Mumbai local trains : Life inside a Mumbai suburban local train

The words "adjustment" and "struggle" draw inspiration from the morning travails in a local train in mumbai.

800 people crammed into every corner of a single coach built for 200 people is actually a tribute to the build quality of the indian railways. Its not as crowded though when the local train begins its journey. As time and stations pass the coach gets filled surprisingly fast. A completely filled coach appears as a maze of hands clinging on to the railings above as the Mumbai local train itself moves towards its destination completely oblivious to the ghettos its harboring. Inside, its a sea of humanity brimming from the open doors of the Mumbai Suburban local trains. To be honest the only space for people to stand is on the outside (you need to see for yourself what the "outside" means) and people have actually mastered that art.

There are people everywhere you look, people standing between the seats, along the passage, along the sides of the entrance, people at the entrance waiting to get down and of course the people standing outside! Among this melee of hands, legs and baggage the original inhabitants, the people who have the privilege to sit on the benches are an overwhelming minority. They enjoy their own freedom from the surrounding struggle by indulging into some reading - mostly catching up on the newspaper headlines, or listening to music on the latest necessity of the middle class - the mobile phone, or for those in the company of friends or colleagues nothing like talking about things from politics at work to family problems with hundreds of people privy to the conversation at all times! Talk about indians being secretive about private lives!

Among all these people the real achievers are those who have captured the window seat in the local train. Its a seat that even a politician would envy. Capturing a window seat requires all the skills required to win a gold at olympics in any contact sport. It requires speed, quick reflexes, power, strategy and a dash of luck.

Standing people naturally envy the ones sitting by the window and are always on the look out for an opportunity to plant themselves by the window the moment they get a hint of movement from the guy sitting. Even though this may mean the person getting up faces unnecessary hardship its a necessary evil to avoid the person next to the window person from stealthily sliding towards the window.

Normally its an unwritten rule that the person shouldnt slide to the window seat and maintain his position but there are exceptions. And when there is such conflict of interests and both parties are equally game for a scuffle , all hell breaks looks.

Who wins the seat is ultimately decided by not the "dog in the fight but the fight in the dog" (no pun intended). And they happily sit next to each other for the rest of the journey as if nothing happened. All this while the standing people chuckle away at the momentary deviation from normalcy and hope it continues till their station arrives. No one wants to miss out on a good fight you see!

Not everyone is affected by this din though. There are people who attain "Nirvana" as soon as they enter the compartment of the train and what ever happens till the train reaches its destination doesnt affect these guys. They are one with their inner self. The ways to attain this is different though. Some resort to the open mouth sleeping technique. this convinces the people around that he badly needs some sleep and people being sympathetic offer all cooperation so as not to break his slumber. At such times you can even rest your head on the shoulder of the person next to.

Some resort to reading newspapers since the only time to read is available in the train. Some plug in to their ipods/mobiles/mp3 players and listen away. Some who dont have headphones instead of doing the selfish act of buying those, blare the song at full volume so as others can appreciate the choice of music.

All this while the people standing outside take the sights,sounds and smells along the journey. Yoy better be a toughie to the core to handle the stuff mumbai dishes all along the track.
So long till the next post.

Mumbai Local Train :Part 1

You wont know how you get attached to things and they become a part of your life unknowingly. They become so much a part of your like that you forget that such a relationship even exists. Its when you are separated that you feel the emptiness that faces you. Something similar is faced by people living in Mumbai when they move out of the city for an extended period of time.

Local trains are like a synonym for Mumbai itself.

Local trains are so intrinsically cast in the fabric of mumbai that its impossible to distinguish between the two. It wont be untrue to say that mumbai is a local train and a local train is mumbai. Perhaps its the spirit of mumbai that is embodied in the local train that endears the mumbai local to the people of mumbai.

Those 9-12 coaches of red and yellow are incessant between the terminal stations of CST - Churchgate and the far flung suburbs. Bringing millions of people into the city day in and day out for most of the 24 hours of the day is no mean feat at all.
No matter what the locals never stop. No doubt the "Mumbai never stops" attitude is more to do with the local trains and the people who drive it.

Each day people wake up with the conviction to catch the first local train in the morning. The reason being it takes an eternity to reach their office in the city from their home in the suburb or neighboring districts. Only the first local reaches them to office on time. The journey continues in the next post.

