On roads, potholes, pavements and more

As I said, now that I have left journalism full-time I can sit back and criticise it:) As if I was ever a reporter (I was a feature writer, part of the elevated clan that was hated soundly by reporters:) who mostly followed her own whims and fancies at work. So, it is even more inappropriate of me to run down the clan. Nevertheless, as a `concerned citizen' I can say that it is soo predictable for the media to suddenly wake up to relevant city stories only when the monsoon happens: you can hear rain-drenched TV anchors screaming about Khar Subway, Milan Subway and then keep showing flood images that frightens my family back home in Chennai. Then, to keep pace with such show-stealing, the print press will go on an overdrive, so you can watch, with a state of immense great deja vu, media ink and ire being spent on the `bad roads', even worse accident statistics, and some blame-game, name-flinging between different maintenance departments. Why wait till then, guys... Have An Accountability section, to pin these issues down....

Here is a lead, sent to me by a blog reader as sms: "Subject for your city blog: at Andheri and Santa Cruz highway is getting a fresh coat of pre-fab macadam sheets. But during the last monsoon the sad thing was scraped out since it was felt they caused accidents (not bad driving)!. Now they are being laid again, but will be scraped out in June!"

Am not technically qualified to tell the difference between one road material and another(feature writers then, and now, only wax eloquent about colour of roads:), but those who drive clearly do know. So, if you are driving past Santa Cruz and Andheri highways, and smell something, it is either macadam. Or a racket:)

Chalta hai, Mumbai!!

Listen to Allah, not Mullah: Shah Rukh Khan

Here is an interview by Rajdeep Sardesai, with Shah Rukh Khan, who has been vocal about these issues for a while now. He, as always, talks sense:) I think time the sensible voices from within the community spoke up and wrest the platform from rabid types.

When a widow weeps: why we must all hang our head in shame

Here is the story of Shruti Gunjan Narang, who lost her husband, and so many others from her family, at the Taj shoot-out.
It broke my heart to read that when her husband's body was recovered from the morgue, only the ring he wore was found. The rest of the jewellry were missing. How can that be? From the Taj to the morgue only so many people could have handled the body: and it cannot be difficult to track down the culprit. Poverty is often cited as an example for such vandalism. But having lived in Mumbai for so long, I simply won't accept that. Oftetimes, it has been the poor who have been the sweetest here. So, whoever took jewellry from a slain man did not do it out of compulsion, but out of a lack of humanity. And under the circumstance, we do not even need to look at why or wherefore, but just seek to pin down and slam that sort of behavior so it never gets repeated again.
Even as the post-terror stories emerge, you can predict the pattern of stories. If the media could kick-butt its journalists to look beyond the obvious. Or read through emerging stories and take leads to chase up certain facts so that the media can, finally, become part of the change everybody is hankering after.

Even if just Narang's case was followed up, with hospital authorities, it would mean the beginning of accountability.

Mumbaikars' anger and their slogans

Somebody sent me, over email, these images from a website: I just cropped the slogans. While I knew that Mumbaikars had turned up in huge numbers for the spontaneously organised Mumbai rally protesting the terror attacks and official bungling in preventing and handling it later on, I never knew the scope of it. Local newspapers seem to have deliberately downplayed it.. Wonder why?

I did not catch any of these slogans in the papers. Or see photo features on these.. That is rather wimpy ...

Media cowardice is part of the current malice we are facing since a watch dog media is what creates accountability -- otherwise citizens do not get a valid platform .... Today, whatever the eruption of anger we witnessed in Mumbai is actually despite all, including the media, a spontaneous affair ...though the way the media is behaving, you think they somehow sponsored the event...

While I was a journalist I remember the shift towards PR journalism had started in full swing -- being wined and dined and being handed out PR releases that they wanted printed. If some of us decided not to take gifts, we became less relevant (to the PR agencies) since we could not be manipulated. But at the time I decided to quit, I realised that this was changing so much so that all of us were becoming bling journalists...Often I was bored that I was only made an `event organiser' -- asked to organise lunch dates between two celebs, so we can record it, or some such nonsense!! Or land up at the film events only when the actor wanted to give an interview.. stuff like that... Even the more `conscience-keeper' magazines were not averse to PR write-ups...Thus, all of us have contribute to the current rot...

