Mumbai bashing

Folks, I am personally a bit tired of Mumbai bashing. I would like to clarify the residents of Mumbai that despite all its ills, Mumbai as a city is still in a lot better state than the rest of India.

I know my detractors will say I’m the first one who moans and groans about the state Mumbai is in. I would like to correct them, I don’t crib about Mumbai as such, I complain about the quality of its leaders. On the whole I find that the people of Mumbai are willing to do an honest days work except that the system forces them out of the mould.

In a lot of cases, its the leaders we get which are crappy due to the very politics which make them the heads of the bureaucracy. The horse trading which makes them a leader of the organizations they work for ensures that they are impotent when the time comes to perform. How can you get anything done if you have to bow and scrape every few hours to the remote control.

For example, my problem with the 26/7 floods is very simple, its not the BMC but the joker at the top Jhonny Joseph who fiddled while Rome burnt.

What happens a few months after 26/7, he gets a plum post of Maharashtra Chief Secretary instead of a solid thumping.  Certainly makes you think that his remote control was in the right hands for him. Same with 26/11.

What do we see with the real culprits except for the three politicos who got a show execution. NOTHING maybe even promotions very soon. Not even a black mark on their private files.

The fire fighters or the common police constable who had a limited role in 26/11, did it to the best of their ability. Its the jokers at the top who were so muddled that they didn’t know their backside from the front side for at least 5 hours till the shock sank in that the very rooms in which they have taken suitcases from Armani wearing businessmen was no longer a bastion.

When I sit back and ponder, I realise that we Mumbaiites are quite comfortable as compared to the rest of India.  For example, we complain about a few potholes on the roads, but take the example of Himachal Pradesh where I visited recently, the whole state runs on the concept of a single lane. 

I don’t mean one lane for up and one lane for down traffic , I mean a SINGLE lane. If you meet a vehicle coming from the opposite direction, you move into one of the millions of little curves onto the side of the road till the opposite vehicle passes. Its a very courteous system and people are very understanding.

Compare this to Mumbai where despite having 4 lanes, every idiot in a Honda City thinks hes Michael Schumacher’s long lost brother and tries to jam his car into the 3 inches of space between him and the oncoming cars at crossings and you can see where the trouble starts.

Or lets take the example of an 8 hour electricity load shedding at Mahabaleshwar on Christmas day whereas we in Mumbai hit the roof if the lights go off for half an hour and would never tolerate it on Xmas day. That certainly Jingles my bells folks.

I am not of the mindset that one eye is better than none but rather of the “Karo Jyaada Ka Irada” , so I dont condone this mismanagement , all I want to do is give all of us a reality check.

Today, when we see an Electric truck repairing the street lights, instead of accepting it for a fact and pushing it in our minds as a part of the the background scenery, let us stop for a second and thank our stars that someone out there knows the bulb is  busted and is doing their job.

When we see the street swept clean as we wake up in the morning, when we see the cops on a drink drive campaign, when a single woman is able to call a cab at 2 am to drop her home. Lets just look into ourselves, thank our stars for the spirit of the true Mumbaikars who make sure our life is better than any other part of India. 

It may also be the right time at that moment ask ourselves, HOW CAN WE AS CITIZENS CAN MAKE THIS BETTER !!!!!!

When our roads get flooded, do we bother to inform the BMC about the flooding ? No we don’t. We expect them to be clairvoyant enough to know when its flooded. We live our lives in our living rooms and expect the world to revolve around us. It doesn’t, the BMC chap doesn’t know your road is flooded, the electric guys don’t know the street lamp is busted, the cops don’t know that the corner shop is dealing drugs. So, the next time there is flood, report it. The next time a street light is broken on your street, report it and it will get repaired faster.

To expect better services, don’t sit at home cribbing, interact.  Be the eyes ears and nose of your community and the good people of Mumbai will work with you. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”.

A good citizen is not one who has lived for past 15 years in a city but an Interactive citizen who participates in its today.

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One for the road

Yesterday night was 31st and I like a lot of people in Mumbai this year went to one of the three star hotels since the gymkhanas etc were not holding parties. Most of them were advertised with skimply dressed women with suggestive names for the parties like “Miami Grind” to “Playboy Mansion”. 

( I seriously think we’re a frustrated generation where we Indians need a skimply dressed woman to sell everything from a cockroach spray to a mobile…….a far far cry from Khajurao and the openess which was our culture)

The passes were an “X” price per couple , unlimited food, drinks kind of scenario. It was fine for the first few hours , till about 2 am when things started getting a bit hairy. The free flowing booze started to hit a lot of the young crowd who perhaps had their first taste of freedom (and free whisky). Some of them were drinking since it was free and a lot of them since they thought it was the macho thing to do. The girls were doing it perhaps  since they thought it made them look a bit more grown up in the eyes of their escorts who frankly didn’t seem to care a damn what age they were as long as they were available. (some faces didnt look over 14)

All around us, drunken fights started to break out. To add to that, there were young people of both sexes throwing up all over the place.

My mind flashed to something and it scared the hell out of me. It was the idea that there were about 2000 people there at that party. Multiply that by at least 100 hotels across Mumbai with such parties and you have approx 200,000 people drinking the FREE booze. Assuming 4 people to a car and about 33% of them as not drunk and 33% wise  enough to bring chauffeurs or hire cabs.

There would still  be a great number of 16,500 cars with drunk drivers running across Mumbai.

I hate to say this and sound like an old fuddy duddy, but in my days (when I was young and foolish enough to think drinking does not hamper my driving but makes it safer since I drive slower) the dangers were not as much. We didn’t have these morons, sleeping right out in the street in the path of traffic in semi lit streets.

(see picture on right,click on picture to see larger image). 

Today the odds of you doing a Salman are maybe a 100 times more than they were about 10 years ago. Today not only are the fines for drinking and driving upto 6 months imprisonment being enforced, the risks of hitting someone who is sleeping on the streets are many times more due to the sheer brazenness of the slum dwellers due to political nincompoopiness.

So the next time you party, think of two letters DD. Designated Driver. Either one of you doesn’t drink, or you take a cab. Its better than having to spend the next 2 months visiting the courts and another 6 months in jail.