Connecting with Bombay

It is not without an ulterior motive that I ask my parents to settle down in Bombay. Though I never say it in as many words. I tell them about how they have been in the city for over 12 years and how they have a rocking social circle. I also tell them that Bombay offers the best medical facilities. What I don’t tell them is that my connection with the city I so love will be snapped once they step out of it.
Yes, I have friends there who will never move out of Bombay and will always draw me to the city, but having family there is a different feeling altogether __ it makes Bombay home and me a resident not a visitor.
My father is due for retirement next year and most of our conversations revolve around where they would want to settle down. They were pretty indecisive until the blasts.
While people were busy, once again, saluting the spirit of Bombay, after the blasts in local trains a few things changed, sadly. A colleague in Bombay who I call up on the hotline almost everyday, declared half in jest and half seriously, “I have to leave this city.” A Delhiite, he had moved to Bombay last year and one of his first experiences in the city was the July flood that left him stranded in office for a good 36 hours.
My father too was stuck in the flood and spent a horrendous night sitting in his car watching the water level rise and eventually stepped out of it and waded through the waist-deep water like thousands of Mumbaikars that night, to reach home, wet, tired but not defeated. The flood did not really break the spirit of Mumbaikars, as they said ad nauseum. But, the blasts surely did.
My mother, who swears by her life in Bombay comprising music and yoga classes, kitty parties, club get-togethers and long walks on the promenade by the sea, told me that she now wants to move out. The blasts, she said, had changed her decision to settle down in this city where her friends were. “You could have been in the local train. I was glad that you are out of this city,” she told me. Now, fearing their safety, even I am not too keen on them staying there though I did tell them that all the cities would be the same one day. How many cities will we move out of?
Nevertheless, the bombers seemed to have succeeded in scaring people. They had not only left hundreds of Mumbaikars scarred for life, but also snapped my umbilical cord with the city.