PUMBAI

hah..i dunno how to spell the name of my city. or..err i actually dunno how to spell maharshtra's capital. or..just that my English has gone for toss. but I have coined this new term. Pumbai is the combination of Pune and Mumbai. i know that might sound boring..gimmme a break or yikes. but that's the kind of feeling i have slowly started getting after analyzing the city more and more
let me make it very very clear in the beginning that I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO AFFECTION/SOFT CORNER for mumbai, let alone love.i kinda dislike or even loathe that city to certain extent. there is nothing, nothing in mumbai that i like except two things.
1. the excellent public transport. mumbai survives only coz of that. best and the locals!
2. and the extremes you get in Mumbai. you can find an arbit stall outside andheri station where you get ANYTHING in the world in 20 rs. and you find the places which are well beyond your reach, who don't talk less than some thousands. but yeah, there is variety! there really is.
but apart from that, i just don't like the city. i am not at all fashion-bothered, i hate the humid weather, i dislike the condition of beaches in mumbai, and i just loathe the no of people live there, and that too in pitiable conditions. And i see my beloved Pune getting more and more like mumbai everyday, and in all bad senses.
i would have loved to have an excellent public transport in pune. that solves half of pune's traffic problems. but sadly we are not lucky enuf to get it. and what do we have of mumbai?

1. the sheer No of people: i know pune is expanding hugely. and in saccharine terms, it is expanding, and growing etc , in bitter words its just being like this obese kid who just becomes rotund and looses the shape and the finer characteristics. there are around 40 lac people staying in pune. and i dun see any chance of stopping this growth coz pune has no geographical limitations. Mumbai ENDS at certain point. the sea starts. pune doesn't end like that. it will expand expand and expand more. morphing into a shapeless city. or probably being amorphous.  People are probably tired of going to mumbai, and think it is better to stay in pne, comparatively slightly cheaper cost of living, good std of living, good for education, will get good jobs, safe city, and good weather. what more do you want?
2. the mixed bag of ethnicity, race, languages and others: mumbai is a BHEL. or may be tossed salad. who owns Mumbai rightfully is a  extremely controversial question. but whatever it is, it is no more a  Marathi city. it has lost hat image since loooooooooooooong. everybody owns mumbai and mumbai belongs to all. Pune was not like that. Pune was still a very orthodox and nice little cozy type of city. jobs came, so came people.  IT boomed and so came many many more people. educational hub it was called. and under the pretext of education, may many others come here!  and of course, the human migration never happens in vacuum. Man moves with his language and all his other cultural belongings. i am a humanity student and i feel this is a very interesting subject. but on practical day o day basis, i still has that layman in me who feel lost in his own city when he sees this bhel happening. the language of classes was Marathi. it is no more like that. English and Hindi came in. The celebration of festivals was done in more of non maharashtrian ways. The flavor of the language changed. the typical behavioral traits that  a marathi manoos would have, changed. the sharp, on your face marathiness is lost and there is this all glossy, colorful and artificial world around you that is increasing.
3. The no of slums is increasing. and thanks to our careless government, which fails to take strong decisions, the no is gonna increase everyday. and just as Mumbai airport is like covered with slums around, pune's parvati will look covered with slums till its neck. And i know rift between the poor and the rich is increasing.

The consciousness about fashion increased. the tendency to flaunt your wealth increased. the flashing of your Ray bans, D&Gs, versaces and jimmy choos increased. The appearances of half-clad women on streets increased.the cases of rash driving increased.
the flavor of night life changed. the page 3 parties increased.
The crime rate increased. the loooong hours of wait in traffic jams increased.
slowly it is considered equal to a sin if you put your kids into a Marathi medium school. only the driver's and the maid servants kids go there you know.
just everything. things like these and many many many more.

i don't wanna put Mumbai is a bad light.but i see these things happening around me. and if Pune is going the Mumbai way, and mumbai the newyork way, Pune will soon be headed towards the new york way. we anyways have the IT guys here, and we soon will have enough no of broken family ties.

i know these things are inevitable. they are not really in anybody's hands. but yeah, the reason why it bothers me so much is that i hate it when cities lose their soul. Pune is slowly losing its soul. so did Berlin after the second world war, and so is Singapore without a soul. Mumbai has lost most of it. and so will pune in the nearer future. I hate it but i know i cant control it. i am helpless. :(  i just don't want to wake up one fine morning and discover that all the cities worldwide have lost their soul so much that i cant make out which city is which and then its really a 'global village'. . And hence i wont be surprised to find that its not just Pumbai, but probably Puneyork! wow!