Courtesy: http://www.myspaceantics.com//images/myspace-comments/days/garfield_monday.gif

This one crossed my mind when I was hearing Dipshika’s Monday morning blues.

Monday – First Half Holiday – Second Half Working
Tuesday - Full day Working
Wednesday – Holiday! Mid week stress buster.
Thursday – Full day Working
Friday – First Half Working – Second Half Holiday!
Saturday Sunday Off!!

Well that is a dream schedule. No business is gonna run on that unless you are in the business of minting money

Cheers!
Novin

I used to show up those raging hormones and boiling blood whenever I found something stupid happening around me, I used clench my fist in rage on issues like people honking behind me, people not following traffic rules, manner-less people, corruption, animals on roads, unprofessional complacent colleagues, waiters at restaurants, shopkeepers who didn’t attend me in time etc etc etc… This can be anything that I come across in my daily life.

I used to vent it out on some of them, rest were abused in my mind, some were given that unruly looks, some were abused aloud within the safety of my car, ah! I remember hurdling abuses at people who created stupid situations when I was busy managing a cousins’ wedding in Kerala 2 years back.

Something that was prevalent on all occasions was the stress induced on me, increased heart beat, headaches etc were the aftereffects. Having realized that these issues wont change them much I have developed sort of tolerance to them, I am not sure if I have submitted to them.

The best part of it is that I tend to get less angry! No more abuses etc… and now more of looking at the funnier side of it (I hope I am not making fun of me because of this) For instance… When I got out of my office in Powai yesterday, Instead of arguing with auto-wallahs about why they don’t want to Vikhroli, I simply put an open question to them “Who is going to Vikhroli!” and then they did the rest of the job for me, they shouted to others in the queue and so on for a couple of autowallahs… But this doesn’t mean that I got the auto… After a couple of auto wallahs I was back to my self abusing the Backchods for not going where I wanna go!

Looks like I have still a long way to go before I can call myself “Officially tolerant”! Till then I’ll live in the dilemma controlling my anger under the pretext of deciding weather I am being tolerant or submissive

By the way… Yesterday, by the time I walked down to Powai D-Mart I asked on lone autowallah if he is “willing” to go to Vikhroli and Bingo! He was going! I got my ride!

Cheers!

Novin

Some of the Dubious Decibels:

SRK: Cried foul for IPL ignoring Paki players during bidding, invited wrath from Tiger, Saffron brigade and others for anti-national comments. Then he went ahead and created more noises on his Twitter page and elsewhere.

RahulGandhi: Addressed a rally in Bihar and screamed “Bhaiyya, its our kids from Bihar and UP who were the NSG commandos who saved Mumbai“. Also cried foul over Mumbai’s ownership. Then he arrived in Mumbai and toured in a local train with his security cover, attended meetings with college kids and slum dwellers. Garlanded statue of Dr. Ambedkar wooing more votes.

ShivSena: Dared SRK to release his upcoming movie! Dared Rahul Gandhi to step in Mumbai. Whipped Ambani, SRK and Rahul Gandhi with their mouthpiece. Dared The later two to step into Mumbai. When Rahul scheduled his trip, they decided to hoist black flags to express their non-cooperation. Before all this the tore My Name is Khans posters and dared the screening of the movie in Mumbai.

Now what resulted from all this? Who benefited?

• SRK for letting everyone know about My Name is Khan!
• Rahul Gandhi for painting the common man picture and earning the name for daring SS in Mumbai.
• SS for scoring some brownie points over MNS and re-growling!!
• The Maha Govt for watching Rahuls back for the few hours he was here. Sonia-ji would be pleased with them.
• Media for getting new pseudo names for Rahul Gandhi from Tiger. Congress ka Yuvraj! Italian Putra, Rome Putra, etc etc
• Uddhav Thackrey for getting coverage on various news channels.
• A bunch of bollywood stars and starlets who extended their support to SRK to make up with the past tiffs or future benefits.
• TV channels with their share of noise for the content they found to fill the airtime which they would have filled with stories of ghosts appearing in buildings, punarjanam (re-births) stories and other useless shit.
• Telcos and ISPs who fed all those Support SMS and #MumbaiForAll Tweets to people who wouldn’t give a shit about these very senders if they were in a mess.
• Some media mouguls who stretched their vocal chords in their Channels being arm chair critics.
• Other political parties who made their presence felt with the ruckus they created by airing their opinions.
• The guys who rented their cars, and Pawan Hans for renting the chopper for Rahul Gandhi’s commute.
• And don’t know who else… O yea people like me who write blogs (equally nice armchair critics!).

