We don't like change, we tend to prefer that with which we are accustomed. I was born in Mumbai and have been living here for more than 25 years - which reminds me that I am getting older - and oddly, I can't think of another place where I would happily move to... Sure, I may think in dreamy terms of a better city, but the massive upheaval that would ensue were I to move away is quite daunting.
This city is bursting at its seams, in-seams and even through the patchwork and fabric that makes this city what it is. Quality of life is rather poor on an absolute scale and one wonders why one ought to keep living in a city with which one is so familiar. Sure, there is great comfort in knowing one's surroundings, sub-culture and the general pace and flow of things.
But I want the ability to cycle at 6 pm on a Sunday. It's a simple desire, which if unmet will leave me mildly pricked, nothing more.
The industrial age norm of working 9 am to 5 pm has somehow transformed itself to 9 am to 7 pm because of an overpopulated and hyper-competitive country - and people take it for granted because there really is nothing that one can do to challenge that; it's how the capitalist system works. Survival of the fittest.
A repercussion of a long work day and a Saturday being included as a work day is a spill-over effect on people who work fewer hours - they are envied, ridiculed and laughed at. And that is OK. But it is poisonous. It is akin to straight people looking at gay people and saying that the gays are wrong. Funnily, it works the other way round too.
But why is it so difficult to think of leaving one's home? One's 'own' city?
I want to.
For a peaceful neighbourhood, for proximity to nature, for a more sparsely populated city, where individual rights are respected, where I can feel safe with whoever my family will be, where power is relatively even and it is still a city.
Don't know how people can afford a 2 Cr home here and be afraid of moving to a smaller, cheaper, nicer city? I have the question, don't have the answer.
This city is bursting at its seams, in-seams and even through the patchwork and fabric that makes this city what it is. Quality of life is rather poor on an absolute scale and one wonders why one ought to keep living in a city with which one is so familiar. Sure, there is great comfort in knowing one's surroundings, sub-culture and the general pace and flow of things.
But I want the ability to cycle at 6 pm on a Sunday. It's a simple desire, which if unmet will leave me mildly pricked, nothing more.
The industrial age norm of working 9 am to 5 pm has somehow transformed itself to 9 am to 7 pm because of an overpopulated and hyper-competitive country - and people take it for granted because there really is nothing that one can do to challenge that; it's how the capitalist system works. Survival of the fittest.
A repercussion of a long work day and a Saturday being included as a work day is a spill-over effect on people who work fewer hours - they are envied, ridiculed and laughed at. And that is OK. But it is poisonous. It is akin to straight people looking at gay people and saying that the gays are wrong. Funnily, it works the other way round too.
But why is it so difficult to think of leaving one's home? One's 'own' city?
I want to.
For a peaceful neighbourhood, for proximity to nature, for a more sparsely populated city, where individual rights are respected, where I can feel safe with whoever my family will be, where power is relatively even and it is still a city.
Don't know how people can afford a 2 Cr home here and be afraid of moving to a smaller, cheaper, nicer city? I have the question, don't have the answer.
