Tired of the fast-paced hustle of Mumbai, here are a few stories of people who achieved their goals outside the “city of dreams”
Anisha Maheshwari has pivoted her career to professional product styling in Raipur, Chhattisgarh
The city of dreams, Mumbai, is supposed to have a corner for everyone who comes here. Millions have come and found a home here. While one often hears anecdotes of how the city showed acceptance to so many, liberated more and made people independent, there’s also a flip side to the coin. Some find the fast-paced hustle of this city to be too tiring, and have decided to find themselves a better home.
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Kanak Murarka moved to Mumbai at the ripe age of 18 to pursue a Bachelors in Business Administration from NMIMS. Hailing from the small town of Jamshedpur, Murarka practically came of age in the city. All the “canon events”, as Gen Z calls it, happened here, be it setting up a flat of her own for the first time, making friends that will last a lifetime, or learning how to survive on her own. She even got her first job here, working with Sony Entertainment Live within a month of graduating.
Maheshwari also models from time to time for her friend Rainy Agrawal’s jewellery brand Mimosaa
But alas, the plot thickens. Murarka tells us, “In my second year, I moved into a flat with my closest friends. But, then when college got over, a lot of my friends moved to another city. I moved into a flat with people I found through Flats and Flatmates on Facebook.”
For the first time, Murarka was faced with the challenge of living without a support system, that too with a job that calls for odd hours and 9 to ten hour standing days. She explains, “Shoots would go on till 12.30 am in the night at times. By the time I reached home, the food would get spoilt on most days. Then I kind of stopped eating, and my weight started fluctuating a lot.”
Kanak Murarka is now freelancing as a PR professional from her hometown of Jamshedpur
Living with strangers led to tiffs on every small issue, ultimately leading to a depressive episode. “The loneliness, the everyday struggle to survive, the food problems, they just kept growing day by day. And so, I decided to quit.” At 22, Murarka moved back to her hometown Jamshedpur, where she now lives with her parents. She’s freelancing as a PR professional and runs her own Instagram page, which provides her with some extra income on the side. “I feel a lot, lot better. It’s like I can breathe again,” says Murarka.
Lifestyle coach Radhika Dhawan explains why home might be calling your name, “People who may have wanted to move back before, found an opportunity during the lockdown. Plus, there’s often an emotional pull to return to one’s hometown, especially to give back to the community or reconnect with people they have grown up with. The isolation of the lockdown made us all reflect on these things.”
Rainy Agrawal is now successfully running her own jewellery line called Mimosaa
A city like Mumbai can also cause burnout. At least, that was the case with Anisha Maheshwari, who moved back to her hometown of Raipur, Chhattisgarh, at the peak of her career at the age of 25. She’s a fashion stylist and a self-described “hustler”, and had lived in Mumbai for eight years—first four during college and then while working. She’s worked on notable projects such as the Voot series Khalbali Records, assisting stylists like Shaleena Nathani while styling Shah Rukh Khan, and Sonika Grover while styling Arjun Kapoor, Aditya Roy Kapur and Ranveer Singh.
“When I first moved back home during the lockdown, I couldn’t wait to get back. I missed working. Every day that I wasn’t on set, felt weird,” she tells us, “but when I did come back, I was severely burnt out in just a few years.” As part of her job, she was constantly on her feet, running from location to location and set to set. Her hours were odd and seemed to never end, with pay that was highly unstable. “I was the only person in their team, for most of the stylists that I was working under, and so I had to manage everything, end-to-end,” she says.
Radhika Dhawan
In 2022, Maheshwari took up a job with stylist Toshia Kader, where she assisted on styling the Birla clan. “I learned a lot from that job. Toshia was amazing to work for, but soon it became more about personal shopping for them than styling, and that just wasn’t my calling,” she says.
And so in 2023, Maheshwari decided to call it quits and move back to her hometown. She says, “It just didn’t make sense to live in Mumbai any more. In my field, I was making barely enough to cover rent. It is one of those lines of work where you struggle for 20 years or so to finally be able to make it. My career became everything, I didn’t have time for anything else.”
The hyper-individualism of the modern urban city can often leave its residents lonely and helpless. Moving back to her hometown has re-connected Maheshwari to the family unit. She says, “Now that I live with my parents, I don’t have to worry about whether I will make rent this month or not. And I have so many friends here. My routine is such that I can make time to spend with both friends and family. I can focus on my health—which was deteriorating in Mumbai—by eating good meals every day.”
Dhawan tells us, “It’s the flip side of what people move to cities for—independence. We crave that autonomy, but when we get it, we realise how much we value community. Living with family or as part of a unit takes away certain pressures. That support system can make life simpler, and that’s often more accessible in smaller towns.”
When asked if she would ever consider the big city life again, she said, “No, I had my fun in Mumbai but home is Raipur now. The slow pace definitely took some time to adjust to, but I love it now.” Dhawan explains, “For people who’ve lived in Mumbai, slowing down can feel uncomfortable, almost like boredom. But the fast pace takes its toll. We’re always busy! People in Mumbai often struggle to prioritise themselves, which is something I work on with my clients.”
Now, Maheshwari works as a freelance fashion and product stylist in Raipur. She says, “The concept is fairly new here, but that’s the fun part—to be able to introduce people to something new. I keep getting projects here and there but it’s definitely a growing market. My mother also runs a small home decor store called ‘The Fig Tree’ and I get to help her out. Many of my friends run businesses here which are doing fairly well. We all get to help each other.”
Speaking of friends, one such companion for Maheshwari is Rainy Agrawal. She graduated as a lawyer but then moved to Mumbai in 2022 to pivot to digital marketing. Here she worked for Black Box Co, a cruelty-free leather accessories brand. Although she had joined in to handle digital marketing and social media, slowly she started participating more in the business side of the company such as account-keeping, packaging, coordinating with vendors, sourcing inventory, etc.
This gave her the knack for the inner workings of a business, and a yearning to have something of her own. And so, Mimosaa (@mimosaa.in on Instagram), her jewellery brand, was born. She tells us, “I remember I used to keep brainstorming ideas while I was working at Black Box, and then I finally came up with Mimosaa. I used to go around the city, to Crawford, just to understand how I can source materials for my own business.”
Agrawal had high hopes from the city but unfortunately, it didn’t deliver. She says, “I thought I’ll meet so many people, party all the time, but the people I met, I didn’t necessarily connect with. I learnt to go out alone, watched movies alone, and went to cafés by myself. I tried new things, like attending workshops to try and meet people. It was an experience that made me grow a lot, but at the same time there was that sense of loneliness.”
By November 2023, Agrawal had made up her mind that it’s time to make a homecoming. She says, “I felt like I had learnt what I was going to learn at the job. Plus, my salary was pretty much the same as my rent. I just thought it’s time to go back. I came back with a plan. I moved to Raipur in November. In December, I had a stock of inventory. In January, I did my photoshoots, and in February, I launched.”
It’s been over a year, and she has been running her jewellery business very successfully. “It’s a myth that opportunities are only available in big cities. I recently got a sourcing request from Alaviaa Jaffrey’s team for her show ‘The Tribe’. With everything moving online now, things are so convenient. I can ship a parcel today and it will reach Mumbai within a day. And of course, Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are booming right now. I am seeing designers from all over the country now, not just Mumbai and Delhi. There are many growth opportunities.”
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