Life on the road

People in Mumbai, especially those living in the far flung suburbs of Borivali, Virar and Thane, Kalyan crib that they waste so much time commuting. But they can feel slightly better knowing that there are so many people living on the outskirts of Beijing and they take six hours to commute to work. Yes, six hours or more!

Beijing has become unaffordable for the majority of the people working there with average rents around 1.2 times higher than the average salaries earned. It holds the name for being the most expensive city in the world. Thus people are left with no option but to live in far flung places and go back and forth to Beijing.

These towns around Beijing are called as “sleeper towns” as people come there to their homes only to sleep. There is a bustling economy which now parallel to meet the needs of this sleeper town. People que up early in the dawn to get the bus to Beijing and to support their needs, bus terminals have food vendors and other needs while in the evening there are “unofficial” taxi drivers who get people home through car-pooling at much cheaper rates.

This is so much like most of Indians living in India, isn’t it?