For those of you who have not been to Bombay in 18 months or less here is short glimpse at what’s new or different since the last time you visited.
1) Some of the signals have a countdown meter as to when will the green light come. As per a friend who drives a car, this reduces lot of frustration and aggresion among drivers since they know after how long will the signal be green again.
2) Since the Rainy season is now over, roads are dug up again at various places. This could be a reason to visit in rainy season. At least that time you are ensured that the BMC will fill up any dug up roads for the rainy season. Of course traffic will still be the same since now you have water clogging.
3) Number of rickshaws has gone up. Most Rickshawalas have an attitude too. One of them had the audacity to shout “Aay” at Kairavi when she was just babbling a whole lot. Of course Dimple let him know her thoughts on the subject. 🙂
4) Western Railway Stations now have a “East” and “West” pointers for the newcomers to point out where is the East side of the suburb and the West side.
Overall Western Railway Stations continue their trend of being better maintained as per the Eastern Railway Stations.
5) Real Estate is booming right now with multiple sky-rise constructions throughout the city. Sadly not many recreation parks are being built. :-(. Many of these high-rises have their own little garden associated with it. Most of the old buildings are now being torn down and redeveloped to build a building with more FSI (Floor Space Index).
6) The Nirmal group has undertaken task of making Mulund the best suburb in 2007. Already the Nirmal lifestyle Mall has become a good hangout place for families during the weekend. In addition the Nirmal group has planned other projects for Mulund.
7) True cell phone power can only be visible in India. Everyone has one and almost all facilities are available via the cell phone. Some people carry 2 (from 2 different providers) to make use of the free airtime from provider to same provider. So based on who you want to talk to, you can use either phone. 😉
8) Reliance Fixed Wireless phones are becoming popular and replacing MTNL phones at some residences.
9) Conditional Access System for TV channels was all set to launch at end of 2006. This means having a settop box and paying for only those premium channels that you want. Just like here.
10) BEST had started a pass system on certain routes which was withdrawn quickly.
11) The automatic ticket stampers at railyway stations are now mostly dead. This was useful if you had bought ticket coupons and wanted to use it for today but did not want to stand in line. But now for whatever reason, these Coupon Validating Machines are now dead at most stations.
Times of India had launched another tabloid (Mid-day style) called Mumbai Mirror. Currently Times of India was giving away Mumbai Mirror for free as part of Times of India.
For a few days I was puzzled as to why the same story was being covered in Times of India, Mumbai Mirror and sometimes even in Bombay Times for the same date.
Surprising the countdown meters at the signals start at a weird number like 62 or 82. Wonder why can’t they start at 60 or 90?
* Indicator on Railway platform shows in how many minutes train will arrive. And it is pretty accurate. Some indicator also display wheather upcoming train is 9 coach or 12 coach
Initially we used to travel by Richshaw between mine and Dimple’s place (Mulund to SantaCruz) but that was a 1.20 hours affair + fumes + bad-drivers.
Then we switched to trains (off-peak travelling) and though time taken probably was almost the same from residence to residence, train was much comfortable in terms of no fumes and no traffic signals.
Kairavi Loved the trains and other people also used to offer her free goodies (which were declined of course). 🙂
In terms of prompt arrivals, Indian Railways truly has to be commended. In fact the Indian Railways witnessned 10,000 crore profit this year under Laloo’s Raj. And Students from Harvard had come down to study the Indian Railways turnaround this year.
* Juhu Beach had as much crowd on sunday morning as evening. There is new trend of feeding Milk to Dog, Chana to Pigeons & Ghathiya to Crow. One can buy them on spot. Not sure who made these choice where dog should be fed milk & not chana. Now dogs are soo spoiled they wont have biscuite.
I too prefer trains over rickshaws-taxis. Even AC bus service is good on some of the routes in bombay.
Everytime we have gone via train in bombay, I felt there are no off-peak hours:-) Trains are always crowded. (crowded – it’s a relative term).
Traffic is frustrating….we are just spending 4 hours each day on roads…clothes become super expensive…we walked into this store vandana on Bandra for fabrics …so I asked the salesman how much is it for meter…he say”Tran”…so I said oh “Tran soa”…he is like nahi “Tran Hazar”…imagine one meter of cloth for Rs 3000 $70…for first few days just could not buy anything…as I was doing reverse conversion and was like woooop