City Ratings - Pune

 I had floated the idea of rating cities by a few things that matter to a common citizen. Here is my first attempt, at rating Pune, where I live.

Commuting. Buses.. reasonable, but not as well-maintained as Bangalore. Some areas over-served, some under. 6 on 10

Metro- inadequate network. Last mile connectivity not well thought out. Cost is reasonable though. 6 on 10.

Cleanliness- roads are not cleaned adequately, particularly garbage clearance is sloppy.. 5 on 10..

Autorickshaws- very good, both metered and Uber are available at most places. 8 on 10.

Weather- better than most places, except Bangalore- 8 on 10.

Food/drink options- plenty, and growing. Seafood, North/South Indian joints are plenty, so are pizza places. Craft beer is homegrown too, like Effingut, Pune-based. We also have TOIT, and Doolally's at Corinthian Club.

Internet- good speed, options. Or else my blog and fb participation would go for a toss.

Overall, quality of life is decent. Pollution is a problem, with too much construction.. road quality needs to improve. 

Myths About Dollar Earnings

 Life in the US or the west is a dream for many. So is a life in the Gulf countries, for others. But what is the reality, vis-a-vis a life in India? I mean, a working life and a retired life.

I was earning a comfortable (at the time) 40 thousand dollars per year when I got a job in the U.S. as an assistant professor. Spent quite a bit on the 2 Bedroom apartment, and furnishing it. The car and medical insurance payments later, was left with just enough to make a trip to India perhaps, and a comfortable lifestyle. But we had to do our own washing, ironing and cleaning. Car maintenance occasionally came up. If we had had kids, maybe expenses would have multiplied. 

The same applies here, at a lower rupee salary. Plus you get maids for housework and dhobis to iron clothes. Drivers are available or autorickshaws in cities. Now metros too. Public transport has always been better in India, and safe for kids and older people. So they are not dependent on you for their movements. Now we have the Metro as well in many cities. Your savings tend to be high in India, as you spend less, unless there are medical emergencies. You can plan your retirement savings too, if you start in your thirties or so. 

Job security was higher too, until now. So it's possible for a qualified person to live a good life in India too, particularly for a double income family of the middle classes. 

Yeh hai Mumbai meri jaan

This is a tribute to Mumbai, which in spite of all its negatives-crowds, pollution, and so on, continues to be a vibrant place where people work (one of the few places in which almost everyone is working rather than idling in our country), play and commute with zest.

There are a lot of things happening on a given day in Mumbai. I happened to catch two of them in my trips there. The recent one saw me attend a Kishore Kumar memorial concert on August 4, his birth anniversary. An excellent show, it had Sudesh Bhosle, a talented mimic and singer, do many numbers of Kishore Kumar. A highlight was Ek Chatur Nar which he sang with his son Siddhant.

Plays in English, Marathi, Hindi and Gujarati are always on. The ad world and the Hindi film world call Mumbai their home. Many migrants, from taxi drivers to film stars have found success here, the city of dreams. From Dream Girl Hema Malini to SD Burman (in music). Real estate moghuls have built palaces and common man's housing. Parsi community has added a charm of its own, apart from running some well-known business houses. Gujarati and Marwari traders have made it a bustling place. Udupi restaurants by Mangaloreans have added many idli-dosa joints for hungry people. TCS, the first of the big Indian IT companies, is headquartered here.

One of the most efficient public transport systems is run in Mumbai, if you count the number of people it transports in quick time. Perhaps one of the cheapest too. The dabbawalas of Mumbai, of course, are too famous to talk about, delivering home-cooked food super-efficiently to offices.

A Walk in the Park

That's just the idiom or a way of expressing the idea. What I really want to write about is walking-anywhere. Compared to the gym, it has numerous advantages, for instance. You don't need a membership that comes at a cost. You don't have opening and closing hours. You don't need an expert to tell you what to do-unless you want to hire one for crossing roads heavy with traffic!

A jog is boring, as it forces you to concentrate on the act. While walking, you can let the mind wander about, and it can go beyond the road you are walking on- on roads less travelled, so to speak. Walking is free, and comes with health benefits such as exercising the muscles, and sometimes making you more agile, if the traffic is heavy and you need to do some quick thinking to avoid oncoming cars and bikes.

Walking in a park may be a luxury, and environmentally unfriendly, since you may need to drive to the park unless you live close by. But walking anywhere is better than taking a  car anywhere. This major realisation came to me after observing what happens to a car (and the person in it) in Delhi. If you can't walk, take the metro or the bus, is my sage advice to anyone who is not busy honking their way out of the traffic around.

Actually, my preferred personal transport is a personal flying vehicle, but the question arises- what do you do for flyovers in the sky, once traffic builds up there? Maybe that's why the sages (powers-that-be) wisely decided not to build such devices.