A farewell to Mumbai

I feel strange writing this post because for the last 11 years I've lived in Mumbai I've spent a lot of the time cribbing about the city, comparing it to Delhi and Bangalore which i prefer and generally finding fault with mostly everything in this city. Yes it has more than its fair share of problems- pollution, overcrowding, lack of facilities, small schools, nothing for kids to do in the weekend etc etc but I've spent a significant phase of my life here with so many varied experiences that I find myself getting quite emotional at the time of farewell. My experiences have been on three main levels

Family : This is where the hubby and I rented out first house together and set up the house together. It was a 2 bhk in Bandra (near Bandra village) and it had a funny second room, connected through the kitchen. But the hall was large and the wind circulation was amazing in the hall. We were so excited about moving in together after marriage, we had a housewarming party and called over a varied group of friends and the evening was spent with two groups sitting in two separate sides of the hall (one with the hubby's colleagues) and one with my college friends. My brother and the hubby's sister in law visited us in this house and I remember my brother walking down to the chatwalla outside our flats and eating a bhelpuri and me getting all stressed that it wouldn't be hygienic enough for his US returned tummy. My sis in law had come for the IIT fest and she has the same sleeping disorder (I call it that!) that the hubby does which is not being able to hear anything when they are sleeping. One afternoon I had given her the key to the house, and when i returned early she was asleep and didn't hear the door ringing for quite some time. So i had to sit in a neighbours house for an hour till she woke up! The next exciting event on the house front was our buying our own flat in Mumbai. It was a 3 bhk TDR flat meaning the society was not so great, but inside the flat was quite spacious and could be made bigger if you enclose the balconies. We loved our house from inside (we ended up hating the society and our neighbours and ultimately had to sell the flat) and had done up each room with a different design. The hall had an orange colour with gold flowers on it, and we had put up our collection of masks on a wooden plank over the wall. The entertainment room had one side with a 3D cube design and the other side had glass panelling for our books and DVD collection. One of the bedrooms had a sand finishing on the walls where we stuck the seashells the hubby had picked up on a beach in Pattaya. Later that was made the room where S slept with us and we bought a slidedown curtain with a white teddy bear design on blue background. The main bedroom did not have a specific paint motif, but we had cane pull down curtains on the windows and a small cane sheet on one of the walls to give the room an airy look. Over time we extended the outside of the hall and made it into a balcony and S spent many a happy hour in the balcony looking at the birds, waving at the neighbours in the opposite house and generally running up and down. It was in Mumbai that both our children were born. S was born in this house and I remember bringing S home from the nursing home, and my mom doing a small pooja at the door, and us putting S to bed in the Moses basket inside the crib. The hubby had bought a rocking chair for me to feed S (never mind that that ended up another story) and it was a cosy comfortable room for S and us to sleep in. S took her first crawl, first climb, first fall, second steps (first in Hyderabad Ajji's house) and spoke her first words in this house. Her favourite was the balcony and she would keep running up and down the balcony, hjiding behind the window and playing peek a boo with us. The drawing room was her toy room, and the entertainment room turned out to be her entertainment room as well and she used to love jumping from the sofa onto the hubby lounge chair and sliding down. I miss that house . A was born after we sold our flat and shifted into another appartment down the road. This had a separate toy room for the kids and did they enjoy it. S was forever playing teacups, playing clay, asking to be read books, doing puzzles in that room and A would keep crawling and later walking around the room, more or less keeping herself entertained. We had a small swing also set up in the balcony of our bedroom and both kids used to love swinging on it. S went to her first playschool in Mumbai, and to her first main school.She loved her main school - the children in her class, her teacher and the activities and looked forward to going to school daily. I personally found the school a challenge to pick up and drop S- it was very crowded as the entire area was a school complex and most of the schools would commence and finish at the same time. But S loved it and she learnt a lot in her one year there. To sum, our family started in Mumbai and there are many cherished memories of the time spent here

Work: My entire professional life (bar a 2 months summer placement at the end of first year at B school) has been in Mumbai. The first two years, we were living in a chummery provided by our employers and given that the employer had recruited a ton of us from our B school it felt like an extended campus stint. We were too junior in the organisation to have any real responsibilities and were the general dogsbody for any flunky work which no one else wanted to do. It was great fun, living independently, earning your first salary, meeting clients, gossipping about your colleagues. Our chummery was in way in the suburbs and the daily commute to office was close to an hour, and the weekend commute to reach a good theatre was more than a hour and a half. But we didn;t really mind. We were young, enthusiastic and really independent for the first time. Our team in office was pretty close knit, and office was a fun place, despite the long hours. The work was interesting and I got to work on many different kinds of transactions. Then after a couple of years, I started getting frustrated. My ratings were not great as I didnt get along well with the big boss, and I was lagging behing in promotions. Our group's focus also shifted and it was no longer a happening department in the company. Most of my colleagues had moved to other more interesting roles or left the company. I asked for and got a role change, but found i didnt like the role much. I shifted to another company. Hated it. Hated the boss and the job and daily thought about quitting. Somehow hung on. Then about 51/2 years back I moved to another company, in a different role and have not looked back since. I really liked my job, liked the team and my boss. I got to work on very interesting transactions, and while the hours were long I didn;t mind since the hubby was also a workaholic like me, and I was getting recognition for the work i put in. I found that I could imagine myself doing my boss role about 10 years down the line and that is the kind of role I really wanted to prepare myself for, which was a first for me, because in the previous organisations and roles, I didn't aspire to reach the senior role. But after having S, I found that the work timings were not sustainable, and while the organisation was amazing enough to give me flexi time for 3 months after my 6 months maternity leave, I found that after A was born that it was getting very difficult to manage work and kids. Firstly the job had become less exciting and secondly I felt I could not contribute my best working for the limited hours I could put in. The Zurich posting for the hubby came at an opportune time. Before I could get too frustrated at my job, and enabling me to quit while the memories were still good. So I hung up my working boots in Mumbai, who knows where and when I'll be working again.

Friends: I was lucky to have some of my closest college and post grad friends in Mumbai with me, for most of my time here. Lucky because I feel you make the best friends you have while you're growing up, and share so many experiences, and also because I'm really quite bad at making new friends. Over the last 11 years there have been so many occasions and times to meet and celebrate, and so many other memories of time spent together. Some occasions which readily come to mind are -the initial birthday celebrations in the Kandivli flats of all the flatmates (the suprise parties thrown), the get togethers in Kandivli when our batchmates from out of Mumbai were in town, the suprise bachelor party (post marriage) thrown for me by myfriends, my suprise baby shower at home, a baby shower we threw for our friend, a bachelor party for a friend at Hard Rock, a suprise birthday party for another friend at Tasting Room, my second baby shower, my farewell party, Holi at Kandivli, then the latest Holi with kids (so very different, yet both so much fun!), Diwali cards parties, train rides to town to watch movies, all night drinking and gossip sessions, movies, girls nights out, taboo, dinners, kids birthday parties..the list is endless. My only regret is that for the period when I was initially married, and later when S was born I couldnt make the time to meet my friends as much. But over the last few months (aided by some very good maids to look after the children) I have been able to meet them more often, and again when I find myself comfortable and back in the groove, I need to move on. I know, looking after 2 kids alone is not going to give me much time for socialising, but there's something to be said for picking up the phone and bitching to a good friend, or even being able to catch a cup of coffee, or a late drink after the kids are asleep with someone who is you friend, and not your husband's colleague, or your child's friends mom, who are likely to be the only friends I'm going to be making in the next few years. I will miss you guys, and hope to see you in Zurich sometime soon.