Experimenting with google search result rankings : the hard way!

Few weeks ago i wanted to be adventurous with my blog post. I wanted to check how back links affect the ranking of my post. the post in question is related to bangalore autowallas. nothing special of the subject though. the good thing being the sample size for the search is a few hundred results. I wanted to increase the ranking of my page in the google search results.
When i published my post it got indexed in an hour in google and was ranked #5 in the search results for the term "bangaore autowallas". not bad huh? but i thought some more traffic to the post would help me earn better rank and in addition some backlinks from the better ranked sites would help.
So i started posting the link to my post over random sites hoping to generate traffic and some reputation. the rank stayed stable for few days which made me more than happy. but all of a sudden i try searching for the term and my post is nowhere to be seen. strange art thou ways Google! Instead i saw the sites where i had posted the link to my post getting indexed. add to that when i made a specific search for my post on google i end up at some random site where i had posted the link.

what a bozo had i been!!!

Usain Bolt : Beijing Olympics 2008 100 meters Gold and World record

Usain bolt has become the fastest man on this planet. And fastest by some margin.
He took a meager 9.62s to cover the 100meter stretch. The previous fastest was asafa powells 9.72s. considering the mammoth difference between usains and asafas timing can give you an idea what an amazing athlete usain is.

As i watched with anticipation the semfinals of the mens 100 meters at the Beijing olympics i couldnt forget the lineage of former sprinters right from carl lewis, ben johnson, maurice green, tyson gay, justin gatlin, asafa powell and others who have at different times in history held the coveted title of "Fastest man on the planet".
Though the semi finals turned out to be a cake walk for usain, for tyson gay it turned out to be a shocker since he couldnt even qualify for the finals. But the ease with which usain completed the semifinals gave a glimpse of how the finals were going to be. he literally jogged home after the first 70 meters. Considering he is mainly a 200 meters sprinter this is amazing. even after being slow off the blocks the acceleration with which he draws ahead of the field shows the unbelievable condition he is in.

The finals was no different, after being slow off the blocks he showed remarkable stamina and speed to clear himself of the others and put unassailable distance between him and the others. half way throuh the sprint he knew he had won the race and the celebrations started for him then and there itself. Usain won the gold is nothing compared to the way in which he won it. his demeanor was nothing more than pure grace. never did power overwhelm his sprint over the 100 meters. it was more like a gazelle sprinting in the savannas of africa. It was more of an honor than pleasure to watch the performance. its not everyday that you get to see a man shattering the 100 meter speed barrier in sub 9.70 seconds. and going by the daylight between the latest recored i wont be surprised if he himself betters in some day in the near future. His peers may agree with me on this as he certainly is the best of the best of the best. GO GO usain ....

Autowallas in Bangalore

If you have been living in bangalore even for a few days, you probably know why i have dedicated an entire post to the autowallas in bangalore. Traveling in an auto is an experience in itself, especially in bangalore. And given the traffic in bangalore the experience becomes unforgettable. But dont take it for granted that this experience is yours for the taking. remember i said something about an unforgettable experience?

Chances are you are new to the place and dont know how to travel in the city transport buses. so your natural recourse is to look for an auto. So you stand beside the road hoping to spot an empty auto coming our way. Spotting an empty auto doesnt tilt the odds in your favor either. what matters is whether the auto slows down taking cognizance of your existence and eventually stops. Lets go through the available scenarios logically. When you see an empty auto, as a wannabe passenger your natural reaction is to flag it down. nows the time for chaos theory to kick in. the following events could happen with equal probability.

