Snippets:

Surprisingly I haven’t seen any cows on the streets here. Weaving through herds, being attacked by bulls, road-blocks by an entire family, lost calves…. were the ways of life in Delhi. A bovine-free road seems like a foreign concept to me. Come to think of it, with so many open fields, trees, parks and weekly vegetable markets, they have a field day there….out here they would probably be run over by the traffic or people.
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The crows outside our building starts to crow precisely at 1230 at night….without fail everyday.
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Delhi’s autowallahs always made me mad but like everybody else, I had also submitted to their dishonest ways. But my blood boils and I froth at the mouth when I find dishonest auto or taxi wallahs here who are out to rip your pocket. Perhaps finding an honest city turning dishonest is far worse than knowing that a city is absolutely dishonest to begin with. It hurts to see the city changing so.
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I got a chance to travel the famous Bombay-Pune Expressway in day-time. I kept waiting for the scene to turn beautiful but it seemed to turn exactly its opposite. Hoarding all along the way, grotesque looking buildings stretching way into the hills – all in the name of luxury living in the lap of nature. In a few years time, there will be no nature, only man made disasters. I shudder at the very thought.
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First it was the cellphone with ear-plugs. Now it’s the I-pod. Everybody out here seems to be plugged. In the train, while crossing a street, in the car, while working. I am one of those few people who hate to change especially when it comes to technology. But now I have realized its importance – long and arduous traveling. I miss the long drives around Delhi in my car with windows closed, listening to music and getting lost in my own world.

In Delhi, people are in groups mostly. Out here, it’s the rule of the single. With an I-pod plugged in the ears….lost in their own world, part of a crowd yet completely apart, hurrying to work, home or a party…or hurrying through life….trying to find those few moments of peace…through music.

Maybe that’s what defines the Bombay of today.