In conversation with Bombay

"Walking on Marine Drive from Charni Road,

Looking back on all those memories I horde,

My best friend and our long walks,

Those endless conversations and mindless talks,

I sit now, on the promenade,

On the horizon, I watch the sun fade,

I smile, wryly, at the metaphor,

Nostalgic tears that clear my memory but make the sunset a blur,

This is where, long ago, my tryst with Bombay had once begun,

This is where, now, I begin my farewell to this wonderful city, watchin’ the setting sun…"

‘What are you talking about? How can you be leaving now?’

‘Well, I think I have reached the end of whatever little part of my journey I needed to make with you. Reckon I’ve taken as much as I can out of you. It’s time to throw in the towel.’

‘No you haven’t. You still haven’t reached your goals or achieved anything of what you had set out to achieve. How can you be leaving any of that incomplete? You still have a long way to go…’

‘No, I haven’t achieved anything of what I had set out to achieve…and that is the reason I must leave now. I haven’t come anywhere close to achieving any part of what I had set out to get for myself. I cannot allow myself to go on this way. I know when I am beaten…It’s time to make a fresh start now and I know it has to be far away from you…it has been a long journey with you. Lots of good memories to take away, a bunch of lessons learnt that only you could’ve taught. I am grateful, I truly am. But I cannot carry on anymore…’

‘You’re on your way there! You’re so close on almost all fronts! How can you think of quitting now? You’re just being unreasonable. Stop being a cry baby and gather yourself, you aren’t going anywhere. Life is long…very long! Stick around and fight it here with me. You chose me…don’t leave now!’

‘I chose you for all the wrong reasons…all the wrong reasons that once again brought me on the same crossroads as before…story of my life - right place, wrong time… It’s always been that ways between us, right from the beginning. It always promised to be an intense love story with it’s fair share of trials and tribulations but it hasn’t been a rosy romance. I’m always in a love-hate relationship with you and lately, it hasn’t been good. You make me weak…I must go.’

‘You’re being stubborn. Who doesn’t have a love-hate relationship? You need to hang in there, you can’t be running away like this…especially not now. Whatever happened to all your beliefs and all that mad aggression and love?’

‘Hahaha! Love? Love! Love… I saw it first with you! I lost it without you! I came running to you hoping to find it again! But I’ve lost it now…the love you once knew doesn’t exist in here anymore…I need to find it again and I cannot find it with you…I cannot find it here. It is the reason I must leave!’

‘Your love will always lie here with me…what are you denying that for? Ever since the first time, has it not always been here, at the sunset that you’ve lived it up? What would you do away from here? The sun sets in the west not in the east! You’d never go anywhere else! Whom are you kidding?’

‘Myself, I guess…and I truly believe I must for now. Maybe it’s a mistake but like all the other times before this, I must make this one too…how would I know it’s a mistake if I didn’t try to work it and find out for myself! When I did choose you, I chose you for all the wrong reasons…that was a mistake too! But a beautiful one…a mistake that I’ll cherish all my life! I need to make another now…’

‘You’re not talking any sense…I won’t bid you farewell, for I know you shall return soon. I can only wish you luck and hope you have the strength and courage to gather yourself again…

Sometimes we think we’ll be together forever,

That we won’t have say our good-byes, ever,

But we forget that nothing ever remains the same,

And people leave for the same reasons they came…”

'I thought too that I wouldn’t say good-bye,

That parting with you would never be a reason for me to cry,

But life I’ve learnt loves playing with irony,

And the end of our journey together, now do I see,

I lived believing ‘In the remnants, my strength I shall find,’

But I’m weak today, ‘cause it’s me that’s leaving it all behind!'