Amchi Mumbai scores over London despite

LONDON: It’s easy for a scribe to get caught up with the media mood of when and where you are. And what’s keeping the media seriously occupied here is Brown, Blair and the redecoration of 10 Downing Street next summer. What’s keeping the locals occupied is, as usual, the weather, property prices and taxes, in that order.

Since I’m not ‘yet’ a local, and I know that you guys back home are more concerned with the left luggage in Khar station than Mr Blair’s housing problems, I think I’ll start off this reality show from London with an episode dedicated to Mumbai.

I don’t know if that legendary Mumbai spirit of get on with life has buried the recent past, but I’ve still got local trains on my mind. So I’m giving you a quick recap of a few weeks on our local trains.

• Overhead, underhand or any kind of luggage racks : 0.

• Services suspended between various stations due to ‘essential’ repair work: 2 or 3 in a day.

• Trains stopped due to flooding on tracks and a landslide, stranding returning commuters for hours: 1.

• Average commuting time from one end of the city to the other: 1.5 to 2 hours.

• Power failure on a train between stations, causing delays and incipient claustrophobia to commuters: 1.

• Beggar jumping in through moving train doors between carriages and between stations: 1.

• Bhajan/Music gangs: 1 at every alternate station.

• Number of ticketless travellers caught by TCs in a surprise check: 6 in a compartment of about 20.

• Escalators out of order, requiring walking up equivalent of approximately 6 floors: 2.

• Delays of more than 20 minutes due to varieties of reasons: 4.

• Customer incidents (read accidents): 2

• Suburban trains stopped, creating chaos at rush hour due to strike by workers: 1.

• Temperature in the trains: no real-time data, but one rush hour trip can qualify you for a saline drip (And this I love; along with ‘mind the gap’ announcements, you’re told to ‘please carry bottles of water in the hot weather’. Hello? Anybody heard of air-conditioning?).

• Commuters who put up with all this, with a stiff upper lip: 100%.

• Price: I’m not all that good at conversions, but I’d roughly convert one single journey at rush hour (from Khar to Andheri, for example) to one recently released movie at a swank multiplex with caramel popcorn, and ice-cream for the kids thrown in.

• Probability of finding platform 9 & 3/4ths in the labyrinths youre required to traverse when changing lines: 86% (Okay, so I just made that last one up. But I challenge anyone to do a switchover at Bank and still not find themselves on the Hogwarts Express).

As I’m by habit an editor and not a columnist, I’ll give you the punchline fast. The experiential list I’ve given above is, as the discerning reader may have guessed by now, about that venerable institution, the London Tube and National Rail. Anything sound familiar to Mumbaikars?

And guess what? Much to the hilarity of the locals, an international travellers survey has just voted London Transport the best in the world. I’m not being jingoistic, or condoning the abysmal record of the Mumbai authorities, whoever they may be — 16-odd authorities are involved, don’t ask me who’s really responsible.

But hey, as everyone here keeps telling me, we’re supposed to pay exorbitant taxes and even more exorbitant prices for public transport, for the ‘advanced’ services residents of a developed nation expect and get.

Given all that, I figure we don’t do so badly in Amchi Mumbai. And for all those of you who are choking over your muffins and frequent flyer privileges, move out of the Oxford Street to Mayfair loop first.

And while you’re about it, take a trip from Nerul to VT, or Kandivili to Churchgate on a normal day. That is, just rains, beggars, delays, signal failures, and bhajan gangs. And about 10 times the number of commuters. And then let’s talk.