LED displays
Improved ventilation
Faster fans
And cushioned seats
Mobile phones
Seem to be with all of you
Everything looks new in a Mumbai Local

Shoe-shine boys
AH Wheeler
The smell of popcorn
Eunuchs onboard
Pocket radios for some
And a Ray Ban too!
Life sure is interesting on a Mumbai Local

Abusive cop
Scared little kid
Girlfriend-Boyfriend
And an office exec
Vegetable vendors
And a Parsi bawa too
Every one takes the Mumbai Local

Fast train screams past
Marine Lines sea breeze
I arrive at Churchgate
By a window seat
Reached in no time
In 6 rupees too!
Is there anything better than a Mumbai Local?

Within a few months, it had become evident that the Dr. Singh who was responsible for the visionary practices of globalization and liberalisation was not the Dr. Singh who was now the alleged “leader” of the country.  In fact, over the next few years, India would see multiple scams surfacing, each trying to outdo its predecessor in terms of the millions and billions it amassed for its kingpins.  And, the famous Dr. Singh was reduced to being no more than a mouthpiece for the venerable “G” clan – if at all he ever spoke!

Like thousands of others, I too saw a glimmer of hope when, a few months ago, a frail old man in a “Gandhi” cap – Anna Hazare – decided to take on the cause of “India Against Corruption” by declaring a fast-unto-death in the capital of the country.  He was doing so, in support of the Lokpal Bill that proposed strong measures against corrupt practices. 

Frankly, the amount of activity online (Twitter, etc.) and on-ground, at the time, was a surprise to most of us.  But, the Govt. managed to postpone the problem by seeking some time to correct its steps and table the Bill.  Not one to give up easily, Anna promised that if suitable measures were not taken, he will return on 16th Aug – a day after India’s independence day.

What was eventually drafted by the ruling government was a completely stripped-down version of the Bill, with ommission or reduced liability for key stakeholders like the PM’s office and members of parliaments, and strict punishments for those who “wrongly” make an allegation of corruption!  And, true to his word, Anna was back.

By this time, however, the man had become a movement…

India Against Corruption was now a full-fledged initiative that sparked the imagination of millions of Indians, both here and abroad.  Twitter was abuzz with activity around hashtags like #anna and #janlokpal.  Thousands of people in most major towns responded to Anna’s call of jail bharo (fill the prisons), to mark their protest against the prevalent corruption.  Retired IPS officers and High Court judges were pledging their support in public.  Even NRIs were flying down from across the globe, in a show of solidarity! 

Enough and more has been written about how India is a country that is too large and diverse to manage.  And, about how every coalition government has to make tradeoffs that may not be acceptable.  But today, for the first time, I feel that as a people, we have had enough.  The citizens of India are demanding a better government.  The citizens of India – youth and disabled included – are bunking classes and taking leave from work, to show up for candle marches and protest gatherings, at places like Azad Maidan and Tihar Jail… 

800+ voluntarily got themselves jailed in Mumbai, just a few days ago.   Thousands have been detained in Tihar Jail already.  Hundreds of thousands are spreading awareness via SMS and tweets, to their friends and family.  1.5 million have pledged their support via the Facebook group – Jai Ho!  And, more than 13 million have registered their voice of dissent via missed calls, as reported by the IAC website.

Yes, some of us are still wishing that this is just a phase, and that “this too shall pass”.  Some of us are still squabbling over semantics, and questioning the “unparliamentary” manner in which this movement has grown from strength to strength.  Some of us are still arguing that as long as we continue to grease palms to expedite things, we have no right to protest against corrupt practices.

But, there is no denying that, what started as one man’s fight for an India that deserved more, has become a movement for which Anna is but a symbol – a face.  Nearly a century ago, a man named M.K. Gandhi taught us that you can shake a nation from its slumber, and oust a colonial ruler, by non-violent means. Today, Anna is using those means to re-ignite a spark in millions.  And, he’s doing more for our society than most of us ever will in our lifetime.

I support Anna because Life is hard as it is, and for decades, we Indians have (mistakenly) lived with the belief that we are like this only.  I support Anna because it takes a lot to get the youth of our country to even care about what’s happening to it.  I support Anna because he may be our only hope, in our fight against corruption and injustice, and an ineffective government.  I support Anna because, years later, when my grandchildren ask me if I had any role to play in the “freedom struggle” of my time, I want to be able to say “Yes, I did!”

