..Just a page soaked in history

In this financial capital, ruins like this one testify the success, the land of mills has made. Amidst the razzmatazz of progress and sensex booms, stands dilapidated, the history, stuck in its tracks, soaked in the remains of time, scrapping through the echoes of age.

Mills met their death when the sun set on the textile sector, labour living in the pockets of this city dwindled, rust laden locks locked the massive acres of land housing these sturdy mills.

Mills are on a run for sale, labour is unemployed, newsprint went berserk filing stories of protest, voices cried hoarse, and human rights hit the rock bottom, crashed and brutally smashed by the powerful. Petitions were moved, nothing happened, voices chocked, nothing happened, mills went to be auctioned, money was pocketed, rich got richer, poor got poorer, labour, already a dead beat in newspapers, lived its last in the mills, that stand in ruins today, glorified for all wrong reasons, while teeming sky rises surround it, modernity forms contrast with the passé.

Rust laden iron, concrete, dust, reside silently awaiting its bid. Labour declares, rests its case with unrest, quietly reclines ‘bargain for life is on, life for sale, any takers?’

Bombay has a certain character, the mills with its labour, the sea with its fishermen, are few of those crucial elements that gave Bombay its feel and soul, it made this city, a home for many and still continues to do so, but its sheen is slowly diminishing, as its early natives are on the verge of extinction. With the mills gone, and kolis nearly gone, Bombay stands tall clad in modernity and jazz, sans its shadow, which is falling nowhere…