Mornings meant tending to the ceremonial lamp for 13 days in my parents' home surrounded by memories. And in the early hours before my daily puja, I walked the streets of my beloved neighbourhood.
A former hub of the textile industry, Naig...aum-Parel is now the elite mid-town for those who have the land. For those who did not have anything, tuberculosis was the gift.
Slum Dog indeed. What do you know?
It takes a certain grit and determination to live through the squalor. And to live with dignity, to wear crisply ironed clothes to work and to school, to line up for crowded trains where at anytime the random bullets of a glassy eyed gunman can make one a mere statistic. I return to the street of my Mumbai, as a Mumbaikar. Never as an expat, never as a First World Citizen. I return as a daughter and I am welcomed with open arms.
Mee, Mumbaikar.
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