I do hope that this flame does not die out too soon… for your sake and mine.

Read Also:
Wikipedia on Jan Lokpal Bill (Anti Corruption) of India
Answering Anna’s critics: 10 posers and rebuttals

We had planned to do a Bombay-to-Goa with both our kids, and I’m happy to report that we all made it back in one piece, and are raring to go again!

The distance is about 650 kms, each way.  And, to get the full experience of a long drive, we decided to do it in one stretch.  The planned drive time was about 14 hours, each way, but we ended up clocking nearly 17 hours!  It was a memorable trip, and I was really pleased that, in spite of a back operation a few years ago, I was able to do this.  We chose the superb NH4 route instead of the usual NH17 one, and it was a fantastic experience…

Here’s what I learned from my first long drive:

- Start by 5 am for a >12-hour road trip; A half-hour in the morning is worth two by evening
- If travelling with kids, carry enough food in the cabin (not in the boot), in case you’re stranded
- On a long road trip, the journey is as important as the destination; Don’t be in a hurry to “reach”
- Wear comfortable attire and shoes – whatever you’re most comfortable in, including floaters
- Plan your route in advance and key-in important via points into your GPS – it will do wonders!
- Don’t start with six options and assume that you’ll decide on the way; Re read above point
- Carry enough water and consume it as frequently as possible; Car ACs dehydrate you
- Don’t take a new car / new pair of shoes / new camera on a long road trip; I didn’t
- Don’t forget to pack your sense of humour with you – no one likes a cabin full of grump
- Know a little about the kind of food you’ll encounter en route e.g. Kolhapur = Spice
- There are at least 20 people in Goa who run at 5.30 am; Watch out for them when you drive!

For the record, the best way to go from Bombay to Goa is from Mumbai to Pune via the expressway and then onto NH4 (buttery-smooth six-lane ribbon of tar!) past Satara – Kolhapur – Nipani (right turn) – Ajara – Amboli (ghats) – Sawantwadi – joining NH17 and then onto Mapusa/Panjim/Madgaon.  Also for the record, the worst way to cross the ghats (mountainous region) is via Anmod.

For those of you who’re interested in our particular travel log, here’s what happened:

(All distances from Powai) Started at 5.15 am. McDonalds @ 6.12 am, 42km. Hit NH4 near Baner (Pune) @ 7.45 am, 145k.  Khed tollbooth @ 8.45 am, 180k. Passed thru Khandala ghats (before Satara) @ 9.30 am, 225k. Next tollbooth @ 249k. Break for lunch @ 1.15 in McDonald’s (opp. side) at 384k. Past Hattari SEZ @ 3.15 pm, 460k.  Entered Belgaum city @ 4.30 pm.  Went via Khanapur road (NH4A) upto Anmod ghats.  Took a few wrong turns trying to follow a “shortcut”, and got lost in the wilderness of a 133 sq. km nature reserve with no sign of civilisation until about 9 pm, when we hit NH4 again near Ponda.  (This last part is entirely optional, and I don’t suggest you try it.)  Then, hit the road to Madgaon and reached Colva @ 10 pm.

(All distances from Colva) Started @ 5.30am. Sawantwadi @ 92k, 7.45am. Amboli ghats end  (Kamat’s hotel) @ 8.55 am. Hotel Minerva @ 2km before Ajara @ 10:15 am, 152k - very clean loo.  Hit NH4 @ 12PM, 192k.  No decent place to eat except McD @ Kolhapur and Sai Food Court @ 265k and some more options @ 285k.  Taswade tollplaza @ 2.35p, 315k. Asal Satara has great food on the opp. side via service road @ 355 k. Last tollbooth on Mum-Pun expressway @ 8pm, 540k. Expressway ends @McDonald’s @ 8.20pm, 570k.  Then, pray that the city traffic does not take all the joy out of your long drive (as it did to our’s).

Happy journey…

P.S. Thanks for all the help, DM.

Enough and more has been written on the event by bloggers that are way more enthu than me about reporting the details.  So I’ll only write about the stuff that left an impression on me…

The Indiblogger team has evolved so much in the two years since the last event in Mumbai.  This one had its own hashtag (#indimum), complete with a hi-tech registration process (just enter your Indiblogger id!) and a live stream that showed tweets and arrival updates on the big screen throughout the event!  In fact, thanks to the tweets, people could “follow” the event live, even if they were unable to make it. 

