Thursday, June 07, 2007

Back again with views about bombay


05/06/2007
Originally uploaded by SuzyMBA
After that last post I did, I made a small trip to Bombay. People in bombay, whom i did not call - please do not get angry. first thing - i did not carry your numbers. i myself had a loaned phone. i was living in a place where the nearest internet cafe could not be located. and i was totally disoriented with the way the city lived.

perhaps bombay is such a nice place for millions of people. not for a person like me who needs some breathing space. in about every place in bombay there are more people per square feet than in any other city in india. you cant to any place soon. if that had to happen then it should be after 12pm and before 5am. a lot of people like the way bombay functions. i personally did not like it at all. everything is so fast. sometimes, the city life can be compared to how it is in New York. Even London is not this fast. although i did not explore the whole city in great depths, i was astonished to see asia's largest slum dharavi, while the aeroplane was descending. its HUGE - in the real sense, its HULK size. from the top i cud see all the small lanes inside the slum. these lanes were just enuff for one person to walk through and houses were placed on the landscape like a collage of matchboxes or maybe just a confetti.

the next funny thing to understand and practice was the suburban train. i stood stationary on the andheri platform for more than 30 minutes to get onto a train. the idea was to get onto the train before someone got off. and to do this, you had to be agile and fast because there were 50 other people trying to do the same thing. nevertheless, the all-ladies compartments were free of any trouble of getting in or out.

public transport as such is quite efficient. the city more or less is totally dependent on the public transport infrastructure. in that way its managed very efficiently. the auto-rickshaws are not allowed in some portions of the city. you can drive only cabs there. this keeps out the rickshaw drivers who keep shifting lanes every 10 mtrs and who do not see the vehicles coming behind before taking a U-Turn.

While I was browsing through some of the other blogs that I visit, I found this interesting picture. Click on it to read what it says

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