Rain rain go away come another day, little johny wants to play.

Hmmm the rains are here. The lovely cloudy skies, the cool breeze, the puddles, the getting wet when you are about to open your umbrella etc. the list just goes on.

In Mumbai unfortunately the rains are more of a nightmare rather than a beautiful experience. It’s about some things like the bad roads, the BMC, the high tide timings and yes the local trains.

I remember that as a child we would wait for the monsoons. We would want to get wet in the rain, make paper boats and put them in the puddles, have bhajiyas, etc.. There was that excitement of spotting a rainbow also.

But since the past 5 years the monsoons kid of brings all the kind of negative feelings with it. People are getting scared of the water. One doesn’t want to go out fearing that they either might get stuck somewhere or getting sick after getting wet. People are getting less and less immune health wise so they don’t want to go out. They are scared of eating out also same reason. There is one more reason also people don’t go out. I guess the various government organizations are responsible quite a lot about the scares of people. The water is contaminated, the roads are bad, and the gutters are not cleaned on time.

But I sometimes wonder whether the cleanliness of the city is only in the hands of the BMC. I think that we as citizen are equally to blame. We keep throwing things on the roads. Well I can’t say that all of us are like that but the thing is that there is a very negligible amount of us who don’t litter.

The other thing which has become very popular point of conversation is the high tide timings. Everyday of the monsoon there will be a new tide time and life seems to revolve around that time. It is said that if the is very heavy rain when there is a high tide, and then we are in for very big problems. The thing is that that’s when flooding will happen.

Personally I love the monsoons they give us a cool weather after the hot summer and it also gives us water. Everything gets cleaned and trees look more green.

What kind of change is this?

I think that India as a country has advanced a lot. I have seen a remarkable change in quite an avenue. I have witnessed a lot of the change in my short life so far. It makes me wonder what next is going to happen. I am very proud of the modernization of things in my country.

I remember we didn’t have cable as kids. We had only two channels Doordarshan national and doordarshan metro. We called them DD1 and DD2. They had interesting programmes. Also we had radio in which there was only MW and SW. Those were fun to listen to. Best was the SW frequency there were so many different sounds in the same channel it was very difficult to understand what was being said or sung.

Later STAR TV started. STAR was an abbreviation; Satellite Television Asian Region was its full form. That was a welcome break as DD was all Hindi and Marathi, so STAR TV was English. All nice programmes there. Then came MTv so we very extra happy as we could listen to English music. Later of course there was a flood of channels like Zee TV, STAR WORLD etc. At the same time there were a lot of audio cassettes of movies, bands, musicians etc. which one could buy and listen to.

After that came the computer. That was like a Pandora’s Box. WOW its like never ending source of activity in every field. It still keeps bringing out different surprises. Along with that there was a start of better looking television sets and video sets. Then there was a lull in things for some time. Then came more TV channels for which I think cable was responsible.

Sometime after that we had CDs and CD players. Also FM radio had started by then. DVDs also started coming in. Our cinemas also improved in their quality. Dolby sound was a big thing. Multiplexes also came in.

And the list is endless with laptops, notebooks, ipods, iphones, fancy mobiles, and God knows what.

But with so much improvement in technology and science does it change a person’s mentality? Terrorist activities, wars, riots, crimes, murders, rapes, robberies etc.. The same technology which has helped in making lives so much easier has also been used to make life hell for you.

The same computer which has helped us with a lot of things are now being hacked into and meddled around with , credit cards which help us not carry cash around are also being made into fakes and used to fleece the poor card holder. The terrorist have been using technology for their attacks as well. I dont want to go into detail I guess you know. Kids are sing mobile phones for wrong things like making MMS clips of fellow students and passing the clips around.

My question is are we ready for so much change? Are we responsible enough to use technology?