Many of us got a chance to put faces to names we’d been interacting with for so long.  Activities like the whackiest intro to your self/blog, and writing comments on chart papers hung on each of us, only helped break the ice and make it more fun.  (Your’s truly was chosen as one of the five whackiest intros from the group of over 250, and won a domain name registration which I ended up gifting away to a fellow blogger who had four blogs on four different URLs!)  As if that was not enough, there were also cool freebies for every one, prizes for pop quizzes, and Gul Panag (ain’t she so pretty?) who was invited to join in the festivities and moderate a discussion on the future of blogging.

The energy level in the room was visible and contagious!  It was so nice to meet fellow bloggers passionate about blogging, and spend an entire afternoon with them, just having fun and getting to know each other. 

To cut a long story short, I left with more friends that evening than I’d walked in with!  What more could you ask of a lazy Sunday afternoon?

See also: Reviews by Indibloggers | Pics on Flickr (Thanks, Renie!)

A lethal plume of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas escaped from a storage tank at the Union Carbide pesticide factory in the early hours of December 3, 1984 in the central Indian city of Bhopal.

Government figures put the death toll at 3,500 within the first three days but independent data by the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) puts the figure at between 8,000 and 10,000 for the same period.  The ICMR has said that up to 1994, 25,000 people also died from the consequences of gas exposure.

Union Carbide settled all liabilities related to the accident, including cleaning up the site, with a 470-million-dollar out-of-court settlement with the Indian government in 1989 after years of wrangling about the amount… The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB), an umbrella group of survivors’ organisations, says most survivors received 25,000 rupees (500 dollars) to fund a lifetime of hospital visits.

Yesterday, after a 25-year-long wait, the final verdict was out.

A quarter of a century after the worst industrial disaster in history, a Bhopal district court sentenced seven people, including businessleader Keshub Mahindra, for two years in jail under sections of Indian law usually applied to road mishaps.

The Monday verdict didn’t mention Warren Anderson, the Union Carbide global chief during the disaster. Anderson, who was arrested in Bhopal in 1984, was freed on bail on assurance that he will return. Four years later, the CBI chargesheet named him, and in 1989, the chief judicial magistrate of Bhopal issued a non-bailable warrant for his arrest for repeatedly ignoring summons. In 1992, Anderson was declared a fugitive by the Indian courts.

The Indo-Asian News Service reports:

The United States has ruled out reopening any new inquiry against Union Carbide after Bhopal court’s verdict in the 1984 Bhopal gas leak that killed more than 15,000 people, hoping it would bring closure to the probe into the tragedy.

“Obviously this was one of the greatest industrial tragedies and industrial accidents in human history,” US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake told reporters on Monday.  “But I don’t expect this verdict to reopen any new inquiries or anything like that. On the contrary, we hope that this is going to help to bring closure,” he said…

Pritish Nandy seemed to hit the nail on the head when he tweeted:

We have simply stopped respecting the lives of the unknown any more. No number of deaths interest us, unless the dead are famous.

Bhopal will no longer be remembered for the crime: 6 lakh lives destroyed. It will be remembered for the injustice meted out 25 years later.

Today, I am ashamed to call myself an Indian.

Someone wise once remarked, “There is only one question – How to love this world?”

Update : 16 June 2010

Amar Hingorani, an advocate in the Supreme Court of India, posts a shocking and brilliant editorial in the Hindustan Times in which he informs us that: “The law empowering the Indian government to represent Bhopal’s gas victims was unconstitutional. In effect, two guilty parties negotiated with each other.”

See Also : Union Carbide’s official statement

Here’s how the Krishnamurti Foundation describes him:

Krishnamurti is regarded globally as one of the greatest thinkers and religious teachers of all time. He did not expound any philosophy or religion, but rather talked of the things that concern all of us in our everyday lives, of the problems of living in modern society with its violence and corruption, of the individual’s search for security and happiness, and the need for mankind to free itself from inner burdens of fear, anger, hurt, and sorrow. He explained with great precision the subtle workings of the human mind, and pointed to the need for bringing to our daily life a deeply meditative and spiritual quality.

