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Powai
30 december 2005 The Bombay that always
lingers in our memory is congested, intense, rundown. But here, in the
middle of Greater Mumbai, the image has vanished, and it is a revelation. It is Powai.
I spent my first week in India in a residence at the edge of this
quaint suburb. Hills and trees filled the view from my balcony. Further
west, the Powai Lake mirrored the tall buildings of the Hiranandani residential
complex. Below me, the sounds of autorickshaws echoed softly.
One day, a cab driver told me. “You are the only Filipino here.” I might
be, and it did not matter. Powai reminded me of the verdant towns of
Southern Philippines, steeped in the ways of tradition, where ancestral
teachings on the love (and fear) of nature still shape the ways of daily life.
That week in Powai was a refreshing change from the bustle of the urban cities that I
had just lived in. Checking out of the residence, I stopped for a lakeside
view of the suburb that I had just experienced. It remains memorable.
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