H_LL_ M_MB__
No, your eyes aren't playing tricks and this is definitely not my version of Wordle. If you are looking for the missing "A, E, I, O, and U" that make up the Hello Mumbai title of this blog, well, I got news for you. They have fallen in one of the million different roads that make up the potholes in dear old Aamchi Mumbai. Hard-working Mumbaikars might as well hold their backs as they get off an auto or their choice of torture mumbling "AIYYO", day in and day out, to and from their place of business. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
I now think that the glitzy high-rises that dot the city's skyline is nothing more than a smokescreen to divert attention of the occupants of a vehicle to avoid looking down at the craters that might put their lives in jeopardy! Hell, screw the moon, ISRO can land the Chandrayaan-3 near Airoli, if it chooses to. Same difference!
Rightfully so, we pride on the fact that cashless payments have made humongous strides to make people's financial lives easier but what of the roads that must be travelled on by these very same people to earn their daily bread?
Mumbai and its leaders need to start taking this nonsense seriously. To be World-Class, you must rise above Third Class. To give your people this every year and coolly get away with it is nothing short of daylight robbery! Solutions, like roads, need to be concrete but sadly they aren't. Who's asphalt for that?
To be called the Maximum City, you must provide your citizens Minimum infrastructure and facilities. You can't allow a thousand new cars on the roads everyday when you can't build a thousand meter stretch of a pothole free road anywhere! If Mumbaikars want to ride a roller-coaster, they will take the time to go to Essel World or Imagicaa! You can't take them to Grant Road, but you easily take them for granted.
Alternatively, civic sense seems to be sorely lacking in most of us (I do not think we have any scope here), an experience that I had just today when transporting my uncle from the hospital to his home in an ambulance with its sirens blaring. Cars, bikes, autos, buses and trucks have little to no regard to the fact that an emergency vehicle is trying to navigate its way out of a traffic situation to reach its destination. I understand that living in Mumbai is not easy and people have to carry on with their lives but today, I felt that folks literally are dead inside. We arrived a little later than expected but what the hell, the Zomato guy brought our food even before the ink on the order had dried up. Priorities people, priorities!!
They say "Mumbai is an emotion" and I bet, anger counts as one too. This post has obviously been a rant but one that has steadily boiled to the "Mumbai-roads-during-the-monsoon" surface ever since the Airbus touched down on the tarmac couple weeks ago.
I could have named this post "Hell Mumbai" and it would have meant the same damn thing!
Good night, good people!
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