You Know You're From Mumbai When....

One of my friends was telling me that the contents on my blog are mostly serious. It got me to try and improve my sense of humour and I finally decided to work towards creating something.  I thought I'd begin with Bombay for a change. The song "Yeh Hain Bombay Meri Jaan" from the 1956 Hindi film CID wonderfully captures the spirit of Bombay and the lives of the people here. Yet, you have these You Know You're From Bombay When... moments, so I thought of listing them out. Though this post is not something I'd like to claim credit for but these pointers are something which would resonate across with anyone who has lived or has had friends from Mumbai. If you know more mannerisms typically Bombay, please do add more in the list.. So, presenting the list I know:

You Know You're From Mumbai When:


*  You take a taxi to get to your health club to exercise
* Your idea of personal space is no one is actually standing on your toes
* You have a minimum "worst auto/cab rides ever" stories and yet you travel by autos and cabs
* You speak in a dialect of Hindi called "Bambaiyya Hindi", which only Mumbaikars can understand
* You call a 8' x 10' clustered room a "hall"
* You have 14 different menus of "free home deliveries" next to your telephone
* Train timings like 09:06, 10:27, 5:17, 6:12 are really important events of life
* You actually care about trains 
* You consider yourself as physically handicapped if trains stop working due to some reason
* Cabbies and bus conductors think you're from Mars if you call the roads by their Indian name as they are more familiar Marine Drive, Warden Road, Pedder Road, Altamount Road, Carter Road
* Stock market quotes are the only other thing besides which you follow passionately
* You love wading through knee deep mucky water in the monsoons
* You curse the monsoons but cannot get enough of the romantic appeal of the rains
* You call traffic policemen as "Pandus" or "Mamus" and expect outstation tourists to understand that
* You have eaten a Chinese Dosa and Jain Chicken at an eatery in Mumbai
* You have mentally blocked out all thoughts about the city's air quality and what it's doing to your lungs
* You spend more time commuting than spending time at home
* Your door has more than three locks.
* You consider beggars, homeless and hookers as invisible
* You compare Bombay to New York's Manhattan instead of any other city in India
* You insist on calling CST as VT and Sahar and Santacruz airports instead of Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport
* Your life's ideology "gheun tak"
* You look at the street and say, "Why are they digging the road again?" after every three months
* You know Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan's homes are nothing less than landmarks 
* Townies think they need a visa to go past Worli to the suburbs
* You say "town" and expect everyone to know that this means south of Churchgate
* You call onion as "kanda" instead of pyaaz and potato as "batata" instead of aaloo.
* When "chalta hain" is the most commonly used word
* You always count the distance between two places in terms of time instead of kilometers
* You  land up at your school/college/office the morning after the city is ripped apart after a bomb blast 
* You famously invoke the resilient spirit of Mumbai after every disaster
 * You insist on calling Mumbai as Bombay despite the name change of the city.