The Flytrap

It’s been almost four years since I have lived and worked in Powai: the same old roads, the same old restaurants, the same old buildings, the same old shops and the same old people. My life revolves around the 2 Km radius, gradually stifling me into this dangerous web of comfort, familiarity and safety, so much so that it gets claustrophobic at times.

The place is almost like a Venus Fly Trap: it’s so attractive that it traps you and then kills you, even before you know it. It sucks you in with all the good things in life so early that you are scared to let go of everything that you are used to, and therefore the place OWNS you.

But on the other hand, it suffocates you to an extent that you want to scream, you want to run away as fast as you can and as far as you can. You want to give up everything and go see the world while you still can, meet the weirdest of people outside your comfort zone and eat random roadside stuff that you haven’t even heard of. And then you want to have the wildest of affairs with the most exotic guy at an exotic godforsaken location.

And suddenly, you are jolted back to reality: the fly trap is closing in on you, the world outside is fading away in the background and you are consumed with the realization that you are going to die on a Bloomberg terminal and an excel spreadsheet, mouthing the same jargon from an age-old powerpoint presentation which hundred other MBA grads have done before.

You have become the fly…