• Dreams,  Personal,  Thoughts,  travel

    Roots | Mumbai Diaries

    Roots. What a peculiar thing that can affect us so much when we least expect them to. I thought I had worked through a lot of my inner struggles with roots and identity by this age but I was so wrong. Why do I keep coming back to this country, why can’t I let it go? My father left India almost 50 years ago and I as an adult keep coming back as if something is pulling me here. Is there a stronger energy at play here that wants me coming back? What is the purpose of me feeling this way? 

    There are two days left of my trip and the emotions are already building up, that I am going back and leaving this behind. Once again, just like any other year, I am travelling back to Sweden. My home. Don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful for my life in Sweden and that’s all I have ever known to be my home. But I have never felt that I fully belong there, there’s just that big chunk of both my heart and soul never able to belong to Sweden and it is always left behind in India. I come back to try to find my pieces every year to try to feel whole. I have also started to accept that it might be difficult for anything to ever fill that void of never belonging anywhere. The trick is to find ways to cope with this empty feeling. 

    When I land in Sweden and travel back to my apartment on the smooth empty highways, it’s always a bittersweet feeling. I feel emotional over the fact that I have left something behind but at the same time I am embracing what is so familiar to me. The life in Sweden. What gets to me each time, is that I notice that my clothes smell like India and the scent of Sweden is so different. The air is much lighter. There are no noises from traffic, no unnecessary honking going on. One would think that it’s something you’d never miss about India, but it’s exactly these things that make India come alive. It’s never sleeping and you learn to be mindful and unbothered by the scents, the noise, the crowd and everything that happens at once. Once you get mindful and one with it all, it creates this feeling of presence and bliss that we have all heard people mesmerised with India talk about. The hippies. 

    Even right now when I am typing this, I am sitting in my bedroom in our shared flat and the windows are closed. But you can hear everything from the streets four floors down in the middle of the city centre of Colaba, Mumbai. During a few wee hours in the night it goes quiet before the city wakes up to the organised chaos. I am not someone who easily get attached to places, I like to keep my memories of people and places normally and that is what I bring with me everywhere I go. But there has always been something with Mumbai that has pulled me in. I believe it’s the contrast between the rest of India that I’ve seen (which is not much compared to how much is left to see) and the India that exists in Mumbai. There’s a vibe in this town that is hard to match elsewhere. Perhaps I am a romantic Pisces that only likes to focus on these pink cloudy thoughts whenever I describe this town, but I am positive that I am not the only one who thinks this way. Obviously it’s not the jammed traffic, the high air pollution and crowded areas that make you love this city. It’s what language it speaks to you when you listen carefully with your ears and your heart. What is the soul of this place? Does it connect with you? Why?

  • Personal,  Thoughts

    Boosting Energy Levels and Apartment Hunt

    I’m thinking of detoxing from the Internet life including all these social network sites that do no good for me. Logging in to them only makes me feel that I waste my time with unnecessary posts and pictures that have nothing to do with my life.
    Next week will be focused on me and try to get back to my own life with the things I’ve been wanting to do lately but have been distracted from. Since I recently got sick and stayed home for a whole week, my gym and fitness routine has gotten out of balance lately. Need to kick-start that again. After just two-three weeks of feeling weak and sick made me lose my motivation and my body feels all tired and unfit. Because of my low blood pressure I believe it’s feeling harder than it is, my energy levels have dropped to zero the last few weeks. Need to be up for fight again!

    I went to look at a new apartment this Friday and it looked very promising with a nice balcony and washing machine included. The flat is smaller than my current flat but it’s more central so I can live with that. I would rather call it cosy than small. I really hope I will get it, because I want to have closer to work and downtown than I currently have and it suits me more in my current lifestyle. The flats are also newly built during the last year or so, which makes it very fresh.
    I have never really understood the want to move out of the city to small suburbs and get away from everything, until now I guess.  I suppose it’s more common for families with small kids and such, but I’m more of a city girl – at heart. I love being able to just go downtown in a few minutes and meet up with friends spontaneously or for people to be able to visit without travelling all over the city to get to my place. The inconvenience is what makes it off putting to go visit someone all the way on the other side of the city – I totally understand where they’re coming from if that’s their opinion. But after living a bit on the outskirts of the city I’ve come to understand the other point of view and I wouldn’t neglect someone just because they live a bit further away – as long as I have a bit of company on the way back or forth. Living in the outskirts has made me realise that it’s more suitable for older people or family oriented people – not for young adults in their best years. 🙂 Once I get home these days, I don’t find myself ever justifying to go out of the house the same day again – since it took so long to travel home – it’s just not worth it. Hopefully getting that flat would change things – for the better!
    Keeping my fingers crossed!

    Peace and love,
    Kimmi