• The autowalla couldnt care less to have a passenger at that moment so shoots past you making you think it wouldnt have mattered even if you were standing right in front of his auto. Since this is the 'n'th auto zooming past you wonder whether auto wallas are so fed up of stopping every few hundred feet for a junction or a signal that they dont bother stopping anywhere in between!!!(Since this is none of your concern you get back to the game of spot the empty auto)
• You find another auto with noone in the passenger seat coming from a distance. You suddenly feel its your lucky day. To top it all even the autowalla seems interested in you. Thanking lady luck you ready yourself to end the ordeal. the auto comes and the autowalla has the expressionless question written over his face. Hes just slowing down though, depending on the place he wants to go rather than you want to take him decides whether he stops his tuc-tuc. The next word that you speak is going to be the most important word you would have spoken and would be speaking in the entire day. You sheepishly tell him where you want to go. As you hope atleast this one says "Yes, I do", he does the unthinkable; just drives on without stopping at all or even giving you a glance.The autowallas certainly believe in actions speaking louder than words. For no sooner your cursed destination babbles out of your mouth that guys just plants his foot on the accelerator - maybe ruing the fact that he lost precious seconds slowing down.
• by now you know that yoga was invented to tackle autowallas - since nothing tests the limits of your patience as much. You feel small and helpless as you return to your pass-time of the morning. Suddenly out of nowhere an auto comes and screeches to a halt in front of you. You pinch yourself and just to be sure check whether the autowalla has stopped to talk on his mobile. you find that untrue and backing your luck as well as the new found patience you ask him as politely as your Indian politeness allows. A few excruciatingly long seconds later the answer comes in the form of a longint (long int is a datatype in programming languages used to store variables of big integer values). For the uninitiated, the answer is simply a number that the autowalla shall charge you for the journey. The amount he quotes makes you honestly wish autowallas should also start accepting credit card payments - since no one carries around that much loose cash. And dont you even think that the amount quotes has anything with the distance to be traveled. It becomes a function of unknown variables.( Dont even try to think what the number would be in case you are traveling in the evening - the rates become 1.5 times normal. so better be your lucky day) When you try to protest by some bargaining you also get a free geography lesson on the bangalore traffic problem first hand. "one way street hona bhaiya. aage 3 km jaana padta .. gaadi khali hota utna tak."."traffic hota sir . adha ghanta traffice me waiting hoga ". When you ask for a lesser fare these guys actually remind you of your salary and give a free advice saying " 5 rs me kya hai sir ". And dont even think that these guys are not up to date. The first question i was asked when i was traveling to my office on the first day itself was " Kitna package hai?". Talk about keeping up with times.
  So with the geography lesson out of the way the autowalla gives you a beaming smile with accompanied satisfaction of having educated a moron and takes off.
• the final possibility occurs when all others have actually happened. You ask the guy and he agrees with / without bargaining. And you are more relieved than happy to end the experience.

All said and done, this is just a small piece of the cake we get to eat everyday. I mean wouldnt it be boring to always get the first auto you stop. Knowledge doesnt always help! its the way we get to meet so many auto wallas who themselves are working, have a famly to feed, are rushing around to get long distance passengers. Since any profession has all kinds of people it would be wrong to stereotype a particular character to one profession. I have had many good experiences with the auto wallas in bangalore and i believe that they are as fallible as we or for that matter all humans are. more about auto wallas in later postings ...:)

Movie Review - The Mummy :tomb of the Dragon emperor

The Mummy tomb of the Dragon emperor

The Mummy tomb of the Dragon emperor is the third movie in the Mummy series. After the success of the earlier movies "the Mummy" and the sequel the "The Mummy returns". The third movie in the installment stars Brenden Fraser as Rick O'Connell the adventurous explorer who along with his wife Evelyn(played by Maria Bello ), his brother-in-law jonathan (played by John Hannah) and his son who has grown up to fall in trouble, Alex (played by Luke Ford). His adversary this time is the Emperor Han played by Jet li.

The movie opens on a brisk note with the story of the Dragon King in China done away with in 15 minutes. The Dragon king is a ruthless emperor with an ambition to rule the world. He has control over the five elements but wants to conquer death. He finds out about a witch who knows the secret to conquer death. Immediately, he sends his trusted general Ming to fetch the witch. Upon arriving the Emperor falls for the witch and commands all that no one is to touch her and that the witch was his. But the General and the witch fall in love while searching for the spell of immortality. when they return the witch casts the spell on the Emperor. But soon after the emperor kills the General as he comes to know the affair between the witch and him. Things turn wrong for him when he finds out the witch has cast a wrong spell on him and he is trapped by the spell along with his army until someone resurrects him from his entrapment.

Circa now, excavators lead by O'connels son Alex find the very tomb of the Emperor. Not without its share of traps and attacks from an unknown ninja (Turns out to be the witches daughter protecting the tomb - couldnt control keeping the secret :P). Turns out alex is in china with his uncle jonathan - who doesnt need anyone to scare him off.

