Mumbai will have a Metro

For a lighter take on this issue you may want to visit : Random musings of a Questioning mind (Content Advisory : May contain booger humour. Visit at your own risk. Readers are cautioned that they will probably need to use shampoos to grow their hair back, once they are done pulling them out after reading the blog!)

Mumbai is the city of dreams. Nowhere in the country will anyone find such a plethora of opportunities nestled in such small a place. It is the city which the nation looks up to for its growth, prosperity and its generosity. It will not be unfair to say that Mumbai is because of its people. People from all walks of life, all parts of the nation and all ages are what make Mumbai this special. People, who are willing to work that extra bit to make sure that their families remain well fed and their children can be educated so that they don't have to eke out a living as miserably. People, who commute absurd distances to reach their place of work, in the hope that some day their plight will be understood by the powers that be and they might get redemption in the form of a few extra local trains at the peak hours.

These are the people who will be the most thrilled at the prospect of Mumbai getting a metro. While the current layout of the metro is not exactly suited for the people of suburbs commuting downtown, it is nevertheless a beginning for a better travel facilities for the city that gives so much to the nation and asks for so less in return. A plan (proposed) for the metro is as shown below:

Image Source : (http://urbanrail.net/as/mumb/mumbai.htm)

The right to information act for the Mumbai Urban Transport Project yields the following:
http://www.mrvc.gov.in/tenderphp/admin/upright/summary.pdf

As things stand, the project is going to benefit the people who currently use the roadways connecting the east-west corridor (horrible state of affairs) and the already cosseted western corridor of the city. I fail to understand why the majority of the city's construction fund is diverted to the west. A significant amount of the working population of the city resides in the central suburbs. The western suburbs already have the western railways, the western express highway and the new and upcoming Bandra - Worli Sea Link. This is grossly unfair for the denizens of the central corridor. Not that I hear them complaining. But they have always been the proletariat as opposed to the upper class bourgeois of the western suburbs.

As I foresee, the Mumbai Metro is going to have the following effects:

1. The Western Suburbs will prosper
The western suburbs already are in the cream of things. The locus in quo the western denizens reside is already served by buses, railways and private vehicles to the point of overflowing. Yet, they are the recipients of the latest improvement in the urban transportation. Yes, they deserve better transportation to an extent, because they are the so-called business class of the city as opposed to the worker class of the central line. However, such an unfair distribution of benefits smacks of something more than simple preference for the western side.

2. Mumbai will be more crowded
This is slightly debatable. However, it is not so hard to believe if you follow the following line of thought:
Everyday, there is an influx of people into Mumbai. And everyday, some people leave Mumbai for the better (implausible I know, but just assume it to be so) Given the state of Mumbai's infrastructure right now, there are many people who are definitely considering leaving Mumbai as part of their retirement plans. A calculation will show that the limiting population, with respect to water and power requirements per capita, will be achieved within twenty years at the current rate of influx. Consider this in the light of improved transportation in the city and this will lead to a greater influx of people, thereby resulting in the limiting population being reached in somewhere between 8 to 10 years, after the completion of the MUTP. These are rough, back of the envelope calculations. However, I believe they should be sufficient to convince rational people that Mumbai is going to get further crowded!

3. More tourists
Better transportation with world class facilities can mean only one thing : more tourists. Which also means more and more stories of cons, rapes and the other malarkey that usually follows tourists around. There is also the matter of increased foreign exchange and increased rock concerts! :-)

All in all, the metro is a welcome thing. It will serve the needs of the people wanting to go from say Mulund to Borivali (a journey which takes two hours at peak hours, minimum) in a jiffy. However, to what extent it will change the fate of Mumbai's ever growing populace will only be told by time.

Beauty and the Beast - Part Two

The last time I had written an article titled "Beauty and the Beast" it was a movie review of King Kong. While the premise is the same, the movie this time is very varied in its style and substance. The movie in question this time around is, hold your breaths, Gangster.

I know, some people are probably sniggering. Yeah right, you are saying. How can you even compare the two movies? Well, I am not comparing the movies. I am saying that the underlying principle of these two is the same and that is exactly the title of this article.

Gangster is the story of Daya : a simple guy from a small village in Kashmir, who grows up to become a key cog in the underworld. He is constantly on the run from the police and it is during one such escapade that he runs into Simran, the femme fatale. He is flabbergasted by her beauty and therein starts the love between them. She is taken aback by certain chivalrous stunts he performs and we have the premise for a love story in the protagonists' life. Certain incidents force them to "adopt" a child and during an encounter, the child loses its life. This leads to the estrangement of the hero and his love.

Separated, they begin to lead their lives in the hope of someday being able to see each other. Simran becomes an alcoholic and seeks the company of Akaash, a singer at a local restaurant. Love blossoms again as Akaash inveigles Simran to accepting his proposal with visions of grandeur and a "settled" life. Daya chooses this exact moment to drop in, thereby sending Simran's plans haywire. He concedes that Simran would be better off with Akaash, but asks her to give him a last chance to prove that he has turned over a new leaf. To this she agrees.

Daya's past however refuses to lie down. He gets chased by police wherever he goes, much like fans chasing Amitabh Bacchan all around Mumbai, with the exception being that fans probably seek an autograph, whereas the police seek Daya's finger-prints i.e. the DEAD Daya's fingerprints! In this pandemonium, Simran realizes (surprise, surprise) that she is pregnant with Akaash's child. Akaash, the goodie two shoes, asks her to hand over Daya to the cops and lead a "happily ever after" life with him. Simran's dreams are dashed when she realizes that the guy she has duped had changed his life for the better and the guy she hoped to "settle" down with her that duped her. This aptly sums up the slogan line of the movie : She fell in love with him the day she betrayed him.

The scene in which the cops separate Daya from Simran is particularly touching. We see a hysterical Daya, bewildered at the thought of being separated from his love and feeling a tad depressed because of the fact that she let him down. This is why, I once again repeat the famous words of Carl Denham (Jack Black) from the movie King Kong : "It wasn't the air-planes that killed him. It was beauty that killed the beast." The femme fatale in this case leads our protagonist to the gallows and ends up joining him up there / down there according to your preference. In the meanwhile, she also manages to finish off Akaash.

All in all, a slightly depressing movie, what with the theatricals the actor who plays Simran's role goes through in an effort to make her role seem natural. I think someone else should have been handed that role. Someone who would be less willing to let her clothes off on screen and a bit more willing to act the part of the character that she is supposed to be. Shiney Ahuja is a revelation and he should refrain from scenes which require him to cry. As for Emraan Hashmi, well, he pulls off his role to a perfection. One has to admit that he can do the job of the bad-guy really well. Gulshan Grover does well in a cameo appearance. The sound track is good and although I have heard from sources that the music has been ripped from all over the world, the songs make for good listening, anyway. And the most attractive part about them is that they are unobtrusive in the movie. The movie moves along at a good pace and finishes within two hours. All in all, good value for money. To be avoided if you are the "core" hindi movie fan.