Auto rickshaw: rocking rides

(The image is from this link... seems an official site of an auto rickshaw-manufacturer)

When I landed in Mumbai, two decades ago, during monsoon, my sandals broke. I was just walking distance from my destination so began to limp tortuously towards it... One auto rickshaw fellow gallantly stopped, allowed me to hop in, and when I covered that minimum distance and alighted to give him the fare, he refused to accept it. That was the Mumbai I had fallen in love with.

About seven years ago, such a thing was still likely to happen. While walking with my daughter I remember being hit on my chest by a teenage boy: I ran after him as he began running, a tribal for whom running was like the very breath. But I kept up, panting, angry, trying to flag some vehicles down, to chase him effectively. Only one auto fellow stopped, I hopped in, dashed after the running lad, and landed ahead of him, and thrashed him with my handbag, quite effectively, so that he would think twice again before touching a Mumbai woman. He took it silently, even apologetically, because by then a grinning, gawking crowd had gathered. In any case, as I wound up my wrath and paid the auto rickshaw driver the minimum fare he had covered, the sweet driver refused to take the money!! So seven years ago, that still was the Mumbai I loved.

These days every day I am finding that the auto rickshawallahs are beginning to change this great city into another Delhi with it cantankerous autos ... and cheating drivers. Soon Mumbai's auto fellows would be winning prizes ahead of Delhi and Chennai (another worst city in that sense because the auto fellows are so annoying and have been since I started affording autos in that city) for the title as to `Who is the worst of them all... '

Some problems I am facing and that is what most other Mumbaikars, especially in the northern suburbs must be facing (Bandra, I have found, is not so bad)...are as below:

• Autowallahs will not come for a minimum distance. And they will not come for a maximum distance. As a rule, they will NOT come, wherever you want to go. Most are saying no just for the heck of it, is what I have realised!
  
• Even though there is a provision for complaint against such behavior, I find that it can be tiresome to do that. Plus, most of these fellows are hanging outside at unregulated auto-stands. When you have a kid wandering about the complex, I can imagine that most parents would hesitate to take on such goons who are passing off as auto wallahs.
• Meters are tampered with maddeningly. I travel often to Bandra: the fare on a nice, empty road (early mornings is the time I travel, being yoga teacher), is Rs 120 one way. I have had fares bloating from Rs 150 to Rs 190. Is this fair? I am supposed to complain?? How many fellows can I complain against.......Especially, as I had explained, they are sitting just outside my gate, watching who goes in and comes out.... and clearly have their local gangs or whatever local goons they pay hafta to, in order to take over prime roadsides to set up their stands?
  
• I have had to deal with auto fellows who will suddenly decide mid-way that their `auto brake is broken down'. This has happened so many times, I cannot tell you how frustrating it is. Especially when you are travelling on the highway where you will not find another auto, empty. Or if you find a taxi, the driver will refuse to ferry you. And this `brake break down' happens usually after the auto fellow asks you what is the time. That is because his shift is ending, he must return the vehicle to the owner and has decided he will turn and go back, or remain in the eastern suburb and the hell to how you find your way to the western part of the town. No care, if it is raining. Once I got into a huge argument with one auto fellow, very politely in the sense I told him that my idea of dharma refused to accept his reason or his meter (overcharged by 60 rupees) and so I will pay him only what I thought fit the distance and his behavior: his brake suddenly started working, since he followed me ominously, abusing me with the most crude words imaginable. When ahead after this torture, I halted another auto, this angry auto fellow threatens him against taking me as passenger. Then, the second guy refuses and seeing that the first fellow is still following me, abusively, suddenly decides to give me a ride. Yet, the second fellow, whose brake had broken down, follows me for a long distance, yelling crude, dirty names at me!! This is the Mumbai I had loved?
  