Alex' parents are happily enjoying their retirement from all the Mummy stuff (Just to mention they do an awful job of acting to show that that they dont like the retirement - it seems they are tired of acting int the movie :)) ). Anyways, call it a coincidence that they get an offer to take the "Eye of Shangrila" to a museum in China. (The reason for this benovelence is apparently a newly found sense of respect towards the chinese people who deserve the "Eye of Shangrila". GO Figure out ). So they graciously accept the all expenses paid trip. They land up in China and visit the Museum and hand over the "Eye of Shangrila" to the curator. But since its too simple a job considering they have traveled around the world for it; a gang of military dudes land up with a scar-face chick in tow. These retards aim to revive the cursed Dragon Emperor (Jet li) so that he restores the lost glory of China.

After a brief standoff the o'Connells are forced to open "The Eye of the shangrila" and the Emperor is revived. Theres a catch though . his curse is still is very much in place. To become immortal he must find the Shangrila itself so that the fountain of immortality shall repeal his curse. In doing so he can then revive his entire army too. The army shall help him in carrying out his ambition to conquer the world (No, he doesnt know theres competition for the post from a certain Mr George Bush ). The only thing between him and immortality is the O'Connell family along with the witches daughter Lin.

The revived emperor heads to the Himalayas to find the gateway to shangrila. The o'Connells guided by Lin reach the temple which is the beacon to Shangrila. Meanwhile, the emperor also reaches the place with his minions. Theres some more boom boom with a dash of father son camaraderie. The O'Connels almost pull off the impossible feat of defeating the Emperor Just after the intermission but the script has its way and the emperor succeeds in finding the way to sangrila. not to mention , in spite of few friendly neighbourhood Yetis who irritate more than they help.

At the cave of shangrila the o'Connels meet the witch, who in turn is more than happy to meet her daughter. With the family reunion in progress the Emperor shows up and messes up their party. he becomes immortal* (conditions apply). He becomes a three headed (hmmmm .. as if he had a choice) dragon and heads towards his tomb in china to lead his army beyond the "Wall of china" which shall make them invincible. The O'Connels and Lin also reach China before the emperor.. er ..Dragon .. Jet Li .. u got the idea right?

While the emperor is busy reviving his army, the O'Connels are busy collecting guns to fight the guy who controls the five elements. (Aha! a class case of fools rushing in Dr. Watson. I kept wondering why did the Emperor keep these retards alive so long; or were they too pathetic to even take notice ). By now, the emperor has revived his entire army and giving them a propaganda speech straight out of WW II. But they have other problems too.The O'Connells only chance to kill the emperor to drive an enchanted knife through the emperors heart. They are tremendously short of manpower facing the revived army of the emperor. SO the witch pitches in and revives all the people that have been killed and buried in the Wall of China. Now after an almost tiringly comic showdown (believe me it could easily grab an academy award for best comic performance or better comic direction. Imagine thousands of terra cota mummies fighting the skeletons and in between them a bunch of chinese army lunatics ) the emperor is killed and the OConnels win.

Now with the story out of the way with my feelings for the movie.
If u really are a Mummy franchise fan then u may give this movie a go. With no real story to boot it up the movie relies entirely on the bang bang and special effects. With the script just making excuses for loading the gun people hoping for a semblance of a story would be snoring soon. Unlike the earlier two movies the movie happens to be a melee of action sequences at exotic locations with average special effects compared to the earlier movies. Brendan Fraser looks his part in the movie. Hes probably used to slaying mummies by now. His better half doesnt match the earlier girls though. Alex looks good as the young OConnell. Lin also plays the witches' daughters' part impressively. Jet Li is grossly wasted since hes mostly an angry terra kota man. the opening few minutes move at a fast pace though which deal with the rise and cruelty of the Dragon King.

All in all an action movie with action and nothing else.

Hope you found the review worthwile. Watch the trailer of the movie here.

Movie review - The Mummy - Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - the trip begins

i was lying in my room playing NFS hot pursuit when suddenly i got a call from siddhe (siddhesh happens to be a very good friend from college). to be precise, he had tried to call me the day before but me being me, could attend to his call since i was busy in a conference with some US guys. though i promised to call him later couldnt do so since the call got stretched to bit too long and passed beyond the hours of calling a friend however you close might be. the next day did bring its surprises though.

