When I was at Pune, I went to Mumbai and spent a week with Suresh and Sudhakar ( in the last week of Oct.) No, no, I am not going to bore you with the usual details about Mumbai. But what I observed during my trip was something new to me and I was astonished to note the time sense of people there.
Yes, this is about the unique sense of time, which the Mumbaivaasis generally have. To give you an example,
When I was travelling to Mumbai, my train was supposed to reach Kalyan at about 655 PM. Here is a conversation of two co passengers of mine.
“ What is the time now”
“ 647 pm”
“ Is the train running late?”
“ Yes, it is running late by 8 mins and it will reach Kalyan by 7 01 pm instead of the scheduled arrival time of 653 pm”
“ In that case, we will miss 656 pm local, isn’t it ?”
“ Yes, but we can catch the 706 train”
Wonderful it was!
During the one week I was in Mumbai, I came across many such conversations. Everybody talks in exact minutes like 6 mins, 7 mins, etc. And invariably, what they mention in mins is absolutely correct. If somebody says, it will take you 14 mins to reach a particular place, it takes 14 mins.
I experienced it myself. The trains (so many of them) are running to perfect time and even buses are invariably on time except may be during peak hours when they may get delayed due to traffic jams. Such time sense has caught almost all in Mumbai, I could see. Hats off to them
When we were returning to Pune, we (myself, Magesh and Suba) were seated in the train in CST (Thank God, there were no terrorists that day) waiting for the train to depart. Magesh then asked me “ When will the train start?”. I told him “in another 2 ½ mins”!!
(In this one week, unwittingly, I had also become a Mumbaivasi!!!.)
1 comment:
Chittappa, Well said. Invariably I travel by 0754 bus to vashi and reach vashi at 0851. Similarly sudhakar keeps telling me that he travel up to CST in 44 min,in which travel up to Dadar is 25 min!!! The longer the duration I stay here the more such influence. Though I hve been used to such sense of timing up to min and sec in my previous career, this is something (among common people of Mumbai) surprises me even now.
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