ChinmayC Blog

Called the Lifeline of the Greater Mumbai region, the Mumbai Suburban Railway has so far only around a hundred AC trains —divided between its Western and Central lines with not a single rake available for the Harbor line at the moment. The first AC Mumbai local train was brought into service in 2017 by the Western Railway line while the Central Railway line had to wait till 2020 for its first AC rakes. Then the Pandemic delayed all proposals for more and more AC rakes and only this year there was some news of more than 200 rakes to be inducted. There’d been    suggestions that all the local train services be made airconditioned while a few leaders opposed this by saying only the regular services needed to be increased substantially. The price difference is obviously a factor here, for the fares for the AC trains are nearly six or seven times more than the regular fares as opposed to the contention of the Railways that the AC fares are more or less equal to that of the non...

A Hero adoration, fascination and love for whom never left my heart—from my childhood days to the present day. Yes, the Hero for me! Embodiment of a person I could trust and depend upon since my tenderest years! Let it be just a screen person or an image only, he lived in my heart like the dearest member of the family! Yes, he's been family, also like a father figure, like my own father! A protector, the He-Man who destroys evil with his bare hands; an umbrella that covers the weak or the vulnerable at every dark corner; and the Hero who conquers all obstacles and hurdles with smiling ease! Dharmendra ! The name itself is a legacy and the countless images that follow and immerse the legacy in colorful vastness! My heart housed in an ageing frame now is still immersed in the legacy! What a hero Dharmendra (1935--2025) has been! Almost hero-worshiped him @5 and still adoring him @65, and mourning his loss today with an inconsolable heart! Kudos for one of the greatest movie heroes o...

His house was less than hundred meters from ours and in the same lane, that is to say, in the immediate neighborhood, and therefore, he could pass as one of our neighbours in the strictest sense. However, our relations with him hadn’t been as good neighbours, it was a doctor-patient relationship . Per our information he rented this flat for his practice while his family lived in the parental house in a nearby locality. Unless in an emergency, he went back to his family every night. At times, his wife and son came over to live with him. The flat is a one-bedroom affair: a small lobby greets you in from the main door and as you turn to your right to enter his little chamber you find straight ahead the kitchen slab which looks hardly ever used staring at you while the room on your left you’re sure is the bedroom; as you pass the door of the chamber you find a few chairs and a table propped up against the wall on your right and in front is the interior of the room containing the doctor’s p...

Rohit Sharma is among the most aggressive yet elegant, correct and stylish, not to be called pinch hitters, openers of Indian Cricket , starting with Farokh Engineer (mostly in Test Cricket those days except for the World Cup-1975), on to Krishnamachari Srikkanth ,  Sachin Tendulkar , Sourav Ganguly , Ajay Jadeja , Virender Sehwag , Gautam Gambhir and concluding with Yashasvi Jaiswal . They’ve always been a delight to watch and the early fall of their wickets cast a doom for cricket fans invariably, often for the team too. Rohit Sharma has excelled in the limited overs format (making his debut in T20I and in ODI in 2007) with quite a few world records for most runs in T20I, most sixes in international cricket, most double hundreds (3) in ODIs ( One Day Internationals ), most centuries (7) in Cricket World Cups , most centuries (5) in a single World Cup for which he won the ICC Men’s ODI Cricketer of the Year in 2019 and the individual record of the highest 264 runs in ODI cri...

The Department of Posts has recently announced changes in its Inland Speed Post services and tariff, adding new features to move ahead with the changing times. The revised tariff will be effective from 1st October 2025. The tariff of Inland Speed Post was last revised in October 2012. Under the rationally revised tariff structure the new rates are not substantially but only marginally higher, taking into account the host of safe, fast and smarter new features added. Additionally, to enhance accessibility of Speed Post services for students, a 10% discount on Speed Post tariff has been introduced.  Besides, a special discount of 5% discount has been introduced for new bulk customers.  In order to further strengthen its position as the preferred delivery service in the country, it has now been upgraded with the following new features aimed at enhancing reliability, security, and customer convenience: ● OTP-based secure delivery ● Online payment facility ● SMS-based deliv...

  The fair bright-faced boy with curly black hair, the sweet smile that never ceases to linger on his face and his eyes, his carefree ways and a great sense of humour, his brutal honesty and equally brutally outspoken, and yet the simplicity of his magnetic personality is overwhelming. These are the images that come to my mind whenever I think of him or his songs; even more now when his sudden untimely tragic accidental demise has shattered millions and millions across Assam , across India and across the world. These images are of the late 90s and early 2000s (unfortunately, I don’t have personal photographs as personal cameras or mobiles were conspicuously absent those days.). He is Zubeen Garg . He has been  a living legend of Assam, second only to Bhupen Hazarika , till destiny took him away just when the people of Assam have started celebrating the birth centenary of Sudhakantha Bhupen Hazarika. Zubeen, possibly the greatest singer-artiste ever produced in Assam, in terms...

I seem to enjoy a special relationship with the trains of the Indian Railways, for most of my train journeys always yield a memorable result—at times very amusing and at times dearly painful. Over the decades I must’ve spent quite a few sleepless nights on various railway station platforms thanks to the delayed schedules or freak/serious mishaps on various tracks or my missing a train or the connecting trains, not to mention other sleepless nights I spent on board looking to get a reservation on the way that never came my way! I meet various interesting people on most of the journeys that make my journeys delightful or rather irritating depending on their quality, and most importantly most of those precious guys end up becoming my characters in my short or mini stories (most of which you can find in my various published collections of short stories. A few remain here too!)! Now, I invite you on board a train for a brief journey I undertook recently which actually doesn’t qualify fo...