GIVE ME RED

Its been a long time since i have posted something.The inactivity has been due to my india trip during which i was mostly an inactive netizen.

During my vacation , i was only in my home city ,Bombay(Mumbai - i hate this political name).Since this was my first trip back home after a year,in the initial days i kept on bickering(in a funny way) about the traffic,pollution,no civic sense,population etc with my family members and friends , while they kept on reminding me "yahin par tu 25 saal ka hua hain...1 saal bahar kya gaya attitude dikhane laga hain " :).We usually try to defend ourselves by starting a lecture on parampara and sanskriti and stuff while refusing to call spade a spade.If the civic amneties are not good they are not good...why not to accept that.Anyways, i think i would have probably reacted in the same manner had i been at the recieving end of amerika returned indian.

People are now in a position to get a greater luxury in life thanks to the rising income ,easy availabilty of loans and other associated factors.While the civic development(roads,flyovers,etc) has been going on at a relatively faster pace, the number of vehicles too have increased manifold.As a result ,i think out of 24 hours we now have a situation where 18 hours can be considered to be peak hours across Bombay.Also trains remain full almost all the time.Roads are pretty much jammed at most hours and driving is now a pain (as opposed to pleasure which it should be).However i think Bombay has much better public transport system than most cities in the world.

Even though i travelled by all modes,personally this time round i thought the best mode of transport were our BEST buses.I was meeting my girlfriend(now fiancee) after a long period of 1 year and wanted to make up for most of the lost time.BEST buses are generally well maintained,one usually gets a place to seat(choose the correct route), people are generally well behaved and there is generally no disturbance except for the ticket tick tick :) .Also since we stay at Ghatkopar and were travelling mostly to south mumbai regularly(often during peak hours), it turned out to be the best mode of transport as compared to the other utilities

1.Trains,almost always full and we would have had to travel in different compartments.
2.Rickshaws, they dont go beyond sion.
3.Taxis, i think they are a shady mode of transport and also it would have cost me a fortune going to south mumbai regularly
4.Personal Vehicle, i wouldnt have had the courage to drive it.

The traffic too was generally not very bad on the route we traversed.I dont know why but i enjoyed the bus rides almost everytime i took it and think that if one wants to see(and feel) Bombay in real sense, one must travel by these red engines at least once.However i was disappointed to learn that the double decker buses on many routes were stopped.Sitting on the first seat on the upper floor of a double decker used to be fun.

By the end of the trip the bickering was gone and i was hoping that i getta chance to stay for some more time.There might be thousands of problems in Bombay , but still in heart everyone knows the life u live there is incomparable with any other experience one has.