Gutter sputter

Few days back I wrote about how the blooming Gulmohar trees are indicating the start of the rainy season. Well, here is the second indicator. BMC, concerned with the rising incidence of flooding within specific areas of the city are on a cleaning spree.

Or is it that, concerned with the increasing number of people who think that a sidewalk is actually for walking - BMC has decided to do its best to dissuade such health conscious populace?They have decided to clear out the gutters and fill up the side walks with rubble and gunk and goop from the gutters. May be it is their subtle way of telling us that we are putting in all the wrong things into the gutters - like milk cartons, ice-cream cups, plastic covers and other miscellany.

Whatever the reason, if you are walking, watch out - because the gutter sputters and its not hygenic by any means!

The Week Ends here

Have you as a Mumbai-ite seen how difficult it is to spend weekends when there are no good movies released that week?

What do you DO - really? Go look at Juhu or Chowpatty half a dozen times? Educational activities like visiting museums and parks or getting religious is reserved for when we get guests. Eating out is like sooo boring after drowning in cheese at Pizza Hut or getting crunchy with chinese or even spicy with thai! The same restaurants are there year around. Wheres the variety in life?

Puh-leaze don't mention the innumerable malls that spring up like mushrooms. Most of them have the same shops and many are not even affordable! Imagine buying from a wierdly named international shops ( I realised that this shop named like a stinky smell was not 'Bhas' but actually a vowel-free 'Bhs' )

No wonder so many of my acquaintance simply go out of town when they get half a chance!
Any suggestions for a bored family?

Battlestations ! Autos are here

The autos-wallahs in Mumbai are an amazing lot. Especially the ones you find in the airports or cinema theatres. You ask them to go to the nearby station, or Bandra or Andheri .... and they refuse.

The autos outside the airports have the excuse that they have been standing in queue for many hours and therefore they are entitled to get as much money out of the trips as they can.

But how about the autos outside cinema theatres and office complexes?

As it is, Mumbai has limits as to where autos can go. They can't go much beyond Mahim on one side. So think about it - do they expect passengers to Navi Mumbai all the time? How many people who want to go to Navi Mumbai and in their senses can you find outside a cinema hall in Bandra or Andheri( at the cost of some 200-300 Rs)?

The autos are really aliens in disguise sent to spy on us. Whatever else they do ...they refuse to take passengers anywhere ( which is what they are expected to do). They want only passengers who want to go to the moon. So that they can earn the maximum of course!

My theory is supported by the interiors of autos ( space ships) decorated with eyes or lips, mysterious references to GODS and their power, about the eyesight of the blind and best of all Anarkali...

A king crowns himself

He is the King of Business and he is showing it BIG time. He is building a royal palace for himself as opulent and extravagant as any king built in the ye ancient times to prove his worth.

From impossibly large stones of the Pyramids in Egypt to...
the lush palace in Luxembourg to ...
the white, gold and glass magnificence of French palace of Versailles to ...
the gold embossed Mysore palace ( with the famous gold throne)....
each King had his palace built ostentatiously. Each of their palaces showed off their might and power to their subjects and enemies.

The nature of the King has changed today. Real royalty and money and power is in the business world rather than in blue blood lines. True to form, the King of today's business world has conceived 'Antilla'. Photos, videos and email forwards galore create a flood no one can ignore.

His 5-star style, 28-floor, 4 lakh sq feet palace towers over the skyline of Mumbai - demanding attention. We poor Mumbai-ites of 700 sq feet homes bow in subjection and wonder. He is the king- Mukesh Ambani – for he has announced it in no uncertain terms.

Mumbai abloom

All ye poets rejoice. All ye nature lovers rejoice and all ye bored with dull gray facades of faded buildings behold!

In case you are wondering why I have gone mad or antiquated in my English, then, wonder no more. It is the season. Mayflowers or gulmohars as we call them here, are abloom, heralding the arrival of rains.

I don't want to get into talking about rains, because today I want to be positive. Positive - about this grave and busy city that bears heavy burdens daily. The city is a riot of colours now. Most buildings have at least one ill-treated gulmohar in its backyard.

So while swishing past in a cocoon of a car, or while hanging perilously out of a bus or even chugging off in a train, let your eyes take in the marvelous feast of eye-catching, orange-red colours and refresh your minds.

The future is underground

Normally, people and movies envision the future full of flying cars and vehicles, thus using space travel and flight as means of transportation. However, in Mumbai it seems that the future is not above but below. I am not talking about heaven and hell though I hope that comparison never applies!

There is a train going to be snaking down under you. Won't it be great if this ambitious project for Metro in Mumbai reduces the traffic on the roads? Or is the traffic saved going to be replaced with the influx of people into the city over the 3 years it will take to completely develop?

Interestingly, the first phase of the Metro is going to be in densely popluated and over-trafficed area (pardon the word) of Andheri east MIDC. Having passed through the same area today, I can only sigh with relief at the development. Cars and vehicles stood stationery for half an hour!

I remember when the WE Highway bridge in Andheri East was built. It used to take me upto 2 hours to get to Andheri West. The only consolation of people stuck up in that kind of traffic jam was that once the bridge was completed, we would see a tremendous decrease in traffic density there.

Yes, it was true. The traffic jams reduced from what it was WHEN THE bridge was being constructed. It went back to what it was before - because in peak hours there are hardly 10 vehicles using the god-forsaken useless bridge built with such fan-fare. Let's hope that this road-block causing Metro does not cause this kind of havoc and trouble to poor working class citizens of Mumbai!

Open gutters - an open issue

It is not a mere gurgle of a river. It is the coughing and sputtering of a polluted brown muddy sewer. Nowhere else have I ever come across an abomination like this and I don't have simple words in which to describe it.

It raises stink of 20 dead rats and its murky depths contain plastic and all other sorts of unmentionable debris. My blog will probably get instantly taken down for disgusting content if I tried to describe it more in detail.

This open gutter system is a real threat. Come rains, it bubbles out, and gently cleans our feet in a deadly caress. Or should I say it turns us into dead carcass?

The amazing view of this seething cauldron of hell can be seen from many apartments in many places. I guess the residents of such apartments just tell themselves that they have a great "water" view. I hope that since it is moving water, it does not double up as a breeding place for mosquitoes!