Rise in mercury, brings work to a standstill

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">MUMBAI: It''s very hot outside. No, this is not a catchline of any advertisement or radio jingle. I am just making a plain statement about the weather. Mercury is soaring everywhere, making people restless. In many places of Maharashtra, including Pune, Nagpur and of course Mumbai the temperatures are at their peak.But they still haven’t broken previous records and are just little short of them.<br /><br />The rising mercury has almost brought to standstill any outside activity during noon. People are preferring to stay inside. But Mumbai is once again exception to this general trend elsewhere. Number of people on the streets around noon may have reduced to some extent, but there is no drastic cut. May be the humid weather pattern of Mumbai allows people to remain outside compared to other places with dry weather, which is more risky for human body. These are the happy days for Ice Cream parlours and roadside <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Sharbatwallas</span>, who are making a brisk business.<br /><br />Cloudy skies in the mornings made Mumbaikars'' life miserable for about a week, but it also brought some relief with a prospect of early monsoon. However, that turned out to be a wrong signal, as gathering of clouds was the result of cyclone in Andhra Pradesh and not indicating arrival of early monsoon.<br /><br />Whether the sky is cloudy or not, a real Mumbaikar starts waiting eagerly for the monsoon approximately from the third week of May and starts preparing to face the monsoon fury, which normally begins in the second week of June. Arrival of timely rains brings two fold relief for a Mumbaikar, one from the hot temperature and another from the prospect of water shortage. <br /><br />Of course, to get respite from the worry of water shortage he has to wait and watch for almost two months, nearly till the end of August. Even the Hydraulic Engineer (HE) of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), who sits in a hot seat during this period, is also waiting for that ''D'' day. As the legend goes in the civic circles for last several years, Hydraulic Engineer distributes sweets in the department when the news of overflowing of the largest lake is conveyed to him. No wonder, the HE does that. To supply adequate water to over 10 million people is a challenge the HE has to face and his resources purely depend on nature. So, only if the rains are good and if the lakes supplying water to the city start overflowing by August end, then the next year is peaceful for the HE. <br /><br />As we are talking about the heat in the weather, it is worth mentioning here the heat that generated in the Arthur Road jail by a woman sitting in a hot seat of a jailer. Jail Superintendent Swati Sathe, risking her life, has tightened all loose nooks in the jail making the Chota Rajan gang members inside the cells feel ''suffocated''. Her no nonsense attitude and strictly adhering to the jail rules has troubled them so much that they even shot at her colleague and threatened her. But, she refused to budge even an inch and continuing with her crusade.<br /><br />Such type of strict officers are very rare to find, like the monsoon which is becoming scare every passing year. As we need good monsoon to overcome water shortage, we need many more Sathes, Bedis and Sheshans to overcome the problem of non-implementation of law and rules, giving rise to the ''<span style="" font-style:="" italic="">goonda raj</span>''.<br /></div> </div>