Mumbai is a colourful and boisterous city, a sensory overload best captured in its iconic markets filled with eager shoppers. The spices, flower garlands, glittering sarees, and stunning garments make walking through a market in Mumbai feel almost like a fever dream.
As I stop to admire stone handbags adorned with pearls, hand-stitched decorative rugs, and intricately carved wooden elephant statues, the soundtrack of the city plays on. Locals haggle with vendors, bargaining for the best price in a lively dance of negotiation. Everything feels so dynamic and expressive.
And then, there’s the black-and-yellow local cabs, known as kali peeli, weaving through the streets. Add to that the vividly painted buses and the endless symphony of honking, all blending into the Mumbai soundscape just like the bustling conversations in the markets.
At the heart of it all is life. Mumbai is known as the City of Dreams, and it’s not uncommon to meet people who travel for hours just to work here or those who have relocated to chase bigger opportunities.
It’s a city of hustle, a melting pot of sharp contrasts, where stories of both thriving and surviving are etched into its very architecture.
And I have seen both sides of this coin.
At first, I struggled to reconcile these coexisting extremes. The luxury of Phoenix Palladium stood in stark contrast to the harsh poverty just beyond its doors. It was unsettling to step out of a place filled with designer stores and gourmet restaurants, only to be met with children knocking on car windows, their outstretched hands a poignant reminder of the disparity between these two worlds.
I had assumed Mumbai, like other cities, would have distinct wealthy and impoverished areas, but instead, they were woven together, coexisting in a way I had never experienced before. A corporate tower casting its shadow over a slum. A lavish hotel overlooking railway tracks where street vendors and young children darted between moving trains, selling whatever they could. These scenes became a recurring pattern across the city, a juxtaposition that was both confronting and deeply thought-provoking.
It took time to accept this duality as Mumbai’s reality, but once I did, it shifted my perspective. The things I once saw as mundane or insignificant were, for so many, distant dreams. This awareness didn’t just inspire gratitude; it forced me to reconsider the weight of privilege and opportunity in ways I never had before.
Mumbai, in all its contrasts and contradictions, had a way of opening my eyes, making me question, reflect, and ultimately, see the world through a different lens.
My values were often tested, and my morals constantly challenged. Growing up, I was taught that helping those in need and never turning a blind eye was not only the right thing to do but also a core facet of my faith. Yet, in Mumbai, every time I encountered someone asking for help—a child in need, a struggling mother, an elderly beggar—I was met with a chorus of voices telling me to ignore them.
It was an unsettling contradiction to navigate. On one hand, I was told that giving could do more harm than good, that it might encourage dependency or be exploited. On the other, my conscience weighed heavily, reminding me that if I chose to ignore suffering, I would be no better than a hypocrite, someone who preached compassion but failed to act on it.
So, as confronting as it was, I chose to shift my perspective. Instead of seeing these encounters as overwhelming or hopeless, I began to view them as divine opportunities, moments where I could extend love to others in whatever way I could. Even if my actions couldn’t change the bigger picture, they could still bring a moment of relief, dignity, or kindness to someone in that moment.
Of course, realistically, nothing I did could ever make a true dent in the vast and unprecedented levels of poverty faced by so many in this enormous country. The sheer scale of hardship was overwhelming, and my efforts felt like a drop in an endless ocean.
But compassion isn’t about solving everything. It’s about doing what you can, where you are, with what you have. I may not have been able to change the world, but for even a fleeting moment, I hoped to make someone’s world feel a little less heavy. And that, in itself, meant something.