Ah, the first shower of a premature monsoon. The smell of wet mud, of a few drops of liquid heaven on parched stone, the sound of those little visitors rapping on your window, the sound of drops hitting leaves that have awaited them for a very very long summer...
But lo and behold! Before you even know it, they're gone, to visit another time, I'm sure... soon, I hope... But the rain has changed the world forever... A world scorched by the sun's unrelenting heat, suddenly fresh with life and energy thanks to these gifts from the angels.
It's amazing, isn't it, how something as, well, natural and relatively mundane (I mean face it, water goes up and it comes down) as rainfall can inspire such ideas from even one like me? :)
But that isn't the end of it either. With the rains come a plethora of childhood memories, wearing rain-coats and gum boots, splashing in puddles at every opportunity, the football we played in the rain, old friends long forgotten, in a time half a lifetime ago...
The rain has gone, but his cousin decided to pay us a visit. The wind...
Buffeting man and plants alike, the wind came down and gave us our second installment of childhood memories. Memories of walking along Bandstand or Worli sea-face with the wind blowing at you, memories of having chai and bhel with a friend and having the bhel literally blown out of your hands... So many memories.
But, unfortunately, one cannot reminisce too long. As the wind dies, one is suddenly made aware of his surroundings. I am at the COEP Boys' Hostel. And I have an exam tomorrow. Thus ends a most wondrous trip into the depths of one's own mind. A trip that started with an old acquaintance... our beloved Paaus!
Friday, May 7, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Mercs SUCK!!!
Greetings to one and all. I'd hoped my first post in this new blog would be more hilarious than this one promises to be. My apologies for that. But you know, I don't write these posts. They write themselves. I'm just the channel. Enjoy!
Yesterday, 16-APR-2010, I rode to Bombay in an MSRTC Shivneri Mercedes-Benz bus. It didn't live up to my expectations. The ride was too harsh, not rough but harsh. By that I mean that every time the bus swayed, it tossed me around. Terrible!
No wait, I take back the part about the ride not being rough. It's like an auto rickshaw! The air suspension is barely as good as a BEST bus. The dampers are a joke...Oh the oscillations! For a 3 year old, you wouldn't need to take him on a roller coaster ride for him to show you what he's been eating, if you get my meaning. The Merc will do the trick.
The second big problem I had was with the size of the bus. The aisle was so narrow, I with my pockets bulging with my cell phone and wallet, kept hitting seats on both sides of the aisle, not to mention the bags I carried in my hands. One might think at this point that Mercedes-Benz have sacrificed aisle size to accommodate wider seats while maintaining the overall width of the vehicle. They haven't. What appears to have happened is that they've made the bus narrower which, in my opinion, has made it more unstable and increased the body roll.
Then there's a third problem and this might not seem like a big deal, but I assure you, it's very annoying. The seat reclining lever touches the seat cushion and sticks out so that when you sit down, it pokes your hamstrings. And that really hurts if you're a heavy person.
But don't go away just yet. The Merc doesn't disappoint... if you want to be disappointed, that is. The air conditioning vents aren't very user friendly. They just open and shut. You can't 'direct' the flow of air. Well, not effectively anyway.
And finally, the cherry on the sundae is this: The last two rows at the back of the bus get really incredibly HOT! The engine is right behind/under you and the good folk at Merc seem not to give too much importance to heat insulation between the passenger cabin and the engine bay.
The only silver lining is that most of MSRTC's fleet consists of the Volvo B7R's and 9400's and JCBL/King Long Cerita buses. They are far better than the Merc buses in absolutely every way. And I'm not exaggerating about this. The air conditioning is better, the ride is smoother, the seats are more comfortable, the recliner lever is flush with the side of the seat so that you can push it down like a button and it doesn't make unsuspecting passengers cry out in pain!
That concludes my first post in this new blog. Hope you enjoyed it. Hope you never have the misfortune of having to ride in one of those awful Mercedes-Benz buses.
Live long and prosper!!
Yesterday, 16-APR-2010, I rode to Bombay in an MSRTC Shivneri Mercedes-Benz bus. It didn't live up to my expectations. The ride was too harsh, not rough but harsh. By that I mean that every time the bus swayed, it tossed me around. Terrible!
No wait, I take back the part about the ride not being rough. It's like an auto rickshaw! The air suspension is barely as good as a BEST bus. The dampers are a joke...Oh the oscillations! For a 3 year old, you wouldn't need to take him on a roller coaster ride for him to show you what he's been eating, if you get my meaning. The Merc will do the trick.
The second big problem I had was with the size of the bus. The aisle was so narrow, I with my pockets bulging with my cell phone and wallet, kept hitting seats on both sides of the aisle, not to mention the bags I carried in my hands. One might think at this point that Mercedes-Benz have sacrificed aisle size to accommodate wider seats while maintaining the overall width of the vehicle. They haven't. What appears to have happened is that they've made the bus narrower which, in my opinion, has made it more unstable and increased the body roll.
Then there's a third problem and this might not seem like a big deal, but I assure you, it's very annoying. The seat reclining lever touches the seat cushion and sticks out so that when you sit down, it pokes your hamstrings. And that really hurts if you're a heavy person.
But don't go away just yet. The Merc doesn't disappoint... if you want to be disappointed, that is. The air conditioning vents aren't very user friendly. They just open and shut. You can't 'direct' the flow of air. Well, not effectively anyway.
And finally, the cherry on the sundae is this: The last two rows at the back of the bus get really incredibly HOT! The engine is right behind/under you and the good folk at Merc seem not to give too much importance to heat insulation between the passenger cabin and the engine bay.
The only silver lining is that most of MSRTC's fleet consists of the Volvo B7R's and 9400's and JCBL/King Long Cerita buses. They are far better than the Merc buses in absolutely every way. And I'm not exaggerating about this. The air conditioning is better, the ride is smoother, the seats are more comfortable, the recliner lever is flush with the side of the seat so that you can push it down like a button and it doesn't make unsuspecting passengers cry out in pain!
That concludes my first post in this new blog. Hope you enjoyed it. Hope you never have the misfortune of having to ride in one of those awful Mercedes-Benz buses.
Live long and prosper!!
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