Umbrellas out in luxury flat

For over a year now, come rain or sunshine, the Diwans haven’t been able to do without an umbrella — inside their house.

They don’t live in a tarpaulin-topped Dharavi shanty but in Colaba. The trouble is their upscale address has a lavatory that makes them feel they are having a shower.

The three lavatories in the family’s eighth-floor home in Elegant Apartments have had water seeping through, forcing the members to carry an umbrella each time they step in for their daily ablutions.

The culprit, they have alleged, is the owner of the flat above theirs, who has carried out repairs that dislocated the sanitary pipes and plumbing lines in the building.

The irony is that Sudhir Diwan has designed many gleaming steel-and-glass edifices in the Bandra-Kurla complex, Mumbai’s financial nerve-centre. But the architect is helpless in fixing an ordinary problem in his own house.

The BMC has asked Pahlaj Hemdev, the jeweller who carried out the vexatious repairs, to fix the problem. The dispute is in court. Till then, over to umbrellas.

Pre-board papers in Urdu

Tamil Nadu has given school students the choice to write their exams in Urdu.

The move, cleared by the government earlier this month, is part of the recent string of measures initiated by the DMK regime for the benefit of minorities. It recently passed an ordinance granting reservation to Muslims and Christians in educational institutions and government jobs.

The Urdu order will come into force from December but it will initially be enforced only for Class VIII students of government schools who appear in public exams. Now, the papers can be answered only in Tamil and English.

Even the papers in math, science and social studies, written in either of the two languages, will be answered in Urdu. Those who want to exercise the option must register with the directorate of school education.

At the wheel, skip driving

Metro drivers in the capital might soon turn their gaze away from tracks and focus on passengers and doors.

The corporation has given a contract to the Germany-based Bombardier Transportation for the design, manufacture and installation of Cityflo 350, its automatic train control and signalling system, for a 37-km stretch.

The new system, which drives the train automatically, allows the driver to only supervise passenger flow, opening and closing of doors, and giving departure permissions.

Cityflo, which has already been installed on mass transit lines in several countries, including Germany, Singapore, the UK and the US, are primarily designed for applications in tube networks where limited action is required from the train driver.

“The contract will allow Bombardier to showcase, for the first time in India, some of its leading-edge signalling technologies. These include automatic train protection and automatic operation,” said an official of Bombardier Transportation.

Eye on terror

The terror scanner has suddenly closed in on Vellore, the Tamil Nadu town more famous elsewhere in the country for its Christian Medical College.

The increased vigil has been prompted by the recent spate of small-town attacks and the arrest of the sister of a Hyderabad blast suspect who studied in a local college.

The town draws countless patients, and authorities fear terror groups might use the anonymity of the crowd to plot attacks. Closed-circuit TVs and sniffer dogs are common at Katpadi station, the nearest rail-head.

Delhi: The United Nations presents eight millennium development goals through the works of artists, craftsmen and sculptors at Dilli Haat. Crafting the Future has been planned by the Dastakari Haat Samiti for the UN in India. The venue is opposite the INA market. Time: 10.30am to 10pm.