Mumbai is infectious. Once you start living in Mumbai, working in Mumbai, I don’t think you can live anywhere else.Yash Chopra
In the city of dreams, where even a strip of land is said to be worth it's value in gold, human life has no worth. The city that fills the coffers of India is given a shabby treatment from the authorities, right from the Centre to the local civic bodies. Pot-holed roads, overflowing gutters, poor water supply, jammed roads are the hallmarks of our so called 'Financial capital of India'.
Everyday the helpless Mumbaikar, in pursuit of his dreams, boards the 'lifeline of his city' packed like sardines, a compromise with his mental and physical state treated worse than cattle. Adding to this awful state are annually recurring 'days of standstill' courtesy the monsoons. Elphinstone Station’s incident is just a part of years of civic apathy.
Who is to blame for this?
US, Mumbaikars have become so accustomed to our sufferings that we confuse it with the romantic idea of 'The great Mumbaikar spirit'.
We have become so busy in our 'pursuit of happiness' that we have conveniently ignored how our beautiful city has turned into a civic disaster. We have conveniently ignored the criminal negligence of the people in charge of our city. These people have infested the system like leeches and sucked the life of the city, waiting for it to crumble.
Hope, this unfortunate incident awakens the real 'fighting spirit of the Mumbaikar'. We must demand answers from the people in power. The city is ours and we can't let it fall apart.
As Bruce Wayne said "I cannot let Gotham fall apart, without a fight".
It's time the dark knights of Mumbai claim their city!
(Sushant Shetty is a mechanical engineer by profession, and a philonoist with an opinion on everything under the sun. He writes on politics, sports and everything in between.)
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