Out-of-town girl

Once upon a time, I was a South Mumbai brat – in those days it was called South Bombay, aka SoBo. I drove myself around, went out later in the night than I do now and did the culture circuit with much enthusiasm. Then we moved out of town to a distant ’burb and my life changed. Going out had to be planned carefully, coordinated with a lot of people and chores and made into an outing rather than just a quick dash hither or yon. For a short while I felt disconnected, like I was some kind of pariah, but then it became the ideal existence: when I wanted to be met or seen or whatever, I could be, but when I didn’t feel like the social buzz, I could trot out the excuse of being too long a commute home, so please could we do a raincheck. And, as everyone knows, rainchecks rarely happen. When I started driving into work every day, albeit with a driver doing the driving rather than myself steering through the commonly hideous traffic, it became a driving (he he he) need to get home and out of the melee instead of lingering to chat or party or dine. I just wanted to get out of the herd of vehicles all heading for somewhere, one presumes, and get to where I was going, where life was quiet and sane and stable. Home.

Somewhere along the way, I lost all my need to be social. People were an occasional buzz, not a constant for my existence, there was no need to see them, look at them, hear them, talk to them, eat with them, et al, not so often anyway. The special ones will always be there for you, I was told by a wise gentleman, who was, as he always has been, right. They are. We hear the call, mutually, and fix up to meet, greet, eat. And giggle, of course. Their work lives and my dislike of being tied to anything except what I want to be tied to helps to keep this meeting-greeting-eating judiciously spaced, so that we have things to talk about and the affection grows instead of fading into well-worn and tired tolerance.

But these days there is another reason for me not to want to travel the distance into town. Yes, we all know that it is not that much of a distance and I have a very comfortable car, a good driver and not much else to do – and thus use as an excuse – but the road into the city from where I live is now almost impassable, which makes it all a good reason to stay home, work from the family study and tele-communicate if required. Everywhere there is something being dug up, for what reason I cannot say. Sometimes it is said to be a flyover bridge, other times it is cited as being telephone cables or water pipes being replaced, occasionally it is a resurfacing job. But it makes the hour or so long drive into the parts of town that I normally frequent a far more tedious and arduous one, stretching it to sometimes even three times the duration. There are hold ups and hang-ups, waits and watches, with honking and horning, yelling and screaming, with the infrequent fist fight in a nearby slum to break the monotony of sitting in a car looking blankly out and nodding gently to the beat of the music on the car stereo.

My city is being destroyed to rebuild it again, made worse to make it better, for the goodness knows how many-th time. But somewhere along the way I am glad it is happening. Not only will it, hopefully, bring in a new and improved drive, but also gives me the perfect reason not to do that drive…not for now, at least!