Lost Winter in Mumbai

It’s almost mid-November and longings and anxiety for winter are hitting my nerves. Of course who doesn’t want to welcome cold with closed arms!

But for various reasons Mumbai is still as hot as possible. My list of culprits include global warming, population on planet earth (blame on the 1 minus seven billion - others), geography design which marks Mumbai not very far from the Tropic of Cancer. Anyways in my endeavor to not take things on face value and put a good fight, this time around I have decided to fight for my right to experience the cool weather. And therefore was on lookout for some innovative ways to keep my house cool. Below is a list of few unique methods, which I came across while researching on Google. I hope to benefit my FB friends and public in general from these.

1) Put a vessel filled with water under the curtains, such that the curtain cloth is in constant touch with the water. The lesser the density of fabric, the more will be the fluid flow. You can infact do experiments on various fabrics and then recall memories of engineering labs.

2) Keep a bowl of ice cubes under the ceiling fan. This will ensure that the circulated air gets cooled off and in-turn cools your home.

3) Don’t eat large quantities in one sitting. Eating more will lead to rise in body temperature, which is required to burn the food intake.

4) Before sleeping at night, slip one or two ice cubes between bed sheets. This will take away the discomfort completely.

5) Smart planning. Instead of work from home, go to office; go for shopping, watch the latest Bollywood 3D movie, go to galleries – during the hottest time of the day.

And don’t forget to tell me which method worked the best for you, along with my fees in lieu of this advice. After all I have to foot my air conditioner bill.

Mumbai Metro One - Patronage questionable

Even before the start of the prestigous new infrastructure facility in the Mumbai suburban area - the Mumbai Metro One Project (Link 1 from Versova to Ghatkopar) - it seems the forecasted ridership/ patronage is under question.

This is because of the MMRDA's last minute planning with the Traffic Department over the issues of traffic jams on the Andheri Kurla Raod - which is expected once the metro is up and running. The Traffic Department has long tried to pull attention to the fact, that given the spacing of stations on the metro line (every 1 km) and naroow stretch of roads, it is expected that commuter traffic plying into and out of the metro will cause a huge traffic problem on the main road as well as artillery roads. Imagine a huge rush of autorickshaws which will line up in all directions from these metro stations. 

MMRDA's solution to this problem is to keep some sort of a control over the autorickshaws and to make them end/ start off from artillery roads, instead of from the Andheri Kurla road. While this may solve the traffic problem, the thing to be noted here is that the same then would not be comfortable to commuters. Say for example, if I have to travel from Powai to Andheri, I will have to go over the artillery road of Andheri Saki Vihar to reach the Saki Naka station of metro. This 3 km journey itself will take me a hell lot of time, given the rush of traffic on the artillery road. Instead of that a direct autorickshaw/ bus from Powai to Andheri via SEEPZ makes a lot more sense - both in terms of money as well as time.

To my knowledge the best utility of the metro is to those people who need to travel farther from Andheri (on the western line) and Ghatkopar (on the central line) via the Suburban Railways (i.e. Mumbai Locals).