Sacred Spaces

Mumbai.Damp,musty,foul smells exaggerated by the rains ,cramped spaces,endless ebb and flow of traffic,harsh honking every other second, half constructed ghost bridges,toxic fumes, dreary gray skies,overwhelming crush of humanity. I had a epiphany about the need and consumption of escapist cinema,for at the end of the day I yearned for it too.
Mumbai, a city I have had a love and hate relationship with ,was the last place I had imagined would have the power to calm the storm that resides within...
But surprisingly,for my first solo trip (away from family in a long, long time) I found peace in this insomniac city..
Met mentors,teachers,friends that I hadn't seen in years.And with them they brought a part of me that I hadn't seen in years,  words and aspirations that I had forgotten,half baked dreams,disillusionment...Seeing these bits of myself in the eyes of people I love and respect, but who live and are part of a world I don't inhabit was liberating...It was like going on a treasure hunt, looking for those sacred places,that I have lost, parts of me floating, residing, in a city that I hadn't much cared for before.
I am blessed to have these sacred places,indebted to the people who carry them.. I have no identity in Mumbai; a faceless nobody like a thousand others in the crowd, yet it has absorbed something precious from me,kept it floating..That's the allure of the city I guess, it will tempt me to keep coming back to claim and build on the sacred places that I have left behind.