February 12th, 2019

It has been two month since this foreigner came to Mumbai for the third time. I feel like I have been living here rather than just been visiting here this time. I have made lots of friends all over the city. I have learned a lot about how life here works even though I will forever be a foreigner when in Mumbai. I guess that is something you can continue to learn about forever. I have learned how to find my way and how to get around at least. How to deal with it (like the rickshaw drivers). When it is best to take an Ola or an Uber. I have learned when to use the metro, when to take the local train and how to cope with the crowd there in rush hour. How to basically play rugby trying to get on or off a train. That you have to be tactical when positioning yourself in the train in order to be able to get off at the right stop and not get squeezed and stuck left in the train. How to deal with the highs and lows that comes with the unpredictability of the life here. And as usual most of these things I have learned the hard way. Someone once told me that if you have the gift to learn from others mistake without doing them yourself, you have a very valuable gift. I don’t have that. So much… yet. But it is, as everything ells, something that comes gradually.

I have met lots of good people and lots of bad people. It is so much of everything. What people does defines who they are. Some people do as much good things for every one they can. Some people do really bad things to people around them and in their life only for their own benefit. I have heard stories about even worse people doing even worse things. In this city there is everything. I have got to know lots of models, actors and actresses. I have got an insight in what that kind of life here can be like.There is thousands and thousands of famous Bollywood stars with glamourous life styles in this city. But a person can only remember a couple of hundred people. I society can only have a couple of hundred celebrities. So what happens is that people becomes famous in certain social circles only, even if they are really big. That is what I ment by that this city is big enough to make even superstars tiny. But there is also thousands and thousands of not so famous but struggling actors, actresses and models who’s lifestyles might seem glamourous but are horrible. I have heard some stories. And even more of the purly poor, struggling, suffering kind of actors, actresses and models that doesn’t seem to get anything. The worlds breaks everyone and some come out stronger on the broken places. Others don’t. As a foreigner in Mumbai I have been writing a lot on my book project and maybe not so much about the details of my life here. I just hope I didn’t get use to it. The life here. Because life sometimes seems harder here than most other places I have seem. It is special in the sense that it makes the rest of the world seem like a bubble. An exception. A place where life is good. This is the reality. Hard.

Now the whole city is under construction. I can tell the difference only since last year when I was here. I felt even more dirt here back then. Now I feel more hope. They are building out the public transport with a few new metro lines and rearranging the roads everywhere. Everywhere you look you see construction work. Tall buildings being raised. Highways partly on top of each other. The areas where road works are in progress creates bottlenecks om the roads, which jams the traffic. Now it is horrible but when it is finished the traffic problem will gets massively relieved. But by then it will be even more people living here and a new plan to update the infra structure will be needed. The space is limited in this city but the population density continues to increase. I guess it has influenced me. Even I have been influenced. Even I have started to put in the word “only” in the wrong places. Even I have started to use expressions like “even I” in wrong context. At least I don’t say words like “trice” for “three times”. They do that here. But not a foreigner in Mumbai.