6.27.2005

bombay meri jaan!

I just finished reading "The Moor's Last Sigh" by Salman Rushdie. The book's so beautifully written...he's really a class act. I copied a paragraph about the way he describes our beloved city. Few people can write such a wonderful statement as him. Even after I finished the book, these words kept coming back to me. Here goes:

"Bombay is central, has been so from the moment of its creation; the bastard child of a Portuguese-English wedding, and yet the most Indian of Indian cities. In Bombay all Indias meet and merge. In Bombay, too, all-India meets what-is-not-India, what comes across the black water to flow into our veins. Everything north of Bombay is North India, everything south of it is the South. To the east lies India's East and to the west, the world's West. Bombay is central; all rivers flow into its human sea. It is an ocean of stories; we are all its narrators, and everybody talks at once."

- The Moor's Last Sigh.