Last month has been one roller-coaster ride. It has been the best one-month- vacation-ever starting with finishing up my masters defense, meeting up close undergraduate friends, visiting grandparents after what 4 years ? , lounging around in the house, growing fat and listening to my new cadbury-ipod-nano. In the last one month, i have experienced varied lifestyles ranging from partying in clubs to being totally off-technology for a while. From the busy life of a big city to a simple living in a village. From flying in airlines to sitting on the wooden planks in rickshaws and to standing in jam-packed best buses. The one thing that strikes me through this translation from a big city-small city-village is that as the size of the city goes down, no doubt the conveniences that come with it go down too, but at the same time the hospitality of people goes up to make up for the inconveniences..
My stay in India perceived a lot of changes in terms of the prices, facilities, infrastructure , conveniences , political scenario etc, and yes, there was not any reverse culture shock. i guess i am too indian for that. The place is thronging with malls. Not a day has passed in bombay without visiting the ubiquitous malls. Then the best buses have television sets playing dhinchak songs which made the cumbersome travel less dreary. Traffic could not get any worse.Bribing and jugaad still work in India.Ads of i-pill with the tag line, no abortion, prop up everywhere. Supreme court has given its sanction to Delhi court's verdict of decriminalizing homosexuality. UPA Congress has done a good job forming its panel. There is Nandan Nilekani's unique id project coming forth and then there is Mr.Kapil Sibal as the HRD minister who is adamnant on bringing in some reforms in the educational sector. There is Shashi Tharoor whose tweets update everyone on the red tape in the parliament's proceeding. But at the same time there are politicians who spend two crores on immortalizing themselves by implanting their statues. And 400 crores are spent on building a bridge. Even though Bandra-Worli sea link is a class apart, infrastructral achievement but it has an investment of 400 crores and a delay of some 4-6 years in its construction which is a big sham.
Amidst so many changes,it felt nice to be in the familiar comfort zone of friends who had not changed much...
