Mumbai deserves a powerful metaphor. My metaphor of choice is a stormy ocean after an oil spill. This is why:
– Mumbai is enormous, like the ocean. Each area appears the equivalent of a city in its own right. Each road across the city is as busy as Piccadilly Circus on a weekday evening.
– Pollution here, like a giant oil spill, causes everything to turn black and dirty.
– Like the waves, there are distinct highs and lows in society, but such distinctions are turbulent and fluid rather than unchanging.
– Mumbai frequently smells like rotten fish.
– Everything appears to be in constant flux: people; material goods; transportation. Nothing ever remains still and all is tempestuous.
– Mumbai’s dreamy lure is its fantastic fish of opportunity. This fish, however, requires a master-craftsman to remove it from the sprawling ocean.
[nb. Mumbai is also blindingly tiring. Perhaps this explains why I chose to write such a tenuous series of metaphorical connections to describe it – my mind has been frazzled beyond sense.]
