Karmen Wiid

Heat. That’s the first thing I felt — thick and immediate, wrapping itself around my shoulders like a heavy shawl. The streets smell of chai, garam masala, and something sweet I can’t yet name.

Motorcycles graze past my elbows. Rickshaws honk and weave and hum. I can practically taste the colours — turmeric yellow, marigold orange, the deep, burning red of roadside temples — like they’ve melted into the heat and settled on my tongue.

I feel my foreignness here, heavy and restless. Curious eyes follow me. Little faces beam at me with excitement, women soften into kindness. Conversations skirt along the outlines of language, stitched with laughter and the tilt of hands.

It’s not comfort I find here first. It’s aliveness. It’s every nerve awake, every step a small surrender to a world that isn’t mine, yet makes room for me anyway.

Moment by fleeting, messy moment I learn that parents are all the same no matter where they’re from. Moms call twice a day. Dads fret with loving stoicism. I learn that all people need a beverage to start their day—coffee, tea, coconut water, it doesn’t matter. It’s about the ritual of waking up, the small ceremony of beginning again. I learn that art is a universal language. That we all blossom under the warmth of being loved.

And I learn that feeling alive often arrives when you’re not looking—like a rickshaw weaving through late afternoon Bombay traffic, sudden and inevitable, finding you before you even knew you were waiting. 

I planned to stay for six days. I stayed six weeks. Sometimes places and people catch you off guard. And it’s wild how quickly a city can wrap itself around you and feel like yours — lived-in and familiar, albeit thrifted.

I recently told someone that this life I’ve chosen, for better or worse, is built on intensity. When you live multiple fleeting existences in different places, the only way to feel anything is to go hard and fast into things. To throw yourself in, fully and foolishly. To dig into a place with bare hands, bury your feet in its soil, taste its salt and dust and humidity, and make it all a part of you.

I always walk away changed. It’s intoxicating, this arriving somewhere new and not knowing when I’ll leave or who I’ll be when I do. Who I’ll grow to love. Who I’ll carry with me in the shape of this new self.

As a writer (and let’s be honest, an impulsive twenty-something), that’s what I crave — experience. Novelty. Getting to know every inch of my heart and how it stretches and loves and breaks differently on every inch of this planet.

That might sound chaotic to some, but to me, there’s an intentionality in my ro(o/u)t(e)lessness.

If you asked me the last time I did something for the first time, I’d laugh — I can’t remember a day that didn’t feel entirely new. But in experiencing something new every day, you also have to stomach the other side of that coin: the last time. The leaving.

So many goodbyes. Grief tangled up with giddy arrivals.

Sometimes I’m achingly aware of my youth and the fleetingness of passions, places, people. Lately, it’s all I can write about. But the writing remains. And that’s a beautiful thing.

As I’m sipping chai and watching the monsoon clouds roll in, I’m thinking about some of the little things that I love about this city.

– Traffic here is like jazz — wild, unpredictable, but it works. I’ve yet to see a single crash.
– Honking isn’t aggressive; it’s more like, “Hey, I’m about to squeeze past you in this absurdly tiny gap, just a heads up!”
– The head nods are a dance of their own. A “yes” might look like a “no,” just with a little more chin. It’s charmingly confusing.
– Sit down at any café or restaurant and a glass of water will magically appear. No questions asked.
– The best food is the cheapest. Street food here is a full-blown love affair.
– In the early mornings, you’ll see rickshaw drivers huddled around roadside stalls, sipping chai and laughing like old friends.
– In parks and public walkways, everyone walks anti-clockwise. It’s a silent, communal rhythm no one breaks.
– Strangers will invite you to their table or into their home and cook for you, just because.
– Bombay is Bollywood. I’ve sat in cafés where people are editing films or writing scripts beside me. The city hums with creatives and hopefuls. It has LA energy — just less jaded.

So it’s with a full and aching heart that I’m getting ready to say goodbye to the city that turned me inside out.

And I hope that someday, wherever I end up, I’ll be watching a sunset or turning the page of a book, and a memory will play softly at the edges of my mind — something about that one spring years ago I spent eating and sweating and loving in Bombay.