Rahul did his job and was gone in a few hours. He’ll expect to gain the mileage of all this in the elections.

SRK and Tiger have patched up after they accomplished the mission of spreading awareness of their current affairs!

And you and me were glued to TV sets, Blogs, Twitter etc to observe all this!

The media went overboard with irresponsible comments like “Uttar Bharatiya hokar Rahul ne Mumbai ke Dadar, jahaan Shiv Sena ka kaaryalay hai, wahaan local train me yaatra karke unko lalkaara“. “Mumbai mein shiv sena ke mansoobon pe paani phera” That was bloody cheap tactics to evoke more violence and get more content to flash as Breaking News.

I appreciate ShivSena’s decision to hoist black flags to express their political non-cooperation because for a change they went non violent. We have our freedom for speech still securely in place in our constitution as one of our fundamental rights as long as it is not anti-national.

All this noise has died now, SRK is talking about meeting Bal Thackrey! Rahul is chilling back home reaping the results of his acts in Mumbai. All these folks are gonna take a break till Valentines Day arrives and then Bang! They’ll be back to save the Great Indian Culture from Western Influences!

Someday these people who have the power to make their voice heard would concentrate on issues more closer to national interests instead of raising decibel levels in this country with their dubious interest.

Thank You

Novin

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Today 40 is perhaps the hottest number in Mumbai, especially in the political arena, Media, Taxi & Auto drivers, and with people like you and me. Thanks to Raj Thackery who has given the 40 day deadline to all the North Indian Taxi & Auto drivers to learn Marathi or leave for their native states. I wish he could have instead ordered the Taxi & Auto wallah’s to realize that Taxi & Autos are meant to take people where they want go and not where the Auto or Taxi wallah prefers to go.

If I had the power to make things happen my way… here is what I would have asked people to stop within the next 40 days… If you don’t you can take your ass out of this city!

So here I go:

1. Stop peeing & shitting wherever you feel like!
2. Stop spitting in local trains (especially in that gap between the door and the coach!), buses, corners of stations, and that lone tree and that panwallah’s corner and that BEST bus stop’s chrome pillar and…  everywhere else!
3. Stop jumping signals! I don’t give a shit if your ride is a 500 bucks one or a 50,00,00,000 one!
4. Stop waiting for a BEST Supervisor to tell you to maintain a Queue, let us get the Queue culture!
5. Stop blaring your loudspeakers, be that of your cellphone or the one at your place of worship or party!
6. Stop illegally advertising misleading ads in trains, buses etc!
7. Stop charging “cooling charges” on cool drinks and “Bisleri”!
8. Stop honking when see the lights go green and you are at the fag end of vehicles lined up at a signal. Everybody is not an “expert driver” like you!
9. Stop paying respect to Gods by showering your offerings in Plastic bags into rivers and the seas.
10. Stop littering! This one is for that pan masala eater who is oblivious of where the sachet of pan masala falls the moment it is popped into his mouth as well as to the one who eats at place  like McD, KFC, Subway etc and drop the crates, wrappers etc outside the malls)
11. Stop ignoring words like “Excuse Me”, “Sorry” and “Thank You” instead of giving other a piece of your butt or shoulder when you want to sneak through crowded place.

Ah! My list will be end-less, of course, it is a wish list!

I know I am asking for too much in too less of a time! But folks! Let us face it! We lack basic civic sense!

If anybody abuses, insults or doesn’t respect the local culture & language it is unacceptable and he or she better start doing so. Again here what I call as abuse may not be what you consider as abuse and vice verca. Hence it is a thin line, so why ever tread on the thin line when we have broader outlines.