He was a prolific writer and speaker, and has expounded on various subjects that concern us as mankind.  Therefore, it’s an impossible task to try and “summarise” the essence of his teachings or give you a fair representation of what they entail.  Instead, I’ll give you an excerpt from notes to himself…

FLYING AT 41,000 feet from one continent to another you see nothing but snow, miles of snow; all the mountains and the hills are covered with snow, and the rivers too are frozen. You see them wandering, meandering, all over the land. And far below, the distant farms are covered with ice and snow. It is a long, tiresome flight of eleven hours. The passengers were chattering away. There was a couple behind one and they never stopped talking, never looked at the glory of those marvellous hills and mountains, never looked at the other passengers. Apparently they were absorbed in their own thoughts, in their own problems, in their chatterings. And at last, after a tedious, calm flight, in the dead of winter, you land at the town on the Pacific….
 
… You have said over and over again that the mind, or if you prefer it, the brain, must be quiet, must empty itself of all the knowledge it has gathered, not only to be free but to comprehend something that is not of time or thought or of any action. You have said this in different ways in most of your talks and I find this awfully difficult, not only to grasp the idea, the depth of it but the feeling of quiet emptiness, if I can use that word. I never could feel my way into it. I have tried various methods to end the chattering of the mind, the endless occupation with something or other, this very occupation creating its problems. And as one lives one is caught up in all this. This is our daily life, the tedium, the talk that goes on in a family, and if there isn’t talking there is always the television or a book. The mind seems to demand that it should be occupied, that it should move from one thing to another, from knowledge to knowledge, from action to action with the everlasting movement of thought.

Why should you care about Krishnamurti and his teachings?  I’ll let him answer that in his own words…

And as we are – the world is. That is, if we are greedy, envious, competitive, our society will be competitive, envious, greedy, which brings misery and war. The State is what we are. To bring about order and peace, we must begin with ourselves and not with society, not with the State, for the world is ourselves…

If we would bring about a sane and happy society we must begin with ourselves and not with another, not outside of ourselves, but with ourselves.

 Wish you a Happy New Year and a more informed life…

During the first week of October, we also made a trip to Gorakhpur (via New Delhi) for my sister’s wedding !!!

It was an interesting few months leading up to the “big day”, with tension and excitement available in equal measure.  The boy’s family was from Gorakhpur (Uttar Pradesh).   For various reasons, both parties had agreed, early on, that we would host the engagement and wedding ceremony in Gorakhpur, and try to keep the formalities to a minimum.  Ma’s health has always been unpredictable, and we were not even sure she’d be able to make it to the event!   But, as the day dawned nearer, I became more and more confident that the adrenalin would keep her going…

Given the dubious safety record of train journeys across Bihar and UP, I was keen to avoid that stretch, and planned to route our journey via New Delhi.  Since most of our relatives were joining in from Delhi, we would also benefit from their company.

That said, we were apprehensive about how our little kids would manage.  This would be our longest train journey with both kids, till date.  And, we were scheduled for not one, but three train rides lasting more than 15 hours each, in a span of 6 days!  Yes, we were planning to take the maid with us.  But, there was no guarantee that she would not cancel at the last minute.

As it turned out, things weren’t half as bad as they could’ve been.  Every thing went off smoothly with the engagement and the wedding ceremony.  And, Ma was able to make it to her daugher’s wedding day.  Having the celebrations in Gorakhpur meant access to a lot of resources (for the bridegroom’s family) and none of the problems of Mumbai’s traffic.  I even managed to go with a few temple-goers for a little ride around the Gorakhpur countryside, to see life on the streets in a new town.

The children enjoyed their holiday, and made the most of the attention from all our relatives.  On our way back, we’d planned a one-night stay in Delhi to catch up with some family that we had not seen in a long while.  (I used to visit family in Delhi, every summer, when I was in school).  Now, after all these years, it was really nice to meet up with some cousins and uncles, and have the kids meet with cousins of their own – some of them for the first time!

Yes, I really wish the weather was not as hot and humid as it was, both in New Delhi and in Gorakhpur.  And, I was really looking forward to my journey back by the Rajdhani – a train I have never been in and have wanted to all my life.  (We missed our train ride back on account of a bad traffic jam in New Delhi, and had to spend an exhorbitant sum to return by flight!).

But, in the end, all’s well that ends well.

- You say “town ” and expect everyone to know that this means south of Kemps Corner.

- Your door has more than three locks.

- Rs 500 worth of groceries fit in one paper bag, and more…

Today, I add an update to that, thanks to another forwarded email on this most interesting subject!

You know you are from Mumbai, when…

“9:47 fast” means something to you.

You think that Delhi copied INDIA GATE from Mumbai’s GATEWAY OF INDIA …

You’re suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you.

