Inside the mind and heart of Venkatesh Sridhar

We in India are always praying to God for rains, rains and more rains but sometimes God grants us more than what we asked for! Tuesday to Thursday Mumbai was raining. On Tuesday the rain was pouring heavily and one of my friends mentioned it to me on MSN that it is raining like crazy and I replied yeah Mumbai is missing me!!! But now I realise how partially wrong I was …

There are many people who are dead and my deepest condolences are with their families.

It was so heavy that Dad got stuck in VT and somehow managed to reach home, trust my dad to be innovative in such situations. Sandy got stuck in his office from Tuesday and he returned today morning. Amresh was cheerfully taking pics of the situation which I am attaching. Aarthi’s dad was stuck in the car for close to 22 hours. He and his colleagues had to get out of the car and swim towards the hotel and they did finally managed to reach the hotel.

This is the view from Amresh’s house….. you will see how it changed soon…

This is the same view after some time … see the difference??

I tried reaching my dad and my friends and surprisingly dad’s MTNL worked whereas my other friends much touted service providers like Orange, Airtel, BPL and Reliance conked off.

I was online and Arun Anand logged in and he asked me to check out his blog to find out the latest. While going through his post on the rains, I (and even you) will find out the heart rendering effort that people from NMIMS put in to help those stranded school kids. My respect has grown for these guys they will surely become good managers because you need to be sensibly sensitive and also a good manager is one who can steer the ship when there is a storm and this was a storm like situation and these guys did a good job and the way they were organized and split into teams looking after various things shows that these guys aint less than others.These guys deserve an award for this, is the NMIMS admin reading this?

I read on The Times of India that there were people who INVITED people who were passing by, absolute strangers into their house and use their toilets,etc. There were local Gujju and Marwari community which pooled in resources and kept dishing out vada pav’s for free to passer by’s. Who says Mumbai does not have a heart we have one BIG heart.

I received a mail from Firoz Amir about the rains and he was pissed that the western media did not find the issue big enough to report. I am also pissed we should recirpocate by not showing what the f@@@ goes on back in the US and the UK. If BBC and CNN think that this aint a big issue to cover then they have their priorites wrong. But on hindsight there are few things that go unreported in the Indian newspapers about stuff that happen in many places that are covered by the local newspapers here in Dubai. So, I guess what goes round comes round. But the local newspapers did cover the thing in detail here so I guess these are the most responsible media companies.

While I was writing this down I came across this blog by Khyati Danani about how Mumbai does not limp back to normalcy but it simply jumps back to life

Here I would like to add that again the BMC proved that it cannot be trusted in times of emergency. Where is the goddamm Disaster Management Cell that was supposed to have been formed when the Latur earthquake stuck in 1993. Another reason why the politicans asses should be kicked. Take their beloved chair and shove it up their a$$.

Mumbai as usual was like a city that had to sustain on it’s own. The apathy of the Central Govt. towards Mumbai was clearly visible as they have not yet come up with any specific plans on how to do the reconstruction and rehabilitation work. I think it’s high time that Mumbai gets its dues. I mean Mumbai alone, singularly gives 65% of India’s total taxes ( Personal + Corporate + Indirect ) and we have not been given a status that befits Mumbai as the financial capital of India. So much for Chidambaram talking about how he wants to make Mumbai, one of the major financial centers of the world. May I ask you Mr. Finance Minister how do you intend to do that, when the infrastructure is so bad? Do not make promises and claims you can NEVER keep.

I would love to see the people’s reaction to the Airtel and Hutch/Orange ads touting about their networks. Hutch/Orange had a cute dog and a cute boy both inseparable where the dog was supposed to be the network. I guess the dog drowned in the water. Airtel touts saying that their network is the best. So much for their superiority. Good old MTNL Cell network was the only one which was functioning. Their landlines were screwed but atleast the cells worked. Those people who bashed MTNL saying that my Orange/BPL/Airtel/Reliance is better have to eat their words.

I may be physically in Dubai but my mind and heart is in Mumbai. I wish I was there would have gone out to help those who are affected. I think it was not my destiny to be there. God’s will is the ultimate will, no one or nothing can be done. God Bless Mumbai and India and the World ( together at the same time and not in that order )