I wonder what value does it add to a common man if a cabbie learns the regional language, considering he will be driving pretty much inside the city where almost everyone knows Hindi.

Instead of concentrating on issues which divides people, let us concentrate on bringing out and addressing issues that effect our daily lives. Let us all work to tackle larger issues. We live in a country that is so damn resource starved that the best we can do about it is to utilize the available ones as efficiently as possible. Mindset change is something that cannot come overnight, there has to be collective effort from everyone, especially the educated ones. The ones like you and me who lives in this age of information.

Just imagine, if you stop doing the 11 things (I am not proposing a 11 point agenda for renaissance in Mumbai) but a set of few things that I think must stop at any cost. I am sure you have much more to add to it! Let us get a bit more civilized! Let us get it done! And yea… the 40 days deadline? Well, we’d see some people getting trashed (may be even me for writing this ), some smashed windshields, probably some mangled Autos and Cabs and a mute govt & law enforcement.

Signing Off!

Novin

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This morning while driving to work I was at the last signal at end of Dharavai which you come across when you are driving to Bandra from Sion. You take a right turn from here to drive through the stretch that takes you to Kalanagar. (Map).

I was waiting for the lights to change green at the right most lane, a guy walked in front of the car and said “Sir, gaadi se dhua nikal raha hai! (Sir, smoke is coming out of your car!)”  and he walked away into the traffic, he didn’t wait to reply me when I asked him “Kya? (What?)”. Again a couple of guys who came walking from the front pointed at the hood and said there is sparks comin etc… I was sufferin a bit from the hangover of last nights booze and lost my rationale and pulled over at the stretch to Kalanagar.

I came out and opened the hood to look for signs of burns or smoke but saw nothing. Then a guy walks out of nowhere and says , “Sir, dhua dekha, shayad sparking ho raha hai (Sir, I saw smoke, there is some sparking going on)”. He said “zara start karke dekiye (Try starting the engine)”. I went and started the engine and shut it down. All this while the guy was in front of the car and I was oblivious of whatever he was doing under the hood.

I came out and he showed me the plugs from ignition coil and the distributor had come out and hence the sparks. Now I got suspicious since I knew there was no way the engine was gonna start when the wire from ignition coil was unplugged. In the meanwhile he placed the unplugged wires back into the distributor. I knew he was taking me for a ride, I immediately went in, rolled up the front left glass, picked up my cellphone which lies on the left seat and my wallet. Locked the car and came to the hood. The guy now said “Sir, ye loose contacts se sparks aa raha hai, mene wapas laga dia hai par problem hoga, mein bhi driver hoon (Sir, the sparks are due to loose contacts, I have put the wire back in place but there will be problems, I am also a  driver)”.

I was now sure that the guys who talked to me at the signal about sparks and the “helping minded dirver” who showed up were all connected and this was a scam.I told him my office is nearby, I know things are wrong in here and I can take care of it. He left immediately without arguing.

Now I got in and started the engine and to my shock and awe… It wasn’t revving at all, no bloody acceleration. I knew he screwed it up. I wasn’t sure what was wrong but I thought I gotta get outta here and check, somehow I drove to the signal near Kherwadi and pulled over since the I wasn’t able to speed even above 30kmph on 4th gear with the accelerator on the floor!

I thought something was wrong with the carburetor and opened and checked it, nothing was wrong in there. I put it back in place and decided to drive to Sai Service at Andheri at the Western Express highway. Now it was around 9:20 and I was not able to drive over 30-40kmph, there wasn’t much traffic till I crossed the international airports’ flyover. My dream ride was over when I reached the place where the highway to Goregaon starts. It was jammed, somehow I managed to reach Sai Service.

The folks there told me that one of the cylinders is not firing up and hence the noise and low revving in-spite of full acceleration ( I thought “Fuck, I’m gonna loose lots of money now”). They parked the car and started the paperwork, in the meanwhile I started checking the connections on the distributor and cylinders. I recollected the guy talking about the plugs and after checking it here I saw that the wire to cylinder and the wire from ignition coil seemed to be out of place. In the Maruti 800 1996 model (Yea, thats my ride and trust me even after all these years it is a good one except for the signs of ageing and some squeaks here and there) the wire from Ignition goes to the center plug of the Distributor (Check it here), that was what my hazy memory of the stuff under the hood told me. To confirm it I walked to another M800 that was being serviced, it was a newer model but I saw what I thought it to be.

