Jet Lagged, Listening to Leonard Cohen and Missing Bombay

The amateur photographer in me always wondered whether sunrises look any different from sunsets, aesthetically speaking. Not being a morning person traditionally, I knew I would never find out for myself. And then there was jet lag. My love affair with this romantic concept is very erratic. It's been six days since I've been back and yet the flirtation continues, alternating like the mood of a petite plump Madame in a seedy downtown Beijing whorehouse.

I have discovered a new soul-soother, impressive almost solely because of its lack of alcohol. It started unlike most love stories in real life do - at the first meeting. I marauded in after a usual satisfying but expensive lunch at the neighboring mall, conniving in my head for ways to pass the time till it was time to go home, and not think of any more ideas of selling nutritional drinks for children between the ages of 8 and 12. And then I heard him, in his guttural Dylanesqeness, singing about tea and oranges that come from China and about being somebody's man. And the immediate life was a little more bearable, much like when I had first heard Comfortably Numb. I have always maintained that the greatness of a certain piece of music (which includes lyrics, the voices and the accompanying instruments) should be determined by its intoxicating effect, comparable to your choice of poison.

I miss Bombay, yes Bombay, not Mumbai, but Bombay. I miss the constant energy, the noise pollution, drivers swearing at pedestrians suggesting they were regularly intimate with one of their creators, moviegoers frustrated at Hollywood science fiction, a glimpse of those perfect feet peeking from the anonymity of an auto, the traffic cops with their meticulously pressed khaki uniforms matching the color of their piping hot evening tea slurped from dirty little glasses, the not-so-cheap food - junk and classical, Kingfisher and its accompanying free nuts, the unwritten poetry on the walls of Leopold (no, I haven't read Shantaram yet) between mouthfuls of Steak & Onions, the bargaining foreplay with roadside t-shirt hawkers in Town, the mysterious Marathi of the maids, the visible ribs of the cows - loitering the streets like drunk, poor poets, Vodka in the inside room for the kids and Whiskey for the uncles in the living room, overtly salty Vada Pao, the apathy of security guards everywhere, everyone's unpunctuality, the excessive honking, the distant sterility of the AC buses, the omnipresence of mineral water - even at gola stalls in Shivaji Park, the phorenesque ride on the new Worli Sea Link, that lonely face in a grilled window in one of those few crumbling buildings in this city of thirteen million, the crazily long lines of Ganpati fanatics in Shiuri, the rickety old Premier Padmini Fiat cabs - drudging on like the tired lungs of its drivers, the expressionless face of the peon assigned bathroom duty, the punctuality of the breakfast bearer at work, those conversations about skipped lunches with the elevator guard when it was just the two of us, the People dancing on the streets with total abandon in front of unmoved clay idols, outdated Communist desktop wallpapers, those violet lights in the window with the banyaned potbelly.