman and my connecting flight was via Mumbai. I stayed at airport for roughly 4 hours and did not get opportunity to experience Mumbai. However I saw the airport was surrounded by slums, touching with airport boundary wall and found it very horrible. Democracy has been understood by some as “Junglecracy”! Meaning of democracy is not about to keep everyone happy and let peoples do whatever they want to do…it’s about prevailing of voice of righteous minds and implementation of ideas for the welfare of whole society. But in our country, democracy is being leaded by wrong minds thus we see wrong things at places. Democracy is very dependent on good leaders otherwise it’s doomed to be failed as we see in other parts of world.

Other opportunity to be in Mumbai I got through a job offer from Capgemini and I had to join in Mumbai in November 2012. Leaving home in Indrapuram was difficult decision for me. My native town is near to Noida, so it is favorable to be near to home town. That’s still a mystery for me also why I left HCL???? Perhaps there are certain events which happen in one’s life without reason or we don’t know why they happen? In my life this phenomenon is quite dominating. Several things are there in my life which I don’t know why they happened with me? But the fact of the matter is they happened and I accepted them rather fighting with them. Many times I feel that there is someone who helps me or who makes situations which in future turn out to be favorable to me. Who so ever you are….Hey unknown well wisher….Kindly accept my heartily gratitude…I assure you I will also in return help out needy peoples…..

I came to Mumbai by Mumbai Rajdhani train and off-boarded at Mumbai central station. It was November morning with quite little cold air. Though in Mumbai there is no winter session but in November-December weather becomes little bit cold from Mumbai perspective but not from north perspective. I hired a taxi for Godrej Hill Side Colony in Vikhroli where guest house was provided to me.

My first interaction was with Taxi driver: I don’t remember his name but I remember his religion. He was Christian. He was very jolly kind of and typically “Mumbaiaa”. I experienced that in Mumbai peoples make you fool by showing over friendliness. I than realized this typical personality cult of Mumbai peoples. In Delhi and Banaglore, Taxi drivers usually don’t have smile on face while trying to extract as much as fare. They have cunningness on their face and very first impression you get is not friendly any way. But in Mumbai, Tax drivers will make you believe that he is the only best friend and you end up paying extra. The fact is, You pay extra in Delhi also but the feeling of goodness does not come over there but in Mumbai you will pay extra with feeling of goodness.

Something is there in Mumabi which don’t make peoples aggressive in behavior….may be sea breeze that comes out from Arabian sea has that secret…………I have seen in locals, Buses, on the roads, I did not see “Road-ism” like we usually experience in Delhi/NCR.

Mumbai is very accommodative..so the peoples are. It is a mini India. Peoples of each and every corner not only of india but I found peoples are here from all of the Indian sub-continent countries. It’s really a financial capital of India.It seems that  Godess Laxmi herself braces this city through “Maha laxmi” temple.

I stayed for few days in guest house which was in godrej Hill side colony. It was very good place full of greenery and with very small rooms. That’s another feature of Mumbai. Greenery I found its comparable as Bangalore but Room size or house size relatively small. Most of the families live in 600-800 sqft area. But as I mentioned above peoples are accommodative and they live peacefully. Not like Delhi or north where houses are usually big but not the hearts of peoples living there. Reason for that is In Mumbai peoples are broad minded and in a family most of the peoples are in job. So they don’t get time to find other’s mistakes and start fighting. This job culture keeps families without family issue. Thus most of the family issue I saw not between in laws and spouse but there are family disputes majorly between spouses. Maximum divorcee I first time seen in Mumbai only. That’s a saddest part. I many times think about their children’s who suffers most. It’s a crash of our civilization.The country where wife fast entire day even without water, just for the sake of husband, increase in divorce cases shows how culturally we are downgraded though economically upgraded. “Hey Prabhu…..May there be peace everywhere”

After staying in guest house I shifted to one PG near to office in Vikhroli area. Entire Vikhroli is godrej. Some far sighted one in Godrej family bought as much land during colonial period and now that entire land is multibillion dollar worth. My office environment was not as I expected. I experienced that there is little what regionalism and peoples who born and brought up here or who belongs to this land remain in a kind of group. Getting merged in that is bit tough. In Kolkata I did not experience such things.

Another thing which mesmerized me here in Mumbai is Locals train. I found it one of the complex sub urban railway networks, one of the most crowded transport systems. It’s a life line of Mumbai. If it stops, Mumbai stops. I admire it and feel proud on developing such system in India. During peak hours, you may find peoples inside these trains which would be more than the total population of some European countries. Despite being overcrowded, Peoples usually don’t fight with other, unlike Delhi metro system. Peoples are really peace loving. They are very business minded and do not keep bad thoughts in mind. This makes it one of the safest places for women. I myself travelled in locals with family and had no issue of any type.

As far as city infrastructure is concerned, I feel that it’s overcrowded. Entire city looks like city of slums and flags of political parties / Muslims. It seems that city is being run by them. I feel that we need iron hand to fix these peoples/organizations who are misusing democracy. They do not perform any duties of whatsoever type but always first to demand their right.

After couple of Months, I brought my family with me and started living at Ghansoli, navi Mumbai. My flat was mountain facing and in front of Ghansoli railway station. Every day I used to bless by seeing rising sun coming out of mountains…giving message “Tamso Ma Jyotirgamay…………”

My son Madhav learned here cycling and running. He came here when he was 2 yrs old. He is very active and just after coming here he learned cycling. I had to buy a cycle for him. We got him enrolled in a local play school “Euro Kids” and was one of naughtiest child, his teacher used to say.

Society where we stayed was typical part of Mumbai. Peoples were peace loving and very cooperative. In our indrapuram society, peoples I found very arrogant and prone to fight. But here it was quite different and that’s why we started loving Mumbai. My wife liked it very much and she never wanted to return to Delhi.