I came back to my car which was still waiting for the paperwork to finish, tried my luck and placed the ignition to the center plug and the one from cylinder to where ignition was plugged.

With doubts of a possible mess up I turned the keys and we were good!!!

I went to the guy doing paper work his name was Garry D’Souza, and said I am good. He said you did a good thing by not allowing him to repair it cuz he would have  made you cough up anything betweein Rs.1500 – Rs.4000!! Another guy at the service station told me it happens near the Goregaon flyover too.

Sai Service issued me a gate pass and I left. (I hope they were not planning to cook up a story around the failed cylinder to earn some quick bucks!)

Now some related incidents that I came to know:

• Dipsikha & her family got conned near Mankhurd when they bought their new car. Same story, sparks and smoke from the car.
• My colleague Amith Ail whose bro got down to check a sound similar to someone bumping into your car from behind, which was confirmed by a scooter rider who came and said “Peeche se thoka hai (You got bumped from behind)”. When Amiths’ bro got down to check the car, the scooter guy sped off with the cellphone that was lying in the car.
• http://www.expressindia.com/news/ie/daily/19990211/ile11185.html

I am sure there must be lot of other incidents where many unsuspecting people have got duped. So next time you see strangers telling you about sparks/ smoke from the car,  “don’t ignore it” but make sure that you don’t allow anyone to tinker with the engine or leave the hood unattended with a stranger asking you to start the engine to look for sparks. I know it is very uneasy to drive around when someone has told you that they saw sparks from your car, so get it checked at an authorized service station for that “Sigh of relief!”.

The last word is… Be extra cautious while dealing with such situations at night and isolated places. Also make sure you have at least some basic gyan about your car/ bike/ computer/ or anything that you use so that you know what you are using and can do some preliminary troubleshooting.

Happy Driving| Always wear your seatbelts | And no mobile phones while driving!

Novin.

I hope all those silent maa-behen ki gaaliyan and curses showered by others motorists who got stuck behind in the rush hour don’t really reach me

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The problem that I have with BEST Ac buses is the high fare (Rs 48 from Bandra to Vashi Depot! NMMT costs Rs. 30) and of course the shaky bus which doesn’t have flaps on the AC vents!!!

Well, with more and more services… We have more options, but hey!!! We are running out of roads & Infrastructure to accommodate these Big Boys! You gotta check how the BEST takes the turn inside Bandra depots last lane where it picks up passengers from. Also one thing to be noted is that from Bandra we have the BEST & NMMT racing with each other to be the first to arrive, not a good thing at all!

Lets wait and watch how many more buses they push in! I hope they to get into a price we like our poor cellular operators who have dropped it to ultra low levels considering the charges they used to command when they Mobile phones were new in India.

Here are the pics- excuse me for the pathetic quality of pics, thanks to clicking them while driving and my 2.0 megapix Samsung phone camera.

Buses from Dindoshi Bus Stop To CBD Depot (24 Hr format)
8.00, 8.33, 9.06, 9.35
10.12, 10.45, 11.15, 11.50
12.22 , 12.50, 13.23, 13.56
14.29, 15.02, 15.35, 16.08
16.40 , 17.15, 17.40, 18.15
18.46 , 19.19, 19.25, 20.25
21.00 , 21.35, 22.10, 22.30

Buses from CBD Bus Stand to Dindoshi Depot (24 Hr format)
6.10, 6.41, 7.00, 7.47
8.10, 8.40, 9.20, 9.57
10.25, 10.58, 11.31, 12.00
13.10, 13.37, 13.40, 14.15
14.50, 15.15, 15.50, 16.20
16.54, 17.30, 18.00, 18.35
19.10, 19.50, 20.05

Please note these timings where taken from NMMTs’ portal (http://www.nmmt.in/timetable.php?routeno=123), I do not take responsibility for anything that results from you referring to my blog and these timings.

