2017-Aug-29
When I stepped out in the morning it was raining and I had anticipated it to be a wet day.
When you halt at a signal for 3 turns of green you know that the path ahead is going to be dense with traffic.
But then if you have been driving in Mumbai for a while you expect this because some driver wanted to go faster than all others and caused some other driver to do something which turns into a pile of vehicles putting up a show for the rest of the drivers passing by watch. Generally drivers are not hurt, just the cars and the insurance takes care of it!
I was lazily clicking pictures to while away the time at the signals and things did not look all that bad.
Knowing how difficult it is to predict the weather, specifically in India because of the sparse number of weather stations; one had the tendency to look at the IMD predictions with your own multiplication factor which is closer to 0 than to 1!
Takes me a little more than my usual time to reach my work place in Thane. Over lunch the rains continue and soon after I get a call from my home. "It is flooding here, you might want to start back home early". Then google says that there is a high tide at 1630 hrs. Continuous rains and high tide are a deadly combination in Mumbai. I just can not forget the 2015 July 27 when the city was under siege for nearly 2-3 days. I brush aside these thoughts and then finally decide to leave work earlier than usual at around 1600 hrs. Telling myself that I should be home by 1800 because google had predicted that it will take me 75 minutes to reach home - I had added my own few precious minutes to reach the number 90.
I start off and a colleague hops in to get down halfway. The initial going is good until we hit the toll naka (Mulund), there are some truck which want to take a right turn and this means the traffic builds. I curse the toll naka before I figure out that they are not the cause for this jam.
A look at the google showing those red traffic jam lines on the map turning out to be true with no apparent reason. But as I drive google keeps pointing out that I have another hour to go and it keeps telling me that I still have an hour to drive and I keep wondering where all my time went when I realize that I have I have my leg on the clutch and the gear in 1 but no space ahead of me. I am moving an inch if at all. "Tiny inches make a kilometer" (like tiny drops of water make a mighty ocean!) I finally reach home in about 180 minutes. Tiered of doing nothing; fatigued, hungry and a cramp in the left leg because more work for the left leg than the right leg!
Couple of observations
When I stepped out in the morning it was raining and I had anticipated it to be a wet day.
When you halt at a signal for 3 turns of green you know that the path ahead is going to be dense with traffic.
But then if you have been driving in Mumbai for a while you expect this because some driver wanted to go faster than all others and caused some other driver to do something which turns into a pile of vehicles putting up a show for the rest of the drivers passing by watch. Generally drivers are not hurt, just the cars and the insurance takes care of it!
Knowing how difficult it is to predict the weather, specifically in India because of the sparse number of weather stations; one had the tendency to look at the IMD predictions with your own multiplication factor which is closer to 0 than to 1!
Takes me a little more than my usual time to reach my work place in Thane. Over lunch the rains continue and soon after I get a call from my home. "It is flooding here, you might want to start back home early". Then google says that there is a high tide at 1630 hrs. Continuous rains and high tide are a deadly combination in Mumbai. I just can not forget the 2015 July 27 when the city was under siege for nearly 2-3 days. I brush aside these thoughts and then finally decide to leave work earlier than usual at around 1600 hrs. Telling myself that I should be home by 1800 because google had predicted that it will take me 75 minutes to reach home - I had added my own few precious minutes to reach the number 90.
I start off and a colleague hops in to get down halfway. The initial going is good until we hit the toll naka (Mulund), there are some truck which want to take a right turn and this means the traffic builds. I curse the toll naka before I figure out that they are not the cause for this jam.
A look at the google showing those red traffic jam lines on the map turning out to be true with no apparent reason. But as I drive google keeps pointing out that I have another hour to go and it keeps telling me that I still have an hour to drive and I keep wondering where all my time went when I realize that I have I have my leg on the clutch and the gear in 1 but no space ahead of me. I am moving an inch if at all. "Tiny inches make a kilometer" (like tiny drops of water make a mighty ocean!) I finally reach home in about 180 minutes. Tiered of doing nothing; fatigued, hungry and a cramp in the left leg because more work for the left leg than the right leg!
Couple of observations
- Odd. Even on an odd bad day like this some people are not forgiving when a car touches another car! I had a taxi guy quite upset that my car slightly touched his rear.
- Technology. There is no way of finding out if I can pick up and drop a person standing along the road, because he doesnot know where I am going and I do not know where the person waiting on the road wants to go. Wish there was something that would help break this problem of unknown. May be some kind of display in the car which can show "can drop one person at X"
- Pee. You are in great trouble if you want to take a bio break. I have not figure out what is the way out. You can not stop your inching vehicle and even if you did you do not know where to pee (for all the swaach bharat!) and I dread to think what it is like if you are lady. We need some solution here. may be a portable loo in the car?
- Help. It was heartening to see that there were some people who were helping out distributing biscuits, mostly to the truck drivers (understandable!)
- Hungry. You need to definitely have some dry food in the vehicle especially if your glucose need to be controlled.
- Thirst. May be have a bottle of water; but see Point 3. These two are directly correlated. Drink water could get you into Point 3!
- Salute. Mumbai Traffic police still there in the rain to control traffic. For once you feel sorry for them. Pray for their health.
- Mobile. Good to have but there is a definite anxiety that you will run out of charge or the mobile network will breakdown.
- Fuel. There is an element of anxiety that you will run low on fuel. My 15.6 km/l average on the dashboard reduced to 9 km/l after I had covered the distance of 26 km. I am more anxious for the cabs who often drive until they have no option to fill in fuel! One can stranded means more minutes to your travel.
- Breakdown. 2 MCGM trucks were holding up traffic because of their breakdown.
- Trees. They definitely take the major blow. Especially in green campuses like Anushaktinagar. You feel sorry about this. May planting more trees is the only solution!
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