25 June 2008 

"Maximum city - Bombay lost & found" by Suketu Mehta


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(...) The western branch of the train terminates in beauty, the eastern branch in horror. On the Curchgate train, past Charni Road station as it sees the sea, past the gymkhanas - Islam, Catholic, Hindu, Parsi - as the shacks fade away, Bombay becomes a different city, an earlier city, a beautiful city. All of a sudden there is the blue sky and the clear water of Marine Drive, and everybody looks towards the bay and starts breathing. The eastern branch, the Harbour line, towards its ends passes slowly through peoples´s bedrooms: in streches the shacks of the poor are less than a meter away from the tracks. They can roll out of bed into the path of the train. Their little children come out and go wandering over the tracks. Train kill more than a thousand dwellers a year. Others, who are in the trains are killed by electricity poles placed too closed to the tracks as they hang on to the train from the outside by the windows. One such poles kills about ten commuters a month as the trains comes rushing around a curve. (...)

24 June 2008 

Cambridge (February-May 2008)




02 June 2008 

Vienna