The Brave Pedestrian

Mumbai, 14 March, 2015: Planning to kill yourself and your family after a tasty meal? Go to Golden Chariot Restaurant. Blocked fire-exits and various other dangerous practices makes this restaurant at Goregaon's Hub Mall your best bet at achieving a fiery death. Although activists like Shaikh Fakhruddin Junaid, Sulaiman Bhimani and myself have repeatedly pointed it out to Mumbai's Municipal Corporation and Mumbai Fire Brigade, the ability of Golden Chariot to bribe the powers-that-be and also abuse judicial processes has helped it to survive. But orders passed by MCGM and Fire Brigade in 2017 suggest that Golden Chariot's goose is being slowly cooked. After the restaurant finally caught fire on 29th December, 2016 (read newspaper reports here and here ), civic authorities are finding it difficult to dodge their responsibility to ensure public safety by sealing it. Deputy Municipal Commissioner Kiran Achrekar and Deputy Chief Fire Officer V N Panigrahi have ordere...

July 27, 2009:  If you folks are civilized when you are behind the steering wheel, then maybe you are more evolved human beings than I am. When I am driving and come across a bunch of pedestrians trying to cross the road, I don’t slow down unless the signal is red. I flash my headlights menacingly, honk my horn and speed up. Translated into words, this action means, “Watch out! I’m bigger and clad in a metal armour! So step out of my way… or else!” When a pedestrian stands in front of my accelerating vehicle, this isn't a friendly warning but a direct threat of physical harm. From where he stands, my car isn't a vehicle of transportation; for him, it is a weapon of death, like a loaded cannon ready to fire. No, we don’t see this as a social injustice because we are all so USED TO IT, dammit! Just as, in the days of feudalistic zamindari and untouchability, neither the overlords nor the downtrodden felt that they were part of an unjust system! They felt it was a normal wa...