Bombay; Nostalgia and regrets

I hated b'bay the first year I lived here. To know her is to love her. To love her you have to do her. I must say that I've rarely found myself so welcome and at home in any other place except for London which comes mighty close. Thanks to S.? Maybe, but probably more to do with how accents and mannerisms are judged there. Yes, being elitist has its charms when you are one of the elite as a friend reminded me.

Today a stranger I met (typical of India - friend of a friend of a friend) told me that he thought I must be nuts if I came willingly to India to make my career instead of staying in the US. Thinking coldly about it, I still think I would have done the same things except for the move to Ahmedabad which smacked of desperation. What should I have done instead? Learnt to code and build my prototype myself - which is what I'd set out to do until misguided by techie cousins who thought that "coding can be done by anyone".

Was I nuts to move back to India? Possibly. Did I lose everything I came back for? For the most part, yes. Beefy, I loved you so very much. Your death suicide made me lose faith in life itself. I no longer live. I just survive. Why? I don't even know. I feel like a projectile hurtling down towards a bad end that is inevitable. But why won't I choose your path? Because I know the pain you left behind. You were always weaker than I was.

Time is immutable. So my target of $6.4Bn seems like a mirage. What would that accomplish? It is no longer a case of sour grapes but simply a reordering of priorities? Do I still care about M.? Yes. Is she more important than Beefy was? No. My poor li'l beefy, I should have told you that the more attention I was paying M. the less it meant because I was just compensating for the brief time that M. and I had together. Nothing more. You were and always will be more important in my mind.

But to b'bay and the city that was part of the alienation of my sis and her destruction. To know b'bay you have to really engage. To enjoy the +ves and go easy on the -ves. It is easy to criticize this city. But pack 300-400 people in a bar and see them happy - that vibe alone is worth life the other 120 hrs of the work week. Go take a walk around the old villages and see their life in the old mould and that is when you love b'bay. B'bay, like many other cities, is what you make of it. There are sub-cultures that you can be a part of or enjoy without being immersed in them.

I can see why Beefy was unhappy here. I can also see why she didn't find it fun when I took her out for a beer. She was of an aesthete as as I am. Being merely middle class was not a situation that rested on her easy - particularly when faced with the patent unjustness in the world as she saw it - idiots doing far better than her "brilliant brother" whom she adored.

Today was the first time I was at a watering hole that I'd taken her. I didn't really have fun but I still managed to strike up a couple of new friendships. That is what really matters. People who are acquaintances today might well be good friends tomorrow and best friends the day after in a big city. That is part of the fun. I'd even go further and say that is most of the fun.

I miss you Beefy and I wish so very much that things were different. That I'd stayed behind instead of going out to brunch, that I'd taken you out for dinner instead of going out for dinner with a friend, that I'd taken the high road instead of feeling slighted by you. I love you very very much and hope you are well. I am an agnostic and increasingly leaning towards being an atheist because if there was a God (god?) he (she?) is so patently unjust that he/she doesn't deserve to be one.

This isn't a letter. But I still feel like signing off as if this were addressed to you. So,

Love,
Your Bro.