You consider eye-contact an act of overt aggression.

When there’s no place to breathe in the local trains, but there’s place to play cards and sing bhajans!

You refer to the city as “Bombay”, not “Mumbai”.

Every three months, you look at your street and say “Why’re they digging the road again?”

You actually pay for the autorickshaw by the meter.

Every time you speak Hindi in front of a Delhite they have the WTF expression on their face.

You think everyone who lives to the south (Mumbai) of you is a snob, and to the north of you sucks.

You consider the local train “empty” when you find a spot for your two feet to stand on.

Everything to the top of Mumbai is UP-Bihar and everything below is Madras

“Chalta hai” is the most commonly used word

When you call the BEST bus, BST, even though BEST is painted on every single public transport bus operational in Bombay

It takes longer to get from your house to the station, than from one end of Mumbai to another by train.

What a city!

It’s also (probably) India’s first bridge to have a website of its own, even if its classic brochureware design boasts of more ads than real content on the project!   The sad reality is, for all the effort that went into its construction, it may not achieve the larger objective, thanks to poor planning and myopic politics.

The Economic Times went from calling it a “traveller’s delight” to “hi-tech incompetence“, in a single day!

ET, 30 June — It was quite an exhilarating experience to be able to commute via the Bandra Worli Sea Link for the time. We started off from the MSRDC site office near Bandra Reclamation and halted at Worli, in a matter of less than 8 minutes, using the sea link route as it was gearing up to open to public in less than 48 hours.

ET, 1 July — What was supposed to be a Rs 300-crore project completed in 2004 actually cost Rs 1,600 crore and was completed five years late… Supposedly it will reduce the 40-minute car journey from Bandra to Worli to seven minutes, but in practice it will lead to traffic bunching at both ends of the link, and become a nightmare during rush hour.

In the days leading up to its inauguration, I was wondering what it would be named…  Given that Mumbai happens to be in Maharashtra,  the Shiv Sena would definitely want it named after a ‘son of the soil’.  And, since the Congress was elected back into power earlier this year, the “first family” would probably want it named after one of its own.  In the end, the Congress had its say.  It would be called the Rajiv Gandhi Setu.

As someone who’s lived in Mumbai all my life, I firmly believe that the city’s traffic problems need a hoslitic mass-oriented solution.  Improvement in the Public Transport System will result in far greater benefits per rupee spent, than investing in two-lane flyovers or sea links that begin and end in traffic jams…

I have yet to see the Bandra Worli Sea Link in its finished state, and plan to head there on the weekend to shoot some pics.  But that’s only because the photographer in me can still appreciate its engineering design and beauty. 

As a commuter, I have no doubt that it’s not much more than Rs. 16 billion worth of band-aid  for a problem that requires open-heart surgery!   Is any one listening?

If all this sounds too good to be true, think again.  It’s all happening in India, this election season!

If, like me, you are also tired of the lack of transparency & access to information, and the limited accountability of your political representatives, you will appreciate just how much any one of these tools can help.  Bear in mind that the list above is just a sample.  There’s all that and more on the world wide web, available at the click of a mouse, to any one with a Net connection.

Sure, some of the features work only for major cities.  Sure, sometimes, spelling mistakes in the voter list can make finding your polling both a little tricky.  Sure, you may print out the directions from GoogleMaps only to discover (at times) that you were directed to the wrong center!  But, if this is what can be achieved in just one election, imagine what we’ll be able to do the next time around!!!

I was able to look up my name on the voter list (showing my old address and constituency), access key stats on my constituency, look up all the candidates that are contesting from that region, read their parties’ manifestos, and access their track record on parliamentary attendance and criminal cases pending against them.  All this, from the comfort of my AC office! 

Thanks to these tools, I also now know that Gurudas Kamat (a respected Congress candidate) has had to declare a 408% increase in his net assets since the last election, and Pramod Kasurde (an independant candidate contesting this year) has only passed his 8th standard!

This country we live in needs change more than any thing else.  And, that change will not come unless you and I move our butts and make our opinion count. 

Head on to these sites to find out all you need to, and ensure that you cast your vote on Election Day…

• JaagoRe  – Voter Registration, Polling Booth details, FAQs and more…
• MumbaiVotes – Info on Political Candidates for any region of Mumbai
• Lok Sabha Elections 2009 – Type in your locality to customise this

Do you still have a good excuse for not doing your duty?!  Really?