Cities maketh the men (and women)

I had attended a former colleague’s kid’s birthday party last weekend which turned out to be an unexpected re-union of sorts for most of my batch mates who had joined SEBI 7 years back!! It gave us good time to discuss the inevitable topic of who has changed how much ever since we first met and the kind of impact moving over to Bombay has made to each of us.

I, for one, always maintain that other than living sans the family, my life at Madras was pretty much the same as it is in Bombay now – both are big, well-developed metros with fast-paced lives; people have a fairly cosmopolitan mind-set and are adequately occupied with their own lives with no time to gossip; places are urbane....both the cities offer tremendous amount of independence...the similarities can be endless. However, it is true that each city has a character of its own and living in a particular city with a certain set of people can really influence the way you mould yourself. While Madras is a classic case of an urban city teeming with happening places co-existing with its conservative/orthodox sides well in-tact, it is impossible to find a city that is more accomodative and professional than Bombay - it embraces every human being who comes to live here for his living and the city really grows on you.

Alongwith a change in the city that one lives, some of the very common instances where changes occur are physical appearances and other superficial things like one’s tastes for a particular cuisine or for a particular genre of movies/music/books or pastime activities.

This was very evident at a recent outing to a “pucca for-the-masses” genre Tamil movie which I had happened to visit in a fairly big multiplex in suburban Mumbai. While I remember relishing anything remotely and authentically tamil when I had moved to Mumbai 7 years back, I now felt like such a mis-fit amongst the co-tamils crowd at the moview hall. It did not take long for me to realise that my tastes had changed and I no longer enjoyed watching movies where the Hero single handedly bashes up 15 hefty guys with a single stroke of his hand. During my initial days of moving into Bombay when I missed Madras the most, I remember enjoying even such typically masala genre movies laden with illogical action and silly comedies – in hindsight, it was probably more in an urge to keep up the roots of any and everthing Tamil and as a solution to my home-sickness.

In fact, at the re-union I was mentioning above, there were people who were commenting on the obvious diffferences in physical appearances in each of us from the days we had initially joined SEBI – and met up with each other. In my case, there were discussions on how different I looked now from the typical southie girl who joined 7 years ago– (my experiment at hair straightening probably made them assume that I have blended more with the Mumbayya crowd and their way of living/culture :p)

Subsequently, the discussions moved onto the way in which living in Bombay as a city has impacted our personalities.

As for traits like courage, independence, confidence, etc. which are terms often associated with a single woman living in Bombay, I truly feel these are inculcated at a much earlier stage of growing up and not the ones that people necessarily - and, automatically- pick up from the day they start living alone. Ofcourse, I do not wish to be hypocritical and say I have not changed one bit from the day I started living alone – but the question is whether this change has been significant enough to shape your personality – my answer would probably be a ‘No’.

It is true that living alone in a big, bad city like Bombay prepares one to be more adaptible to situations and probably more prepared to handle crisis situations, however, it is also true that the basic character of a person and his/her extent of dependence on the support system available to sail through such situations play a significant role in moulding us, irrespective of the city we live in. With all the freedom and independence bestowed on me and for all the changes in me on what and where I eat and where I hang-out and how I pass time, I have no qualms in admitting that, at heart, am still the same girl who would rather let the people in my life deal with my tough situations with me taking the back-seat!!

All this only makes me wonder that a city, probably, does make a man – but only superficially so. Its good to be a Roman while in Rome...But its even better to remember that you are not a native Roman!!