Category: Mumbai

A comment

~ Akshay ~ 3 Comments

The other day a me and a friend of mine were discussing about work and she commented that you have to struggle so much to get to the office. While at that moment I didn’t really understand what she meant by struggle, since being in Mumbai and traveling regularly in the trains here, I am quite used to the daily pushing and jostling for tiniest of spaces. But after a while when the comment really sinked in, I realized commute was much better when I was in Washington DC. I didn’t have any jump in the entering train just to get a better place to stand, neither did I get crowded in, or drenched in someone else’ sweat and there no pushing and fighting or arguing. Just everyone going about their business in a very comfortable manner.

Even in Kolkata, the commute was much better. I didn’t have to take the train here, the auto rickshaw journey was comfortable as again there was not “struggle” to get to office. Getting to work place for only tough some days when I used to travel by the overcrowded “killer” blue buses.

Enter Mumbai. I can now understand how much struggle it is to get to work. By the time you have reached office, almost half of your energy is drained. This by far is the biggest challenge a new comer might face when he/ she arrives here. May be Raj Thackeray should take up such issues, rather than focusing on who said what. A lot of Marathi manoos also travel in the trains. I am sure he will get their votes if he makes their, and with them, our commute comfortable.

Strike..

~ Akshay ~ 2 Comments

I didnt have to go work today because we had a strike ‘bandh‘ as we call it in the local lingo. Now I have no idea why we had this bandh, but all I know is this bandh was planned about three months ago. Funny, how political parties plan strikes so much in advance. It is like preparing for a party. But anyways I spent the day at my house, doing absolutely nothing, except attend a few meetings and sleep. Some of my colleagues unfortunately were not as lucky as I and my team were. They were picked up by 6am and have been in the office since. I just hope that the frequency of all these strikes go down. It is only Dec 15th and we have 3 strikes already this month. It is like anything happens and the best solution to solve that problem is to call a strike. I cant recall any single problem being solved by a strike. It just costs so much economic loss to state machinery and every single working person, but somehow no one realises this in India. I remember a few years ago, some politcal party called for a strike in Mumbai and so everything was shut down. The good part was the next day some citizens filed a lawsuit against the political parties who called the bandh and the court fined those parties a huge sum of like Rs. 2,500,000. And after that the frequency of strikes called by that party has dropped down drastically. I hope someone does the same in this state. I think the best way to stop all these strikes is to hit the political parties where it hurts them most and that is their check books, otherwise I dont think this bandh culture is ever going to end.