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October 26, 2006
Matungaiites Everywhere
This was in today's Mumbai Mirror.
How things have changed! Just a few years ago, Diwali was all about Chopda Pujans, fire-crackers and the rounds of Saal-Mubaraks on Bestu-Varas day, to my kakas, nana-nani, mamas, etc. all of whom thankfully live in the Greater Matunga area, in Wadala, Matunga and Sion.
After the Finance Ministry killed the relevance of Chopda Pujans, when April-March was compulsorily made the financial year for all businesses, things started changing. More and more, Diwali time became “holiday time”, even during the Diwali and Bestu-Varas days, with many families opting to stay away from the city.
The problem unfortunately, is that if you go to hill-stations like like Matheran or Mahabaleshwar or even beach-resorts like Goa, you are sure to find “half of Matunga” in these places. Honestly, it is very likely that your neighbor in the next room is from Matunga or has lived there or has in-laws there.
This Diwali, we split up our Diwali holidays into two short trips year, to areas we were absolutely sure would be devoid of all Matunga flavor.
The first trip was sans-kids, to the Maldives, where we landed up being the only Indian couple at the Taj Coral Reef and unlike the experience in most other tourist places, we were actually over-pampered by the predominantly Indian staff, as compared to the British, Italian and Japanese tourists. Talk of reverse discrimination! And of course, the corals and snorkelling were awesome.
Then, during the Diwali days, we decided to go off to Ahmedabad (at the airport alone, we met two Matunga families on their way to Goa...jeez!). On Sunday, the “dhoka” day, we went to Goyal’s water park (apparently better than Water Kingdom), which was virtually empty and the kids had a blast. In the evening though, we found Vishala to be very crowded, I guess, because locals just love eating out, Though fun, Vishala is now obviously a tourist-focused experience, with the puppet-shows, the "garba" area and of course the cross-legged eating on leaves with earthen crockery, but with average Gujju food. With another “average” experience at a very popular “thali” place on Monday, I realized that though people love eating out, this city still has a long-way to go in terms of the quality of the food and the fine-dining experience.
Overall though, Ahmedabad has become an amazingly vibrant city, both in the inner-city “pol” areas, as well as in the newer parts. And despite our views about him in Mumbai, the locals think the world of Mr. Narendra Modi and give him full credit for this development.
The last evening was topped off with Don, which we all unanimously thought, (despite Khalid Mohamed and his colleagues) is far better than the old Don, which we had all seen the night before, both to refresh our memories and for the kids. The old Don honestly is a B-grade, badly edited and directed film, but is great fun because of AB, Pran and the dialogues, while the new Don…well, it just rocks! I wish I could write a review for all the contrarians.
So, once in a while, it is nice to be away from Matunga, both column-wise and physically. And the trick I’ve realized, is to either go away to really exotic destinations or to other big cities, which are themselves a little “empty”, because their inhabitants too have decided to go away to other touristy places, and yet are large enough to make it unlikely that you’ll meet another Matungaiite!
Posted by bhavinj at 10:58 AM | Comments (1)
October 16, 2006
Injured? You must go to Sion
This was published in today's Mumbai Mirror.
A certain percentage of reader feed-back has always focused on the frivolousness of my writing. “I am sick of your rasam-idli. Do you know the plight of those who have been scammed by the South Indian Co-op Bank? Can’t you write about them?” And so on and so forth. Apart from the fact that what I write about is really nobody’s business, it is amazing how presumptuous people can get.
Having said that, when my dear friend Nobs Roy mailed me some stuff about Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in Mumbai (or rather the lack of), I thought I could use this opportunity to get serious.
Question: If you were to get seriously injured in a road-traffic accident, where would your best chances of survival lie?
a. Public hospital (Sion, KEM, etc)
b. Private hospital (Hinduja, Lilavati, etc)
The answer is (a). The public hospitals have round the clock services including emergency diagnostic and blood facilities, easy handling of police and legal inquiries and no risk of being denied treatment due to non-payment of bills. Virtually all specialties required to handle emergency care (orthopedic surgeons, general surgeons, neurosurgeons, anesthetists, radiologists) are available at all times. And among the public hospitals, Sion has perhaps the best EMS, simply because of the vision of the previous deans and surgeons who worked hard to make the EMS a well-oiled machine.
The problem in Mumbai, unfortunately, is of reaching the EMS services. A common medical fraternity joke is that the only difference between an ambulance and a hearse, is its color. In a city choked with vehicles and the complete absence of civic sense, it is virtually impossible for ambulances to reach any hospital in time. And even if ambulances are given way or are allowed to break signals, it is not uncommon to find a couple of cars behind the ambulance availing of this advantage as well! And so, the study conducted by Arvind Vatkar, Poonam Vaishnav, Pragnya Supe, Ritam Chowdhury and Sandeep Patil, found that only a third of emergency cases were brought in by ambulances. The rest came in police vans, taxis, private vehicles and some even on stretchers by foot.
It is a pity that a country that is supposed to be the next superpower and a city that is the financial capital of that country does not even have a basic EMS for the public. There is no single number to call and no coordinating authority to work with. If a person reaches the hospital in time, it is usually due to the timely arrival of a complete stranger, either the police or a passerby. And contrary to popular belief, the police were actually able to rescue people in about a quarter of accidents and then transported the victims in police vans to the hospital.
With the virtual absence of any kind of civic training in first-aid as well as trained paramedics (even if an ambulance manages to come to you, it is actually just a transportation mode with no trained personnel to handle accidents), about half of the victims receive no first aid on the way and the other receive inappropriate care, which is even worse.
Despite all this, the EMS at Sion Hospital does a great job. And though, as with most things in our daily lives, the authorities are completely useless in terms of providing pre-hospital care during accidents, it is a public Municipal hospital that provides perhaps the best accident care, if you manage to get to it…alive.
Posted by bhavinj at 10:19 AM | Comments (2)
