Friday, March 7, 2008

Loose Change


The city of Mumbai (previously known as Bombay.) There are cities and there are cities but none of them can come close to Mumbai and its people. There is something over here thats much more than the amount of money that is present in the city. In the early days if anyone in the country wanted to make something for himself then Mumbai was the place to be in.
Mumbai has been the breeding ground for most of the entrepreneurs we hear about today. Sure the majority of them have built up on businesses handed down to them from generations, but then the whole startup was in Mumbai itself.

There is something about the famous work culture of Mumbai. After the 93' riots immediately the next day itself most offices recorded large scale attendance. This was true even during the 26/7 floods which had disrupted and crippled the city to a large extent. I was a kid during the 93 riots and was more concerned about my Geography test in school. However I was quite affected by the 26/7 flooding incident. I was stuck at Thane station for quite sometime with a dead cellphone. I did manage to reach home the same day though after several hops, skips and jumps along the way. (Not to mention the amount of water that I did wade through. I am 6'2" and still had water pretty much waist high.) I am a decent swimmer.(I have been on lifeguard duty for the YMCA.) , however the raging floods were quite another thing so I can imagine how the situation must've been for the average office goer.


Family and all were fine as I was the only one who had faced the floods. Dad stayed back in office and came the next day. Mom's work place was pretty closeby and so she had an early day off. The next morning while the folks stayed at home, I went out to see what had actually happened the previous evening. All I could see for quite sometime was a scene from Kevin Costner's Waterworld.

After surveying the damage done and seeing that pretty much everyone was out of the water and people were just waiting for the water to subside to get back to their daily routines, I headed back home with a heavy mind. I had tons of questions in my head which were asking basically just one thing." Mumbai is the richest city in the country, paying the most taxes, with a huge population demographic and still getting just loose change for all that it was contributing to the country's economy. Why."

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