It’s raining spuriously in Mumbai. I have not seen dry roads in the last one month. With the rains come the seasonal problems to the city. From traffic and travel to food and fashion everything suffers. I am taking myself on a whimsical ride (somewhere imaginative) and writing down my wishes that would make life a little easier during the monsoon.
Disclaimer: I love the rains and no wish here by chance or accident would come close to ask the rain gods to work less
- I wish the Mumbai road were like Claire Bennet from the TV series Heroes! She had the power to heal herself. So even if she would cut her arm with a knife the wound would start healing and her arm just normal in 10 seconds. The Mumbai roads need this power. There is no chemical substance that seems to work, leaving more potholes on the road than the road itself. No amount of repairing has worked as well and it just gets worse every time. Interestingly the newer the road the more damaged it is.
- Rainwater harvesting inside the subways. With the traffic on the roads growing like hair on my friend Vishwajeets chest a subway is the only safe place for a pedestrian. However in the first two downpours one can only swim across the subway. How about harvesting that water and increasing the height of the water table. Aam ke aam, gutliyon ke bhi daam!
- All parts of wet clothing are bearable apart from socks. Believe me it is the socks. What you are thinking is still bearable. Quick dry socks have failed in Mumbai as it never gets the time to dry my wish would be to wear water repelling socks. So even when I am walking through that stagnant water puddle with a dead rat floating in it, my feet come out dry. I can promise the Mumbai city Nobel Prize would be conferred on the inventor. Can’t imagine how much pleasure this would bring even the thought is getting me on a high.
- Radiation heaters to dry washed clothes on the clothesline. With humidity more than 100% and water seeping in through every possible vent it is impossible to dry the clothes. Mini radiation heaters would possibly be the answer so the clothes would dry to be worn. Of course they would be wet soon as soon as worn and stepped out of the house.
This is not it. This is what I can think of right now, of course there are a lot of other areas of improvement and scope of inventions. However without all the things that I have mentioned and a lot of other ideas the city does not stop or halt or slow or even hitch in the 4 months. In fact the challenge of the rain is taken head on and life goes on at the same lightning pace.
