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Review of Executive Lounges at New Delhi Railway Station (NDLS)

During my recent trip to Uttarakhand , I was faced with a problem I had never encountered before. We were passing through Delhi, but we had hardly any time in the city. On earlier visits when I have had to change trains/flights at Delhi, I have always arrived in the morning and left again at night, visiting relatives in between. This time, I was arriving in the city at night, and leaving again early in the morning. There was hardly any time to visit people. I would only have a couple of hours with them before I’d have to leave again. For the first time, we considered booking a hotel, but there again, we were hesitant about the actual hotels, the costs involved, and the logistics of getting from the airport to the railway station and then back again from the station to the airport.  That’s when we remembered reading something about a corporate-managed lounge at Delhi station. We soon figured out that we could book online and pay by the hour. Besides, we also learnt that there wasn’t ju
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Snapshots from Mumbai - Salt And the City

Vast tracts of land cut up into squares - each filled with water... and sometimes, a white mound by the side.... These are the salt pans which line the highways leading into the city of Mumbai.....




At one time, this tiny island was only inhabited by fishermen, who caught the fish, which were then plentiful, made salt from the same water that gave them the fish, and stored the fish with the salt. They made their living from the sea, and considered it their God. That time has long gone. Mumbai evolved from a sleepy fishing island to the throbbing port city of the British, to the commercial capital of India. 


These salt pans may not produce the bulk of the salt eaten by the country, but they still have their use. These salt pans, and the mangroves lining them are what keep our island afloat. Over the years, we have occupied land which had lain wild for centuries, reclaimed land from the sea, and even cut mangroves and filled in these salt pans, to build houses for our ever growing population. I wonder how much more the island can tolerate before finally allowing itself to be submerged into the sea once and for all. 

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Location: Eastern Express Highway, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Comments

  1. NeerajMay 13, 2013 at 7:34 AM

    The development in Mumbai (and India, in general) is highly unsustainable. I fear what will happen to Mumbai once sea level rises... no more Marine Drive. Can you imagine?

    ReplyDelete
  2. SudhageeMay 28, 2013 at 4:19 PM

    The controversy and politicking over the salt pan lands is one more in the innumerable controversies surrounding the city. The only losers are the people who live off this land.

    ReplyDelete

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