Headline September 07, 2017/ ''' KARACHI -*MUMBAI*- KRAMPUS '''

''' KARACHI -*MUMBAI*- 

KRAMPUS '''

WERE ALMIGHTY GOD -ever to grant me a *Governing Angel's* status, even for a day, and then allows me to conduct a small experiment

All I would do, would be very simple : I would help the entire World Get its Cities Right?. Very few countries in the world have got their cities right. I hope and will honor and name them in future research.

KARACHI - PAKISTAN : For well over a decade, I had the great honor to reside in and watch and learn Karachi, the rain, the floods, the sink, the stink, the submerge, the rise, and the rinse, the weep, the sufferings, and then the indifference...... 

Karachi, Proud Pakistan's straight 60% value, is a total disaster. Coping with floods, rains, and monsoons, and survival. and poverty, and misery, that is not even one-tenth, the battle.

The waters and disasters come and recede in Karachi, and so, inevitably the Sindh Government's interest. Rumi? Haider? Nusrat? Hammad? Masour? Nisar? Fawzi?..............

Even at this very moment, this very moment, the monsoons and rains have left behind huge mountain of wreckage, some of it invisible. 

In particular, Karachites have just no idea how much poison has been released by chemicals, blocked sewage pipes, rubbish-decay-mix, and then fresh new viruses getting incubated.

Oh, and if you trust the current administration to handle the aftermath right, you are in for a surprise.

Karachi, over all these many years, that I have lived there and observed, is an epic disaster brought on in large part, by bad policy and hopeless execution. 

As many great people have pointed out, what makes Karachi so vulnerable to flooding and sufferings, is unregulated development, and over population, and poor governance. 

Just Yesterday, Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah expressed his *extreme displeasure*, and unending sadness, with the contingency planning at the Municipal bodies, Karachi Water Sewage Board and ..............

In the meanwhile, let me get, Zilli, to ensure that this operational research is shared with all the relevant authorities in Karachi and in Mumbai.

In the years ahead, the World Students Society will be watching very carefully and caringly, how the operations unfold in Karachi and Mumbai in context of timely and reasonable solutions.

MUMBAI -INDIA : For many of the poor in the city, each year contains just two seasons : the demolition season and the rain.

Every winter, when Mumbai is dry, the police come with wrecking crews and rip-down countless slum homes.

And every summer, when the monsoon hits, many of these same areas get flooded. Filthy water, swirling with oil stains, rushes into houses and sweeps away the few possessions leaving behind plastic bottles, coconut husks, rocks, sticks and bundles of rags.

This last week, especially heavy storm lashed Mumbai. 

The Dhurves, a family of four that lives in a plastic-roofed shelter sequestered between an underpass and a set of railroad tracks, raced to highway median high median -high ground- where they spent the night watching their home get swamped for the umpteenth time.

''My life will go away fine,'' Babli Dhurve said on that Wednesday as she sat on an old mattress, staring at her neighbors scooping up storm muck. ''But what about my children.''

HERE in India's financial capital, epic floods and sufferings are a part of the landscape. This megacity of 18 million sits on a peninsula surrounded by the sea. Many of its sewers and drains were built more than 80 years ago-

When Mumbai was a small fraction of its current size. In 2005, in the same area, more than 1,000 people died during the monsoon season.

The rains this last week were bad -estimated more than 10 inches in 12 hours -but nowhere near the deluge of 2005. 

The authorities said at least five people died, including one doctor walking home from work who was sucked down an open manhole.

As is often the case when real disaster strikes, people seem to band together. As light rain fell, two men zoomed across a bridge on a small motorcycle, the passenger wearing a yellow plastic pants, apparently from one set they had divided into two.

In the Dhurve family's neighborhood, many women stepped out of their homes to help clean, wearing gowns in oranges, pinks and sapphire blues -the bright colors on almost cruel contrast the drab surroundings they inhabit,

Their houses are plastic lean-tos, dozens in a row, built on a dirty sidewalk. ''We don't even have a dream of where we would go,'' said Suraj Dhurve, the father.

Mr. Dhurve is a dishwasher, as are many of the neighbors. The neighborhood is, in essence, a dishwasher's colony, although people here phrase it a little differently, saying they work in the catering business.

A new monorail runs above the road. Fancy cars swoosh past. But for this group of about 50 interconnected families, Mumbai's opulence and opportunities seem out of reach.

Most of the adults are illiterate. Families six survive on $10 a week Their homes are considered illegal, and when the weather is good, the police and demolition crews show up.

Nobody in the colony that Wednesday was talking about the flooding half a world away in Houston, or even seemed aware of it. But the comparison has not escaped Indian intellectuals, including those in the news business.

''INDIA'S HOUSTON'' was the headline one news site used for a Mumbai flood story. Another paper ran side-by-side photos of the of the floods in each place.

After news agency reported that a curfew had been imposed in Huston to stop looting, many Indians posted proud Twitter messages saying nothing of the sort was happening in Mumbai, even in the poorest parts.

''Here in Mumbai.'' wrote Anand Mahindra, a well known executive, ''a friend stuck in a car for 5 hours told me that the slum dwellers came out to serve stranded people tea & biscuits.''

Nobody was serving tea or biscuits in the Dhurve's family's neighborhood. At the same time, as the brooms scratched the pavement and people wrung out wet clothes, there was little complaining.

So, time enough for !WOW! and me, and the whole world to go back and re-watch this great American Horror-comedy movie/ 2015, Krampus. 

With respectful dedication to the Leaders, the great People, Students, Professors and Teachers of India and Pakistan and then the world. 

See Ya all on !WOW! -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW! -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Coping & Copying '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless