Average Privilege

Bombay. Let's call that my India. 

No, no... before you go off picturing your Marine Drives and Worli seafaces.

This is me - the average Bombay Boy. 

A middle class, documentary filmmaker wanting to make my India a better place. 

I'm actually the Borivli Kandivli, and the Mulund Thane... the fringes. 

Circling around the action but pushed away from it. 

My privilege, too, is average. It doesn't come with a big sense of entitlement but with a big conscience. 

And guilt and self-doubt... you know, a tasty recipe for depression. 

Now as a well-meaning guy, you want your privilege to be an antidote to your troubles. 

But average privilege is like an incomplete course of antibiotics. It doesn't fully cure anything. 

What remains are the fringes... you know, the Borivli Kandivli. Sometimes the Mulund Thane. 

So this is me - too laidback to hustle, and too blessed to persevere, so I just sit and think about what to make of it. 

Of having not enough and too much at the same time, and feeling alternately shitty and amazing about life. 

I mean, I get that maybe you don't need very much to start. But I'm always afraid I'll lose what I have. 

And get pushed further out beyond the fringes. You know, past Borivli Kandivli, and Mulund Thane. 

And work commute in India... is a real bitch.