Mumbai.... The Maximum City.

I'm sure that there will be many people after my blood once they finish reading this but I'll take a risk anyway! And for all those people who are used to reading my blogs, this is different in that I'm in a seriously shitty mood.

I came to Bombay, the city of dreams, some 6 months ago. I came here with the impression that I was going to live in one of the most prosperous cities in the world...the Financial hub of the nation... the City that never slept... The Maximum City.... Gosh...the names and captions were endless really....

BOY WAS I IN FOR A SURPRISE.

I landed at the SantaCruz Airport in Bombay and started disliking the place as soon as the auto got out of the Airport premises. IT WAS(IS) A FILTHY CITY. I am told that I traveled through some of the posher suburbs that day, to get to my destination (Andheri) . I can only imagine as to how clean the "not so posh" suburbs will be. Here are some of the things which changed the image that I had in mind and changed them rather violently.

Garbage Bins… A myth

Here, I don’t claim that Bangalore(the city where I grew up) is the cleanest city in the world. There are certain areas in Bangalore where even pigs would think twice before setting camp... But Bombay is something else altogether. It is not an uncommon sight to see an overflowing garbage bin here (and when I say over flowing, I mean that the garbage spills out to almost 10 metres away from the bin which is not really serving its purpose). The stench is unbearable and there are flies all over the place. And this even in posh areas, mind you.

Spit!!!

Spitting is the local pastime

The hygiene level of the people of Bombay seems to be primitive as they spit wherever they feel like. I know that I’m being a bit unfair by generalizing here but you will see red paan pools or thick gooey red blobs all over the roads and footpaths here. In fact, in the area where I stay, I get my daily dose of exercise as I hop scotch my way to college, trying all the time to avoid stepping into a fresh mound of spit(yes yes… not shit…spit).

It hurts and angers me to see people who do not respect what they have around them. (Like I said, I was in a shitty mood so bear with this for a while longer as I vent my frustration on whoever cares to read this)

The Local Trains

Here’s another bit that left me disappointed when I saw it for the first time. I have recently returned from Singapore where I stayed for 7 days. I used the Metro rail there, the pride of the city. I, not to feel left out, shot my mouth off claiming that it was nothing in comparison to the Mumbai local trains (I got weird looks that day and I wondered why). When I visited the Vile Parle station for the first time, I was SHOCKED. I was not that appalled by the crowd(or the spit pools and the fact that it smelt like a public latrine…I was used to all that by then). What I was shocked by was the fact that the whole system was very old and outdated. In the sense…the platform was crumbling at the edges, terribly cracked and eroded in places. Hygiene levels had hit all time lows (Even the ticket checkers were spitting at will) and trains were BURSTING at their seams.(Im assuming that trains have seams here)… Five million people a day….thats more than the population of relatively large countries in the world…that’s the number of people who use the Bombay Local trains everyday. Shouldn’t the Government take steps to make the system a better one? Shouldn’t the Government take steps to instill some pride into the people who use it by telling them that what they have is probably one of the best systems in the world? Shouldn’t the government spend a little more on maintaining the system? These were some of the questions that came to mind almost immediately. And after a 30 minute journey where I got storked (a new term that I am introducing here…I was on one leg for 30 minutes ... not very different from the posture of a stork) I came out visibly shaken and terribly disappointed

Uncovered Drains and nalas

Now is where I get slightly emotional. The reason why I have written this epic is because we just lost a classmate to Dengue fever. One would think that Dengue fever is contracted only in god forsaken places in back-of-beyond Africa where the mosquito population outnumbers the human population a 1000 times over. I was shocked to hear that Dengue fever is very rampant in Bombay during the monsoons. When I kept reading (on daily papers) about the mounting cases around the city, it did not do more that just surprise me. But when one of our classmates passed away in a span of 3 days, this was then when it hit me. Drains, the breeding ground of mosquitoes are open and have stagnant dirty water all throughout the year.

I could write a book on why I hate Bombay so much but I think I’ll just put a lid on it for now.

I hope I have not offended anyone too badly!