Big city versus small town — which side are you on?

Growing up as a 90s kid in a small town had its own agreeableness. Our intrepid seniors were all about guts and charm. Them wearing sneakers to school on Saturdays, or just getting their hair coloured — to be seen as rebellious — got them mileage.

Heck, even getting a whacking from the PT teacher raised their ratings. They put the cool in school. My batch — studious rats, hair deep-fried in oil — voluntarily participated to stay back for those extra classes.

Growing up we couldn’t discern the deficiencies of a small town. Our world expanded and contracted within a 20km radius. It was only when those seniors from school began to flee — due to the absence of recognised universities or media courses, that we realised there’s much more to the sky than what meets the eye.

Channel [V] and MTV shows made us wish we grew up already. Me and my friend (both 14), spent 40 bucks and 2 hours inside the internet cafe to fill up the form for some of those shows. Eligibility was 18.

We also replaced the letter ‘a’ with ‘@’ in our names to come across cooler. And waited for an audition call, till the day we both sat to watch the new season together. We still blame that @.

My exposure to the internet and TV overfed my motivation to move outside. Being the only son of my parents did battle my ambition.

And so, I succumbed to having my clothing store back home. It felt like living a Xerox life, where I couldn’t tell one day from another. My boredom was fatigued. That’s the incurable in me — how to keep myself from not getting bored?

I read an interestingly offensive post on the internet — “You’re not bored. You’re boring”. I’m yet to make peace with that.

I took the plunge as I saw myself go downhill. My efforts to scale my work were anyway all tongue in cheek. I leased 6 months of freedom from my folks and boarded the plane.

Mumbai is truly what dreams are made of. Artists don’t retire in the tinsel town, they reinvent themselves here.

I was alienated upon landing. The streets smelled of sweat and toil. The weather, to complain mildly, was usually humid. Like my mouth in the middle of the sweltering night.

As a tourist, I had always dissed Bombay for its traffic and hype. But as a resident, the asphalt jungle grows on you. Even taking a rickshaw to the local station for further commute felt like enacting a scene from the movies.

The air has a touch of magic. The other time my cab stopped at the traffic signal, I spotted Salman Khan in his car next to me. It’s an actor’s safari, and you constantly spot celebrities. Yet the excitement never fades.

Figuring work wasn’t as hard with my skill set. I took up a gig with an advertising firm and realised the hard work that goes behind releasing a single ad. Of what I assumed to be a fun shoot-ad, turned out to be all planning, strategy, budgeting, execution, and reaction measurement.

It’s taxing. Work and life are oxymorons. You may clock in at work at dawn and then find yourself guilt-tripping to clock out at dusk. Big cities microwave you 30 extra seconds after you’ve been grilled for the required 1 minute.

Although it’s a lot of work, I got to network a lot. I met a young director who had exhausted all his resources just to stay afloat in Mumbai. The currency of currency is essential — if you don’t have it, don’t come to the city.

Most days, he was living off the edge, yet that didn’t stop him from showing up for work with the same zeal. He chased work like a cheetah with zero self-pity.

That was an eye-opener — to stop making things about you and start making things out of you. Many such encounters made me more tolerant towards all types of people, who came from different walks of life and felt “inclusive” in a big flashy city.

Yes, small cities are less polluted, have a languid charm, and we’d not have to squint our eyes to spot the stars (in the sky), but what it compensates for in nature, it lacks in pace.

Small cities act like those rigid families that only value traditions with little to no scope for change. While things are constantly changing in small cities, they are hardly evolving.

What makes a big city bigger? The ambitions of people coming in.

I often find myself at crossroads with nostalgia for home. And yet every time I visit my hometown, my cravings are satiated sooner than expected. The big city boy in me can’t wait to be back to the hurly-burly and the inspiration that awaits.

The choice is plain. A big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big sea? For the majority, the answer lies between the two. For me, it’s cheaper flight tickets.

Ashish Dewani is an avid traveller and writer. Twitter: @a5hush