• Another headache with auto fellows: suddenly, since the time I take the vehicle is usually the time when their fuel stations are likely to be empty, they will insist on refuelling: an auto refuelling means joining a long line of auto rickshaws, with crudely gesticulating drivers, at the backside of the service station (that is where they are allotted space). So you are there, uncomfortably being stared at by bored, crotch-scratching men, outside smelling male urinals, in a space that is not clearly, for women. After one such experience, I have become smart, and usually step off the auto, pay my fare and walk away. But I almost got abducted the other day by this smart cookie auto fellow who suddenly shifted lanes, in the highway, to the side of the fuel station, beginning an argument about just why it was not nice of me to refuse him `five minutes only' refuel time. Imagine, I was going for a class!! (always I am headed for a yoga class in this state of absolute mental disarray, thanks to this deterioration in auto services and the men who ply them).
  
• Imagine auto unions have gone on strike protesting against the public bus corporation for plying in certain areas(the Goregaon road, the last time the autos went off the road in protest)!! I find that absolutely difficult to swallow... That means we citizens have no collective voice, no union, and must be held to ransom like this? I mean these guys wont come where we want to go. And if I am to be given an alternative transport that is reliable, he will go off in a huff and protest!! Give me a break...
  

What may be done to improve the system?

• I cannot imagine why the city municipal corporation will not allot valid auto-stands for these guys so they are not taking up road space. And there are complaint boxes or liason people (from among auto fellows) at such halts. A city adminstration cannot think of the city only in terms of private buildings and highrises. The state government only seems to think of space in terms of what it may negotiate with private builders. Unless it starts to think in terms of such allottments for auto, car parking (rentals, as happen abroad) the city will continue to bloat like an unattended garbage can. Or try to organise it the city will be a mess. And it is also becoming difficult to stomach such nonsense. What made Mumbai tolerable, despite its filth, difficult commute, etc are its sweetness in daily transactions. The auto fellows are eroding that and thus eroding the ethos of the city. If you don't see that as a problem, soon people like us, from outside of this city and who have loved it as their own, will desert it.
  
• There has to be random meter checks: it seems corruption means the one who pays the most gets away... Suppose I as a citizen even complain (despite all those inhibitions I have explained above), if an auto fellow will pay some piddling hafta, which is most likely, he is going to be left off... right?
  
• The government must insist that unions liason with citizens -- after all, the unions are not an isolated entity, but can exist only with citizen patronisation! Just like Parent-Teacher Associations are a must (though schools can flout that too) in schools, so also all registered unions must have Commuter-Union meetings regularly so that such complaints get redressed.

Till then, I will suffer and dream of moving out, to a place where I don't have to travel by autos ....

Khar Subway: why is it so hellish...

You can see, though the picture is so shaky the garbage piling right into the road-- this is one of the most important subways in Mumbai. Not just during monsoon, but at all times the access from East to West road (the other street is dry) is always wet with some water/drainage leakage. Kids go to school stepping over it. Pedestrians use that pavement, splattered always with Mumbai's own exotic graffiti -- paan/betel nut spit stains. Am going to post better pictures when my auto does not stumble too fast -- those would clearly show how both sides are equally piled high with garbage. The richest city in the country. And this subway is one of the two most subways linking the eastern and western suburbs -- sign the city has been imploding for long on its own filth... Today I saw a few construction workers pore some tar/stones on some potholes -- somebody's grand idea of road repair:)

Khar subway has been like this since I have known it-- and none of us are really concerned that this is also the first view most foreigners or new comers to the city get if they take it, as they must, to catch the arterial SV road, to enter the western part of the city...

C'mon all you developers/city fathers/or whoever is supposed to taking care of this spot -- when are you going to do something about this rot? Don't t you use this link route at all? It does not make you cringe?

A slideshow of South Mumbai, post-attack

(Click on photos, for captions)
This is a slideshow of South Mumbai, on Sunday, as the city firmly decides to return to normalcy... By evening, some of these spots must have been thick with crowds, carrying candlelight, to mourn the loss of innocent lives and show their solidarity and also inform the politicians that enough is enough.