Thursday, June 01, 2006

Rain Rain go away, Little Johny wants to play

Yes. The monsoon is back. The weather changes to pleasant overnight. But that is the only thing that is pleasant in mumbai. Mr Johny joseph, the BMC chief assured us that mumbai is ready for the monsoons. Well, the city just got a glimpse of it today. If it would have rained continously for an hour more, we'd have a day off tomorrow. And that would have been getting away really easy.
I do not have anything against rains. Maybe if i had not spent most of my life in mumbai, i would have appreciated it more. The smell of the first rains is quickly overcome by the stench of the filth. I will not write anything more lest people may miss out on the beauty of rains. But, as it is, mumbai had a terrible monsoon last year. Everybody has their own horror stories of 26/7 2005. That should have been reason enough for the BMC to wake up and smell the coffee.
Well, the city will smell this monsoon, but I am sure it will not be coffee. Agreed, quite a lot of work has been done in the past year and deadlines have been met. But as would be the case, quite a few deadlines have been missed. This should not be unusual as it is most common place for such occurences. But the bafflling part is there seems to be no contingency plan. Roads are still being dug up and "Work in progress" signs being put up one day before the rains. On another note, I remember seeing this sign board on the streets of mumbai for as long as i can remember, and one day if they all dissapeared i would feel lost and believe i was in another part of the world altogether. As it is, I have been travelling from andheri west to saki naka to work for almost 5 years and i want to see how new york traffic could beat that. And now they have potholes all along the road. I remember some radio station had come up with the idea of having a pothole named after you, if you discovered it on a road claimed to be clean. And believe it or not, they still have the same amount of potholes if not more on that patch of road. But johny does not think so. We are ready for the monsoons he says. Maybe he knows something we dont. I have never been to shanghai or new york, the cities they claim to make of this, but if they are half of mumbai when it rains, i sure dont want to be there.
All of the citizens of mumbai are partly responsible for this. Students across the country are raising their voices against new issues that bother them. We wont even say a word for things rotting in front of our eyes for years. But till we do something about it, Little Johnny will have his way.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

only happy when it rains OR it won't rain all the time..

take ur pick.