And so I was Mumbai-nized...

Who am I ? Well, just another alien whom the ‘City of many ‘ – dear Mumbai has engulfed , and made her very own dweller.
Why Am I penning this down ? When you see the ‘this can NEVER happen’ becoming true , in a much shorter time span , you get the killing urge to let the world know , it happened , you transformed , and belong here.

How is this different from what other

Victims have to say ?  Not at all, you see ’ Mumbai-nization’ results in pretty much the same symptoms in all its targets !

Two years ago, when I landed in Mumbai, I hated the very air I was breathing in. Occasional calls to my dear friends and family, cribbing , sobbing , and using every curse word I knew on the city , didn’t quiet calm me down. But then, the city worked its magic like it does to every other soul who dares to step on it, embalming me with its golden potion , and converting me into a Mumbai-kar .
I cannot fixate the change to a “the Date” ; Mumbai’s embalming process is pretty gradual .But it happened my dear friends , in every sense of the word – it DID.
How did I know I was transformed ? It’s simple , there’s a checkilist , and you know you are trapped once you’ve tick-marked most of them .
Here’s my very own checklist, on you know you are a Mumbai-kar when :

 üYou start craving for Vada-pavs ::  What 4 years of Pune did’nt do to me, an year of Mumbai did

 üFall in love with local-trains. And actually prefer them over any other mode of transport.

 üYou’d rather use your legs and walk up , than use your mouth to curse the traffic : Believe me , you’d rather  get down from the auto few steps before and walk than wait for the lights to go green.

 üYou run your breath to catch that last local, and even though you trip and hurt yourself , you are proud of the fact that you actually made it ! And the 1st word that came out of my mouth was “YAY” , rather than “Ouch”

 üWhat , you are not a Mumbai-kar – how dare you curse my city !! - You’d crib about the nuances of the city , yet if any of your Non-Mumbai-kar friends start doing the same, you feel offended and would jump to the other side , and go all “ga ga” with praises .

 üSea-Side Bliss all for Free - You’d prefer travelling an hour to enjoy your weekends just sitting at Marine Drive , rather than going to a fancy restaurant just few min from your door.

 üLiving in the rains : You become impervious to rains-rather thunderstorms. You learn to jump a little, take a right and a left , over those puddles, which earlier used to feel like an entire lake in itself , on your way to office.

  üHaggler of the Day :You become an expert in haggling , and beam with Pride , when you are able to get the price down to half.

 üShop till you drop;but of course @Sasta  : Well , you buy , even if you don’t have the space to keep a pin in your wardrobe. Make memory notes of stuff you liked while walking thorugh Colaba, and get the same when you next go to Linking Road , and save yourselves those few extra bucks

 üParty abhi Baki hai :You start entering the clubs at 11:00 pm ,and Wooa the party starts!

 üGhode ki Neend : You can sleep soundly , even with the all traffic noise buzzing through the window. Even when you are cramped up in a local.

   üScared of an empty street : You are no more afraid of the multitudinous roads , and you get a terrible sense of a disaster in progress on seeing an empty street.

 üEat what you desire  : You’d rather wait an hour to get into the restaurant you decided for the night , rather than take a ‘no-wait’ entry into the one next to it. I actually travelled all the way to Bandra to reach the original Candies!! WTF , I didn’t even know there were two more of these , before I made a rendezvous trip on their discovery.

Well, there is much more to add, but the above made me sure that I was infected with the disease. I call it a disease because that’s what my friends call it – for me it’s actually become a way of life. It’s not an infection, it’s a habit which I am happy to have picked up, a boundless love and adoration for the city , the “City of Dreams “ .

All in all , I can finally say – PROUD TO BE A MUMBAI-KAR !!