Swami Vivekananda.....beautiful article by S Gurumurthy

Sisters and brothers of America’. These five words that issued from the lip of the young Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda set the 6,000 strong audience of academics, intellectuals and spiritualists on fire at Chicago on September 11, 1893 at the first World Parliament of Religions. Rev John Henry Burrows, Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago and a chief organiser of the parliament, recorded that the audience went into rapture with ‘a peal of applause that lasted for several minutes’. After silence was restored, he delivered his historic address, comprising exactly 471 words, in two minutes. Vivekananda unveiled the Hindu view of universal validity of all faiths — an idea unknown to religions born outside India. He demolished the hidden agenda to get the parliament nod for Christianity as the superior, universal faith. Burrows was explicitly committed to the superiority of Christianity as the universal religion, to the Bible as the universal book and to Jesus Christ as the universal saviour. Admits James Ishmael Ford, of the First Unitarian Church as late as on February 22, 2009: “For many of the Christian and Unitarian organizers the barely hidden agenda was to show the superiority of Protestant Christianity. But that show was, by universal acknowledgment, totally and completely stolen by the swami from Calcutta.”

Unparalleled in elegance and eloquence, the young Hindu monk proudly thundered before the Parliament of Religions that Hindus ‘not just tolerate’ but ‘accept all faiths as true’; their ‘nation has sheltered persecuted peoples of all religions and all nations of the earth’; ‘gathered in its bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites who took refuge’ when their holy temple was shattered to pieces; ‘sheltered and still fosters the remnant of grand Zoroastrian nation’. He concluded that ‘sectarianism, bigotry and its horrible descendant, fanaticism’, ‘have filled the earth with violence, drenched it with human blood, destroyed civilisation, and sent whole nations to despair’; let the parliament be ‘the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen’. Vivekananda was just 30-years-old then. With no text or notes on hand, he spoke from within. He mesmerised the parliament. Burrows wrote: “Swami Vivekananda’s three speeches undoubtedly drew most attention from the American public.” A media comment was: ‘Vivekananda’s address before the parliament was broad as the heavens above us, embracing the best in all religions, as the ultimate universal religion’. Another comment was: ‘“That man a heathen!” said one, as he came out of the great hall, “and we send missionaries to his people! It would be more fitting that they send missionaries to us (America)”’. The Swami’s historic speech changed the global religious discourse forever.

He lived a little over eight years after he stormed America and spent half that period in India and the other half outside. In that short time, what he achieved for India, Hindu spiritualism and India’s Independence is immeasurable. His nationalist exhortations deified the nation, seeded the freedom movement and inspired great leaders. Mahatma Gandhi said that reading Vivekananda had made him love the country ‘hundred fold’. Jawaharlal Nehru saw the Swami as one of the great founders of the national movement, who inspired freedom fighters. Subhash Bose saw in Vivekananda “the spiritual father of modern nationalist movement”. Rajaji said that but for Vivekananda we would have lost our religion, not have gained our freedom; we owed everything to him”. Rabindranath Tagore said ‘if you want to know India, study Vivekananda’. Mystic nationalists like Maharishi Aurobindo and Subramanya Bharathi too were inspired by him. The British police, which repeatedly found Vivekananda literature in the possession of freedom fighters and revolutionaries, even mulled action against Ramakrishna Math. Vivekananda was the spiritual trigger for national freedom.

A rishi that he was, Vivekananda foresaw the rise of India a century before it began. When the world had written off the Hindu religion as worthless, Indian civilisation as dead, and Indians were slaves, the young seer said, “I do not see into the future; nor do I care to see. But one vision I see as clear as life before me is that the ancient mother has awakened once more, sitting on her throne more glorious than ever. Proclaim her to the entire world with the voice of peace and benediction.” The young sanyasi’s vision then would have been dismissed as brain disorder. Today as the nation is preparing for his 150th birth anniversary, like many other think-tanks have prognosticated, the National Intelligence Council of the United States said last month that, by 2030, India will overtake China and will emerge as one of the three world powers, with the US and China.

Turning to America that was fast rising then, Vivekananda prophetically told the Americans that they should import spiritualism from India to handle the ill-effects of their material prosperity. The rich America did not listen to the Indian mendicant. The result is that today half the American families are broken, 41 per cent of the US babies born are for unwed mothers, and 55 per cent of American first marriages, 67 per cent of the second and 74 per cent of the third marriages end in divorce — all indices of the huge spiritual crisis in the US. When Eleanor Stark wrote in her book The Gift Unopened that Vivekananda was the unique gift for the mankind that was still not opened, she was particularly true of the US.

Vivekananda repeatedly asserted that the core of India is religion and spirituality. A materially rising India needs to turn even more spiritual. The Supreme Court (in the Ayodhya case) approvingly referred to the Zakir Hussein Memorial Lecture of Shankar Dayal Sharma (President of India then) in which Sharma had said that ancient Indian thought provided for “developing Sarva Dharma Samabhav or secular thought “which enlightenment is the true nucleus of what is now known as Hinduism.” However, vote-bank politics of secularism is increasingly repudiating Hindu spiritual content. This threatens to de-Hinduise and de-spiritualise India.

The nation that Swami Vivekananda loved, breathed and gave his life for, is under great moral stress, with stinking corruption and shameless debauchery by public office holders. Today’s youth is angry, but directionless. A desperate nation is now recalling, and looking to, Vivekananda and his great thoughts for course correction. Today is the 150th birth anniversary of the patriotic monk. This is the occasion to reconnect the Indian youth to him. Posthumously, the young monk, still living in the hearts of Indians, is the most charismatic youth icon. Did he choose to die young at 39 to remain youthful ever, to inspire and guide the youth of India eternally?