Mumbai Diary: Tuesday Tales

Auto strike beneficiary
When autorickshaws shut their engines off last week, it was mayhem for most… but not for at least one individual, however.

Auto not plying, dreams are flying. Pic/Shreya Bhandary

We spotted a stray dog who took full advantage of a stationary and deserted autorickshaw at Andheri, and snoozed the day away on the passenger seat.

Stretched out to his full extent, the four-legged faffer seemed to epitomise the saying that there is a silver lining to every cloud. Not to mention, every dog has his day!

Name your pace...
Medium, speedy, or… torrid? We were intrigued by the possible reasons for the naming of this car service agency, which we spotted in the Western suburbs the other day. Perhaps it was set up during the really hot months when the heat is, well, torrid.

Or was it during the thick of the monsoon, reflecting the torrential nature of the rains? The word is also used to describe on-the-side dalliances, as in a "torrid affair". Well, whatever the reason, the name is certainly memorable and it got us thinking!

Tunnel vision for garbage
Sometimes when one is waiting for a local Central Railway train on the fast platform, a mail train hurtles past on its journey out of Mumbai. And one catches a whiff of phenyl from the newly-washed toilets. Unfortunately, when the train reaches the Parsik tunnel, after Thane, it's a different sort of odour that assails the nostrils. There are shanties on either side, and garbage strewn everywhere.

What could be a picturesque tunnel exit, is literally a wasteland instead. Pic/Shrikant Khuperkar

Two large toilets add to the olfactory assault, and it goes without saying that rubbish litters the tracks as well. The wall that has been built by the railways does not help to contain the littering. It is even more sad when one hears that the 4,316-ft-long Parsik tunnel is the first ever tunnel dug for a railway line in India it was opened for traffic in 1916.

By all accounts it should be a scenic portion of the route, for both long-distance and suburban travellers. If cleared of encroachments and rubbish, the tunnel would be one of those sections that people wait for, and point out.