“Thoda time doh, Mumbai aapko apna bana leti hai.” (Give it some time, Mumbai makes you its own) Not suddenly, not all at once. It happens slowly… in ways you don’t even notice. One day you’re a stranger, and before you realise it, the city starts feeling familiar. Like it’s wrapping itself around you, one small memory at a time.
It’s in the heavy rain when you’re walking with your friends, drenched from head to toe, laughing while everyone else is running for shelter. The kind of laughter that drowns out the sound of thunder. It’s in the way a random child hands you a flower at a bus stop, for no reason at all. You smile, take it, and somehow that moment stays with you longer than you expect.
It’s in the traffic that makes you late every single day, yet you can’t stay mad at it. You look out the window and see two autos almost brushing past each other, like they’re teasing, like even chaos here knows how to flirt. And somehow, even that becomes a story.
There’s the rush of crossing trains, that unspoken promise, “Next time we’ll meet at this station.” The sound, the speed, the faces passing by too quickly to remember, and yet, it all lingers somewhere inside you.
It’s in the way you find yourself running across roads that never really stop, waiting for the signal that always feels too long, and then taking that one sip of ‘chai’ (tea) that somehow makes everything okay again.
Somewhere in between all this chaos, Mumbai starts teaching you how to notice things. The little ones. The ones we usually ignore. The things that don’t change your life in big ways but somehow change the way you feel about it. A cup of chai on a rainy afternoon. The sea breeze that hits your face just right. The sound of someone playing old songs on a speaker while you walk home.
Mumbai makes you slow down, even though it never stops. It shows you that beauty doesn’t always have to be loud. It can be quiet, fleeting, ordinary. It can be the way streetlights reflect on wet roads, or how a group of strangers share an umbrella at a crossing.
You begin to realise that these small things start building something inside you. A kind of love you didn’t expect. Not the movie kind of love. The real one. The one that sneaks up on you when you’re just living. The kind that fills your heart for no reason at all.
Because maybe that’s what this city does. It doesn’t ask for permission to become a part of you. It just does. Slowly, softly, entirely. And one day, without even realising it, you’re standing somewhere between a crowd and a coastline, smiling for no reason, and you think to yourself maybe this is what love feels like.
So yes, let’s romanticise Mumbai, not for what it promises, but for what it quietly gives.
Writer : Manya Arora
Grade : 2nd Year Psychology Undergrad (Year 2026)
Place : Mumbai, India
