I am back with what I called a 'substantial' post in my last post. Well, I gave it a lot of thought about what to write & then decided to go ahead with the things that I would have written if I had persued this Blog when I had first thought of it. That was last year when I had recently moved to London after my marriage and didnt have too much to do with my spare time. The blog didnt materialise & I ended up whiling away the time surfing the internet & god knows what.
I still remember the day we landed in Heathrow & were driving down towards the house. The city didnt seem very alien to me & I almost felt at home instantly. The roads, traffic etc seemed a lot like Bombay only without the chaos and the pollution. This was the first thing I noticed as it was already dark by then. In many ways I always tend to compare London with Bombay & find both the cities very similar to each other, ofcourse London is a little more refined as in it is more organised.
It has been more than a year for me here now, but I still see & think about the analogies between the two cities. For one, both the cities are home to a lot of diverse people. In Bombay you will find representatives from each state of the country. There are Gujratis, South Indians, Bengalis, Punjabis...practically everyone. Similarly in London you will find people of almost all Nationalities. Indians, Pakistanis, Polish, Americans, Germans, Chinese...again practically everyone.
Then theres the food. You can find almost all the international cuisines easily here in London as you would in Bombay (international as well as national). Then theres the public transport angle. The local trains, called the Tube here, are so similar to the local trains in Bombay or should I say it the other way..:) In more than one ways the Bombay local trains structure seems to have been built on the same model as is the Tube here. The first time that I went inside a station, I found the platform uncannily similar to the ones in Bombay, maybe cleaner, but nevertheless. But then there are some differences as well. The crowd for example. No its not at all lesser than Bombay, infact much more if thats possible. But the crowd behaviour is so mature & organised that you dont feel the stress of travelling as you would in Bombay. I still remember those days when I used to struggle to get into the train during peak hours & barely managed to hold on to a bar, handle or anything that I could get hold of till I reached Dadar from Ghatkopar. Because of that even that 15 minutes journey seemed like a big deal & was very tiring & exhausting. Repeating the same feat in the evening after you have worked the whole of the day was just a nightmare.
But here the crowd is more managed as the No of trains running is a lot more. Also there are a lot of 'Lines' as compared to only Central, Western & Harbour in Bombay. In Bombay if anyone enquired about how to reach a particular station, a regular train traveller will have the information on the tip of his tongue as to which train or line to take. But here even daily travellers have to carry a Tube map to get around because of the large No of lines (almost 15! within London itself & there are more lines for travelling to the counties) and also the stations.
Another point of difference is the timing. The Tube here is so accurate that the indicators actually have the time remaining for the train to arrive & it does arrive in that time. Compare this with Bombay where you are used to announcements such as 'Platform No 2 pe anewali Dombivili ke liye dheemi local anishchit kaal se deri se chal rahi hai' ! and you are left wondering if the train will even arrive & how will you get back home!
But the major difference between the two cities that I had to face was the climate! But more of that later....
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