We have floated through 26/8, and with the Monsoon having cried and ‘bursted’ enough we are flooded with drier times. While hurricane Katrina terrorized the US, Mumbaikars sashayed through the daily grind. With so much under and behind us, we wonder, did it really happen? We have added another ‘experience medal’ to our chest!  The suburban trains are as massaging as ever, the streets are as ‘house-full’ as ever, the filth and dirt as ‘un-friendly’ as ever and the bumper-to-bumper traffic as ‘touching’ as ever. Meanwhile, the street dogs are fast learning that it is better to wag tails up and down than sideways!

 Will Mumbai ever stop a while and think? How do we improve? Where do we begin?

 We’ve got to begin with the homes, sewers, streets, highways, trains & buses. Begin with what you have! Build and keep your house in ‘maha strong’ condition, the sewers perfectly drained, the streets hawker and litter free, the highways pot-hole and ‘jam’ free, the trains exactly on time running at 3 minute intervals with the tracks hermetically sealed from any kind of ‘crossing’ and the buses in the ‘best state’. Clean, sweep, scrub and maintain everything in superb condition. Hold hands and work together. Pick up the best ideas, regardless of the source, and execute them. Go back to the basics……..believe me, everything we need to know we learnt at kindergarten!

 Imagine, would it not be “slightly better” to walk though a sweet smelling ‘rightly crowded’ street-on the pavement, to the Station which is awfully clean and catch an airy, or perhaps air-conditioned train where you could at least stand on your feet without leaning on a ‘perfume killer’. Or even if you  bus, hyundai, ford or maruthi ‘swift’ to work you are promised with ‘sure movement’ on a runway surface which holds only wheels and not legs and arms!

 Imagine, all this is within reach, if we make up our minds. If we can ban the bar girls and the plastic we can also ban the “worst” of Mumbai.