Hi,

Back from my hibernation and this time I'm writing a short poem on the myriad colors that I think make up for the imagery of Mumbai. Recently, I read that the colors of our taxis are going to be changed to a beige with brown trimmings. I've expressed my views on this change through the poem below. Hope it's a good enough explanation.



Colors that define Mumbai city~~

In Mumbai every colour has a story to tell
It's what defines this city, that some call heaven and hell

The cemented gray and the mossy greens
Are surrounded by the intense blue of tarpaulin

Turn around and you will notice
that not a wall or even a corner is left unblemished

Red designs and sprays of yellow
Make most people squirm and bellow

Signs don't mean much " Please don't spit"
Is just too much!

The whiteness of the zooming political cars
Is in stark contrast to the black money of these czars

Of common people and rush hours
Of jangling bangles and marigold flowers

Traveling by the black and yellow luxury
Against the crowded red bus, which seems like drudgery

Black crows and gray rats
Live in peaceful co-existence and have no spats

The amber that spreads across the evening sky
Makes my heart go sigh!

Colorful people and a colorful city
Changing a single thing would be such a pity!

MUNNA ON THE RUN: The yellow umbrella

MUNNA ON THE RUN: The yellow umbrella: "One evening as I was driving, crawling back home, I thought, 'there is something about the decay of Bombay that is beautiful.' It can't be t..."

Whose road is it anyway??

Recently, I joined the bandwagon and took to owning a vehicle and even driving it myself. This is one of the most perilous decisions I've taken. Why? Simple, in our country the onus of the pedestrian safety lies on the vehicle driver. Check the recent and significant judgement, the Bombay High Court has held that in case of an accident even if a pedestrian is negligent while crossing road, the driver of the vehicle is liable to pay the compensation to him or his family members.

Fraught with the fear and burden of being responsible for some strangers lives apart from the co-passengers whom I put under great duress. I drive only in the first or maximum second gear. Now this maybe civil in a crowded area which constitutes most parts of the city. It also makes me realise that pedestrians walk alongside my car and maybe move faster ahead.Maybe it is because they are carefree and even if they bump into strangers, at best they would apologise and move on. But if my car bumps into another car there will be an ugly spat,abuses will be hurled,etc. That's still a very acceptable situation god forbid if I slightly brush against a human I'd could even get beaten up,I would be asked to pay an unreasonable compensation even if it wasn't my fault and people were almost climbing on top of my car to get ahead.

One would reason that in crowded areas, narrow alleyways there are no pedestrian pathways. Why blame people when they are also subjected to risking their life and taking to the roads. All right, I cannot blame pedestrians here. Afterall I've been there not too long ago. Between the perennial construction work in Mumbai, hawkers and innumerable rickshawallas elbowing each other and other vehicles the poor pedestrian finds a place and squeezes himself/ herself to continue moving ahead.

But then what about wider roads, national highways, traffic signals etc. Do pedestrians follow the signals that have been made for their safety? Not always, many times even after the signal has turned green people continue to run like lunatics to cross the road.On national highways it is common to see people jumping from nowhere onto the highway to cross over. In a free country like ours, Jaywalking is not just restricted to humans. One could even encounter a herd of cows, a stray dog, maybe even an elephant who hogs the road ambling away at it's own pace(which is better than the elephant running amok anyways)...

So do we accept that Jaywalkers are here to stay or is this going to change? Well the good news is that there are awareness drives that the traffic cops have conducted one of them was outside CST where people who were crossing the road outside CST station, unmindful of traffic rules and were penalised for it. More such awareness drives need to be conducted across India, especially with the vehicular traffic growing faster than the infrastructure itself. I for one vouch for such a drive because until I took to the wheel I pretty much was clueless that such a word "Jaywalking" even existed. To make these drives successful there could be a PPP (Public Private Partnership) where the Traffic police jointly with auto companies create an awareness building campaign. This could be a great Branding initiative under the Corporate Social Responsibility angle. Are any Auto companies listening??
A few other things include signages which markout the vehicular traffic area from pedestrian walkways.Going forward one could also consider implementing a law that would compel people to follow the rules for their own safety and that of the vehicle driver.


Sources:http://www.zeenews.com/news566854.html
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/35-jaywalkers-end-up-in-fine-trouble-outside-CST/articleshow/4979622.cms

From a roar to a meow

The latest CSR based ad campaign by a new teleco caught my attention...More so because I am an animal lover and the campaign highlights the alarming decline of our beloved national animal- The Tiger. From 40,000 to just 1411 that is an almost 100% percent decline. The fall has beaten the stock market crash across the world. In India there seems to be a wave of optimism and some industry experts are hopeful that the sensex will gradually & eventually move northward, especially with the stimulus and corrective measures taken by the finance ministries. But I don't feel the same optimism when it comes to the tiger population, especially given there seems to be more lip service than actual action. I love tigers..so what if I've never been fortunate enough or rather have been fortunate enough to not have a rendezvous with one.I still feel strongly for this specie, especially because my first love was a tiger's cub, whose picture I had seen in one of the animal magazines in my childhood days.Pray, with the way things are going, future generations might well have to resort to movies and books to look at this magnificent creature. But don't get me wrong my love for tigers has nothing to do with my background, as in my community identity. My fondness is restricted to the stripped four legged man-eater and not to any individual whose considered the human equal of it.The only dissimilarity and a striking one that too remains that one is a national animal & the other one would rather want to be viewed as a regional member. Interestingly though, it appears that somehow their fates seems to be entwined.Both seem to be losing their battles to control territory and fight extinction...

The Flight for survival

Mumbai is an overcrowded city, but not just because of it’s people. It plays host to other thriving species that spans its skies, scooter seats, offices windows, residential buildings etc. Here I refer to crows and pigeons & in the minority & conitnously diminshing are our sparrow friends. Mumbai’s skyline is more often than not dotted with our black feathered friends and they seem to be the only birds one imagines to exist in this cemented jungle, apart from the pigeons which seem to blend into the buildings. Sparrows seem to have relocated altogether.

If it’s your lucky day you could spot a flock of parrot and maybe a mayna or two but that’s how far it goes. Most times you have to wake up to the cooing of a pigeon, and if your unlucky like me, a dozen pigeons. Normally the Mumbai skyline offers an overhang of pollution, an entanglement of wires, the bright lights of hoardings, a flight of our feathered friends and sometimes even a beautiful sunset that makes you feel hopeful about the next day is what keeps us going.

But today im not here to tell you’ll what you all already know. What I want to talk about is how Mumbai’s politics isn’t restricted to just it’s people. The fight for calling Mumbai home isn’t just an issue with us humans, even our feathered friends fight over it tooth and nail or should I say feathers and beaks.

It was well known that Mumbai had many visiting birds of different variety. Then suddenly with the turn of time crows grew and came to power. Their population itself made them daunting enemies that little sparrows were forced to keep a low profile. The power equation seems to be increasingly in favor of the new entrants & now permamnent residents- Crows. Yes, blasphemous according to the city's political environment. They are the new owners of the skyline and my guess is that their sheer size and might has made them fight the incumbents.

Everyday I’ve been noticing them in becoming more and more bolder as compared to other birds. This crow mafia fears nobody & they have aligned themselves to the national agenda of becoming the country with the higesht population. The drama it seems to be unfolding right here in front of us…