Novin

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Caution: If you drive a car please read this -> On road Dupers at large in Mumbai

Things going pretty ok nowadays, some big expenses were incurred, a trip to Kerala perhaps in Feb- March. 

Lets see how it works out!

- Novin

May be we are working “A Description” that is our calling but if you don’t own the co, you are still working for someone else…

I came home… Calmed down and started introspecting. I figured out the cause of the crisis. Figured the way out too… No I didn’t think of quitting. Not yet!

Novin!

So here we are with Diwali – The Festival of Lights! Really?? It appears to be more like the festival of sound! We spend lots of money buying the fireworks that contribute to hell lot of air and noise pollution. We the educated youth should take responsibility of spreading awareness about these issues among our peers and children. When I say spreading awareness, I mean to pass this message about rising pollution levels during festive seasons, weather to implement our thoughts or not is solely up to them.

My employer planned a Diwali fest last night and had planned to burst crackers to conclude the even. I wrote to the organizer who didn’t give a damn about it. I didn’t want to play spoilsport and didn’t push the matter much.

Check out some facts and figures here:

http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_ganpati-beats-diwali-at-decibels_1299092

1 lakh students vow not to burst crackers: Times of India: 15th Oct 2009:

Can’t we all celebrate a Diwali which is full of light than full of noise, smoke and burn injuries?

That is just a thought for you to ponder upon, at the end of the day we are a democratic and free country, we can celebrate our festivals the way we want!

Happy Diwali Folks!

Thank You

Novind

There are many who are curious about the service and search a lot, no wonder my first post about NMMT Volvo has had 440 hits & Wait Wait & Wait… But you may never find your NMMT! has had 44 visits, that is 484 visits to my blogs out of the 1, 111 till date (29th Sept 09). Which is 43.56%.

NMMT has indeed delivered a mode of transport that was never seen on the public roads of Mumbai but does merely delivering a mode of transport suffice the purpose? Isn’t management of the service an ongoing basis a very significant part of the deliverable? And most importantly… Isn’t maintaining the existing lot of non Volvo buses of the fleet an equally important job?

Here are some points to ponder.

1. Shouldn’t there be a supervisor who maintains a queue at Bandra? There is always a mad rush of people to get into the bus, people are supposed to maintain a Queue which is quite absent in our culture. I don’t blame everyone because if there are only a handful of people who believe in queues and a hell lot of mad ones don’t give a damn about queues, the former ones are gonna be at disadvantage.

I don’t know how it works out in Belapur. If you could throw some light via comments, it would definitely be helpful to other readers.

BEST beats NMMT here as they have the advantage of the depot and a queue system.

2. Shouldn’t the frequency be more smarter? The buses are supposed to leave every 20 mins from Bandra but this is pretty stupid at rush hours, thanks to the heavy traffic at Bandra, Sion, Chembur and other unexpected locations, you may find yourself waiting for the bus for over 45 mins at Bandra.

505s are more in number and pretty frequent too.

3. What about regular NMMTs? I am sure that lesser lucky commuters (like me ) to Navi Mumbai who have to take a regular NMMT eventually to reach their homes have to get into a rickety ill maintained bus. Isn’t maintaining the rest of the fleet like the Volvos necessary?

And as I have heard from conductors of NMMT, the supervisors don’t treat them well and the don’t heed to the repeated requests of drivers and conductors for better maintenance of buses. Many of us know how the roofs of the buses leaks during the monsoon and how frequently the buses breaks down. Not to mention how the drivers “follow” the “rule” of not allowing people to get in from the front and how they simply choose to ignore most of the traffic rules!

I am neither supporting or opposing any transport body, I am just a regular commuter who tries to reach his destination in the easiest & comfortably available mode of transport. Yeah, I do look for customer service but I do realize that I can’t expect to be treated like a king everywhere

By the way, next time you have issues with an ill maintained bus or a misbehaving driver or conductor or if you need any assistance about the NMMT service, here is the number of the Thurbe Depot- 022-2784 6724. I have observed many people searching for the bus schedule and the route, the above number can help you with it.

Novin