Afternoon was its boring self. (how am i supposed to know where did morning go; i was half dead in my bed :P ). so continuing the story, i got a call. so in the next few minutes i actually managed to finish my game and some R&D and set off towards my target for the day "Sigma Mall". Sigma mall is a big mall situated on cunningham road .The plan for the evening was to watch the movie "The Mummy - Tomb of the Dragon Emperor".

In all of my jaunts to "Nimma Bengaluru" i had never been to a multiplex to watch a movie so literally jumped at the idea. My first and most difficult task was to first have an idea where the mall was. though i have been in bangalore for the most part of last year i haven't really been about the city barring the confines of my office and place of stay. So i donned the hat of the intrepid tourist and set out.

I reached CMH road which happens to be an arterial road connecting indiranagar to halasuru. the scene at the bus-stop was the same that anyone can see in any city for that matter. people waiting; waiting alone, waiting for someone, waiting with someone and craning their necks to the object of their desire; the BMTC bus. Its a trance like state that people enter into a bus-stop and they generally dont want anyone to disturb them. I managed to catch one guy about to go into the lost state and asked him how was i supposed to reach the place. Thankfully he directed me to the correct bus.

As the bus rambled towards the bus stop, i noticed it resembled more with the state transport buses that play near my village in Maharashtra rather than a city bus. the chassis was very old with paint almost chaffed off and embellished by dents and corrosion. Though i wasnt much concerned by how the bus looked on the outside i braced myself for a few surprises in store once i entered; and i wasnt disappointed.

As i climed the couple of steps into the bus, i immediately felt at home
for i was watching familiar scenes. Not that i had expected a driver less bus; but it was surprisingly similar to a city bs in "Mumbai". two rows of seats which could seat two normal sized individuals with space between the two for those who didnt have an empty seat and have to stand. things appeared pretty much in order without any inconveniences. Even though there were no seats unoccupied the bus was more or less empty. i found a comfortable corner and stood watching the proceedings. People sat in their seats patiently, the lucky ones being those sitting next to windows.

As any good passenger my first reaction after finding a place to stand/sit was look out for a person called the "Conductor". I didnt have to look far. he was right there beside me standing with is customary leather bag slung over his shoulder with change and the paper tickets; and not to mention the same expressionless features on his face as all other conductors i have seen. but this wasnt the interesting part.

what happens when you want to handle cash/coins, ticket and punch tickets before handing it over to a passenger? well if you are successful, chances are your DNA resembles an octopus's than a humans'. theres no way a person can do all that all through the day and repeat it day in and day out. but did i say conductors are normal people? its impossible for us lesser mortals not bus conductors. The guy i was watching was doing a good job vending tickets and a better job of entertaining people. well at least i was entertained. he had the coins saddled in the bag; nothing unusual about that. but between each of his fingers on the left hand were different denomination notes neatly folded, so that he didnt have to fetch it from his bag. Ingenious!!! but what was more than ingenious was the way he punched the tickets.

with the notes snugly fit into his left hand he held the ticket box in the palm of his left. so whenever he had to pick a ticket he reached with his right hand, pulled out some ticket and handed out the passenger. Now the magic happened just before handing over the ticket to the passenger. tucked into his right palm almost unseen to the naive eye was the ticket puncher; a small stapler like device used to punch holes in to the tickets. as soon as the ticket was pulled out, with a flick of the thumb and other fingers the ticket would be punched without anyone even noticing!!! The action amazed me so much that it immediately reminded me of an illustrious colleague of my conductor friend.

that colleague was his senior by quite a few years and million dollars atleast. "Rajanikant" the superstar of the Tamil film industry was a bus conductor himself before getting a break in movies. He used to work for BMTC itself. Anecdotes about his those days as a conductor are as famous as him. His unique style of giving tickets, and doing tasks like wearing sunglasses used to amaze people so much that they used to wait for his bus just to watch him go about his job doing all that. the result was that his bus always used to be full!! dig that.

So this guy went about as coolly about his job as if nothing special and maybe the others agreed too as no one took interest. Eventually i got a seat to sit and my mind was diverted from watching the conductor to watching the scenes go by the window.I managed to get down at some stop eventually and so ended my trip thru the BMTC bus.