The City Has a Good Signal
Mumbai August 2026
The city wakes before the sun
as alarms explode in rented rooms,
as milk packets sweat against doors,
as water comes only for forty minutes,
as local trains will not wait.
In towers named
Harmony Residency,
Dream Heights,
each balcony faces another,
each window looks into another,
each flat
stacked on another.
A child in a school uniform
chews breakfast sleepily.
A mother packs the family tiffin.
A father searches for blue socks.
The mixer-grinder screams
inside the kitchen.
Outside, the city wakes.
Buses, drills, temple bells,
delivery bikes,
and one lonely crow
who still makes
an original sound.
The lift arrives.
Inside,
a woman opens the same chat.
He was last seen
at 11:43.
A man watches fourteen
become thirteen, then twelve,
rather than meet anyone’s eyes.
The smell of
someone’s perfume,
someone’s lunchbox.
The lift drops,
carrying ambition,
and last night’s acidity.
People
move from
bedroom box
to lift box
to car box
to office box.
On the road, traffic is long and still.
Exhaust fumes thicken the air.
Cars gleam.
Buses sag beneath those
who cannot afford cars.
A man in a fancy car
curses a man on a bicycle.
A man on a bicycle
curses his life.
At the red light,
a girl holding wilted roses taps on the tinted car window.
The man inside turns to his phone:
his mutual fund
is up 0.8 per cent.
The sky is available,
but trapped behind
billboards selling apartments named “Serenity Heights”
beside a flyover.
A coaching class promises success.
A fairness cream, confidence.
A luxury watch, time
because nobody has any.
The city sells everything
except silence.
At the railway station,
the crowd waits patiently
for a train
running
fifteen minutes late.
Elbows. Backpacks. Earphones. Sweat.
Swear.
No one is exactly cruel or kind.
A man pushes because he was pushed.
A woman shouts to keep one inch of space.
A student hangs near the door,
one hand on the metal bar,
one hand on his phone,
his future buffering
between Dombivli and Dadar.
Inside the compartment,
people sleep standing.
Advertisements watch them.
Learn coding.
Buy insurance.
Improve English.
Upgrade phone.
Grow hair.
Lose weight.
Find love.
Reskill. Rebrand. Reinvent.
To remain yourself is not acceptable.
At office reception, identity is scanned.
At the desk, personality is minimized.
At the meeting, language becomes plastic.
“Let’s circle back.”
“Let’s touch base.”
Nobody says:
“I am tired.”
“I do not know why this matters.”
“My father is ageing.”
“My marriage is quiet.”
“Once, I wanted to sing.”
Instead, they say,
“Noted.”
“Sure.”
“Will do.”
“Kindly find attached.”
By noon,
tea cools beside targets.
Charts multiply.
Lunch is eaten from steel tiffins,
plastic boxes,
canteen plates,
and delivery containers.
People laugh in office corridors
with careful volume.
Friendship here is real,
but scheduled.
Concern is genuine,
but brief.
On the thirty-sixth floor,
a man looks across the skyline:
buildings, ambitions,
LinkedIn gratitude.
What is all this for?
A larger flat?
Three days beside a blue ocean
before returning to dirty air?
He looks around.
No one is alarmed.
The meeting is starting.
Civilization continues.
So he swallows the question
with machine coffee
and returns to his chair.
Evening arrives
not gently.
The office releases its prisoners
with access cards.
The roads fill again.
The trains inhale again.
The city begins its second shift:
recovery from work,
which is also work.
Gyms glow.
Children go to tuition.
Couples sit across tables
and touch their phones
more tenderly
than each other.
At the mall,
meaning is arranged
between cosmetics, electronics,
food court and cinema.
Beyond parking: nothing.
A family poses
near artificial flowers.
A boy cries
because he wants a toy.
His father says no
with the tired anger
of a man who says yes
to everything else.
A woman tries on clothes
under lights designed
to create dissatisfaction.
A salesman calls everyone “sir.”
A security guard stands
near a luxury store
where one handbag costs
more than his three months’ salary.
Night deepens.
In thousands of apartments,
families return to themselves.
Shoes come off.
Bags drop.
Televisions begin their sermon.
News anchors shout
as if volume were truth.
Advertisements interrupt pain
with discounts.
Dinner is eaten
in front of screens.
Someone asks,
“How was your day?”
Someone replies,
“Fine.”
Fine means:
I survived.
Do not ask further.
I have no language
for this emptiness.
The roof is not leaking,
the salary still comes,
the child is not sick—
so who am I
to complain?
After dinner,
the sacred ritual begins.
Scrolling.
The thumb moves.
The face glows.
The room darkens.
Other people's vacations.
Bodies. Success. Outrage. Joy—
edited to fifteen seconds
and set to music.
The city enters the bedroom
through the phone.
A man lies beside his wife
and sends a laughing emoji
to someone he does not know well.
A woman searches symptoms
she is afraid to name.
A teenager deletes a message
before sending it.
An old father waits
for his son to call,
then tells himself
children are busy now.
A watchman walks in circles
around a building
whose residents do not know his name.
The city shines.
From a distance,
it looks magnificent.
Aerial photographs love cities:
from above,
everything becomes pattern.
Height hides the smell,
the rent,
the loneliness,
the unpaid loans,
the bad knees,
the marriages held together
by logistics,
the parents ageing on video calls,
the dreams postponed too long.
And yet,
beauty keeps appearing
where it has no permission.
A tea seller remembers
how much sugar you take.
A woman feeds a dog
before she feeds herself.
After rain,
the city smells briefly
of soil.
A tree grows
through a crack in the pavement.
A child on a balcony
blows soap bubbles
into the polluted evening.
For a moment,
each bubble holds
the whole city upside down:
tower, sky,
billboard, cloud.
Then it bursts.
Still, it happened.
Midnight comes.
The city does not sleep.
It reduces brightness.
Somewhere, servers hum.
Nurses walk hospital corridors.
A coder fights a deadline.
A mother checks a fever.
A man calculates debt.
A woman decides
not to cry tonight
because morning is early.
The moon hangs above the towers,
old, unimpressed.
It says nothing.
The city refreshes.
The phone lights up
with other people’s urgency.
One more sale.
One more alert.
One more update.
One more opportunity
to become
a slightly improved prisoner.
And somewhere,
in a small bedroom
facing another small bedroom,
a person lies awake
asking the oldest question
in the newest language:
Is this all?
The fan turns.
The phone charges.
On the screen,
a message waits:
Reached home?
The person types:
Yes.
In another small room,
a father reads the word
places the phone beside his pillow
and turns off the light.
Outside,
the last train
moves through the dark.