ENROUTE TV   ENROUTE FM   MEDIA KIT   AIR CANADA   LINKS   WRITERS'   GUIDELINES	LONDON vs MUMBAI Text: SHAWN BLORE Illustration: NORMAND COUSINEAU 1. Soft Drink/Beer Ratio A Fuller’s London Pride bitter – room temperature, thank you luv – costs £1.75, several pence more than a bottle of R Whites Lemonade. Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) must be the only city where a store needs a licence to sell beer and you need a licence to buy it. Fortunately, most ignore this law when laying down 20 rupees for a bottle of Kingfisher. A similar-size bottle of Thums Up soda costs only eight rupees. In a perfect world, 1:1 or a score of 100; anything lower is sobering. London 33.3 Mumbai 40 FORMULA > 2. Carbohydrate Comparison Londoners claim The Sandwich (see "Earl of – inventor"). Common fillings include bacon fat, Marmite, margarine, Spam, eggs, jam, Spam-eggs-and-jam… Congealed fat aside, fat content per slice of bread is a minuscule one gram. The Mumbai pakora is made from vegetables coated with gram flour batter and deep fried. Quality is high at 85, but so is fat content at 4 g/serving. Pakoras come in seven varieties. A Parisian croissant is a baseline 100; other carbs must rise to the challenge. London 98 Mumbai 88 FORMULA > 3. Babe and Hunk Index In London, babes showed up at a respectable 28 per 100 pedestrians, while hunks were half as common. Mumbai’s babes are bablier thanks to Bollywood, renowned as a centre for film production. (London is renowned as the land of crooked teeth.) The babe count (30) was tremendous; hunks were half as common. Clearly, in their long years in the Empire together, Indian and British males learned much from each other, not all of it good. Summed average of stylish head turners in a crowd of 100. London 42 Mumbai 45 FORMULA > 4. Street Life Indicator Both cities scored perfectly. London’s Oxford Street (W1) yielded hot caramel nuts, Happy Birthday pants, Margaret Thatcher handbags, The Big Issue (which homeless vendors sell for £1), sidewalk Old Masters in chalk and a woman who thought she was a chicken. Mumbai’s Linking Road yielded delicacies like dosas and idlis, salwar kameez ensembles, mehndi and tattoos, newsstands, second-hand books and poor families begging on the streets. Percentage of goods and attractions available on a busy street or square. London 100 Mumbai 100 FORMULA > 5. Public Order Index Londoners show an endearing propensity to put their feet where they don’t belong, with a jaywalking reading of 25.75. And traffic suffers for it: A 2-km cab ride from Marylebone High Street to Paddington Station took 10 minutes (5 minutes/km). Mumbaikars show a near equal disrespect for the traffic light, with a jaywalk rating of 22.75 and traffic that’s even worse. A 4-km trip from Churchgate to Malabar Hill took a horrific 25 minutes (6.25 minutes/km). Average number of jaywalkers in a crowd of 200 people (low score, low fun factor). London 20.8 Mumbai 16.5 FORMULA > Conclusion Ruled and ruler grow together, ’tis said. Though the Empire vanished long ago, London came out on top – but only by a nose hair. London     294.1 Mumbai     289.5 ----- STANDINGS: Rio 383.3 Rome 380.3 Paris 353.5 Mexico 346.1 Amsterdam 343.2 Buenos Aires 331.8 Zurich 325.8 Berlin 325.3 London 294.1 Mumbai 289.5 San Francisco 283.8 Tokyo 283.8 Hong Kong 281.5 Moscow 277.9 Shanghai 259.2 New York 255.1 Toronto 249.1 Washington 242.0 Montréal 233.9 Los Angeles 220.6 Vancouver 213.1 Chicago 197.1 Next Match : St. Petersburg vs. Havana – exclusively at enroutemag.com in December 2004. Watch for a Civilization Index finale in January 2005. [ ] St. Petersburg vs Havana Rome vs Buenos Aires Washington vs Moscow Mexico vs Tokyo London vs Mumbai Chicago vs Berlin San Francisco vs Shanghai Toronto vs Zurich Hong Kong vs Vancouver Montreal vs Amsterdam New York vs Paris Los Angeles vs Rio de Janeiro STANDINGS Top   |   Home
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