Yashika T Khanna

Phoenix Towers, Lower Parel

Mumbai 29th Jan 2008

01.33am

Looking down from the 24th floor… seeing life slowly fade away from a city that is touted as an eternal insomniac. Sitting in the lap of luxury, the Mumbai skyline reminds of the view that I saw from atop the Empire State Building in New York a few years back. Fortune favors the brave… and one such legend sleeps peacefully across the hall from my bedroom. Heaving sighs of relief and content at a life well utilized. I feel silent admiration swelling up inside me. Is this how the ‘view from the top’ feels like? Nothing less than pure elation…

Today proved to be a dreamy day. A heady bus ride from Pune(my home for the last 4 days) to Mumbai in a Asiad Volvo… the scenic pleasures that NH4 could afford…reunion with somebody who forms an essential part of me(so I realize now)… a shopping spree at Bandra west… a walk on the Carter shoreline… accommodation in one of the finest places that the city could afford… a skyline view that brings back nostalgic memories of cherished days gone by… a laptop (with a data card, mind you) to work on at the end of the day… the presence of a special someone who I can relate to with illogical ease… affection from previously ignored quarters… and a dynamic somebody else who snores peacefully in her room across the hall. Life has been more than generous of late. Looks like fate is trying to make up for all that I have been made subject to in the recent past… a past that is finally well behind me.

Tomorrow comes with more promises attached to it... more things to look forward to. Leopolds, Marine Drive, Juhu Beach, Church Road and Dalal Street… a package that others would kill for. Add to that the company of the people who matter the most, the sweet taste of independence and the constant nurturing offered by endless luxury. I couldn’t be more content. But if life is as perfect as it seems to be… how do I explain the feeling of incompleteness that envelopes me on repeated occasions… a void that dwells deep inside me even while looking down from the 24th floor of Phoenix Towers, Lower Parel Mumbai…? I still look for my answers…

P.S. Happy Birthday, new phone.