9.46 Seconds

Sometimes I just don’t understand the difference between life and dreams. I’m a regular person like any other loner walking down the street with no aim in life. Walking just for the sake of walking and checking my watch once in a while, not because I’m getting late, just getting used to the fact that I have been walking all morning and its 6 in the evening. Sun is trying to find its way between all the concrete poles trying to outsmart each other. People are walking past me, some in a hurry, some just plain tired from the day’s work, and some just dreaming or you can say stuck somewhere. This is Mumbai. City of dreams and misfortunes and fortunes brought together into a perfect synchronization where everything looks bright and shiny. Of course the bright and shiny part can be considered for a few exceptions. Otherwise it’s just a route straight to hell. See, you change a city to chase after your dreams. Just changing the city doesn’t mean you are getting closer to your destiny. In Mumbai each and every human has dreamt, dreamt big, some have promised their families, some have just come out of pure rage and revenge. “Someday I’m going to show everyone what a big bunch of losers they are when I will be famous” well I say open a food stall and find a corner as you are going nowhere brother for the rest of your life.
I sell fruits and vegetables. So I was walking from morning till evening just for the sake of walking. No, I was not. In Mumbai you don’t walk, you scramble for a place where you can stand on one of your toes. If you are lucky you will get to stick both of your toes while standing in a train. Mumbai I strictly say is not a city where you want to check your luck. Main road just outside chatrapati shivaji terminal till the market near dadar station, that’s my area. From morning 9 till evening 6, that’s my timing.

Place of birth: Chamrola, Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Dream: To become famous.

Current status: fruit and vegetable seller.

Timing: 9 to 6

If ever there was a book written on how to dream big and end up becoming nothing 10 million people in Mumbai will raise their hands to write one.

Well me?

I have a plan.

Not like one of those plans that they show in movies in which the hero devices a plan that sounds ridiculous to everyone but what the heck it’s a movie, right?
It’s not a plan it’s more like my last option, my last hope.
Area: chatrapati shivaji terminal to dadar station.

Distance: 10 km

Rounds per day: 4

Some of the fruit and vegetable sellers don’t even cover an area of more than 2kms while most of them stay where they are from morning till evening.

Me, I have been covering an average of 40 to 45 km for the past 4 years.

Four years back when I completed my 5th anniversary of living in Mumbai I stumbled upon a plan. A woman was purchasing fruits from me when suddenly a guy comes, snatches her purse and starts to run as if his ass was on fire.
So I start to run after him and hell I ran like no human being could in this damn city. At the age of 25 I will become a legend.

I became a legend.

100 metres sprint past record: 9.58 seconds

“Fruit seller from India breaks world record”

My timing: 9.46 seconds

When it comes to chasing your dream you don’t walk, you have to run for it, grab it, whisk past it. It doesn’t matter from which city or town or a village you come from, or changing cities, what matters is how fast you run for your dream.

I was a fruit seller.

Tonight I stand before the sea. I think it’s trying to tell me something.
Tonight I became a legend.

I don’t know what I will be in the next 10 years. Whether I will be able to run this fast? All I know is that in those 9.46 seconds I ran from Chatrapati Shivaji terminal to Dadar station. I felt like I was home.

A legend.