Welcome

The bright mid-day sun rays tend to literally blind you as you try to peep outside the window. Up ahead you see the magnificent mountain range that you are just about to cross. The fluffy cloud formations, stationary on top of the mountains, ensure that the passage through them would be safe, but definitely not smooth!

Once you cross the mountains, you come across vast green pastures. The sad thing you, however, notice is that these beautiful green patches are rapidly decreasing as a result of the so-called 'Developmental Activity' that every city needs. Travel a little further and you get to see the outcome of this activity in terms of houses, apartments, malls. Buildings springing up at every nook and corner. Some only a few storeys' long, the rest - tall enough to be called 'skyscrappers'

As we pass these structures we notice a wide river, lazily meandering away right in the middle of this maze of development. A few bridges built across its' shores enable people to move about, without waking it up. On one the those bridges, you notice the famous yellow and brown coloured local train, carrying people, ten times it capacity, chugging along quietly.

As you travel further, the maze of skyscrappers continue for a while and then suddenly give way to hordes of little hutments. Thousands, if not lakhs of huts, touching and occasionally even overlapping each other in a tiny area on the ground tend to surround you from every direction. A blue plastic sheet is seen on every alternate roof to try and prevent the water from dripping in when the rain gods shower their fury over the city.

You see a small alley in which some people are dancing to the beats of the 'nashik dhol'. Behind them you notice a couple of guys carrying the idol of our very own Ganpati Bappa. 

You start to wonder where you have reached when suddenly the hutments stop at a tall wall with a fence above it. The other end of the wall seems barren for a while until your eyes fall on a wide winding road. A Jet Airways flight make a turn on this road, ready for takeoff. A few seconds later your flight lands with a loud thud and comes to a screeching halt.

The lady on the microphone announces - "Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Mumbai's Chatrapati Shivaji International Terminus"

The year 2012 was the first year in my lifetime that I didnot come home. I wasn't particularly proud of that, but, on the 29th of August when I finally landed in the city after two years, I couldn't have expected a more dramatic welcome!!