"I am bored" is probably the most often used word in the year 2009. I was bored with
• not getting placed for long cause of the lousy recession
• having to sit in front of many employers who refused to pay well
• with news channels picking up all the silly topics to discuss about
• inconsequentially
• listening to Radio Jockeys claim each of their radio channels being the No.1 channel in Mumbai
• with people chronicling their entire life on twitter
• with trains getting more crowded
• with trains getting horribly crowded
• with my e-mail box getting filled with all the irrelevant job offers
• with people calling me to remind me of the various loans they can give me
• of not having much of consequential work to do
• of TV getting filled with garbage day in and day out
• of Bollywood stars and their stupid tantrums
• of our cricket team not winning very often
• of driving in over crowded streets
• not being able to go to my friends marriage due to some unforeseen events
• with my friends going to trips while I stay back for work
• with having to clean the utensils everyday after my parents to transferred to Delhi
• with endless discussion of how a goddarned mailer would look like
• with futile discussions of reaching a target of 1 crore a month from 1 crore per quarter
• with having to come to work while other just start for work
• with being back stabbed by our politicians every time you wan to trust them
• with ill judgment giving people taking critical calls
• with having to do things I wish I didn’t have to do
• of the nepotism
• of writing any more…
Thursday, December 24, 2009
My Delhi Trip
“Have you heard..blah blah blah blah” n this continued for 2 and a half hour constantly only taking break when one of them went to pee. My god I started my journey on the wrong seat with 2 constantly chattering women who couldn’t be stopped by anything less than the call of the nature. I’ll let that pass as a non spoiler but a major irritant in my start to the trip to Delhi from 6th Dec 09 to 13th Dec 09.
I was warned by my parents and again warned by my friend Tyagi that “It gets really chilled in Delhi get some warm clothings along” but when the captain of my flight declared the weather outside as 25 degree Celsius I thought is everyone kidding me 25 is jus 2 degrees short of what it is aamchi Mumbai, so started my stay in Delhi. As I got out of the airport I was hit by the chaos on the street caused by unruly drivers but that was not much considering I drive quiet a bit in Mumbai. I heard a lot about Delhi and what it is all about. How this place had arguments on every street corner or how people misguided you when asked for directions and more. I decided to check these things for myself and so I set out on a mission guised under the pretext of roaming the Delhi city….
My first day in Delhi was pretty much normal with only a visit to our family friends and then watching TV the whole evening only to go to a small event where children put up a small show with fancy dreaa & dancing & singing for the chief guest who blasted the inhabitants of the colony for absentism of most of the people of the colony. This by the way went on for 30 minutes witn the man repeating himself enough number of times that people actually wished they too were in the list of absentees. As this ranting got over we made way to the food filled garden. The food was good but this was not the best of Delhi that i had in my trip...
On the next day I went to Qutub Minaar, one place every person who visits Delhi for leisure visits so I thought I was not different and headed there in my car. The roads as such were crowded but only thing that bothered me was how people driving in the left most lane took a decision in a jiffy to go to the right side cutting a whole lot of drivers short of getting the biggest dent on their car. Then there were people who decided that “I own the road” and drove past you and cut your path without any kind of provocation on a Red light of a signal. And this I’d say continued through out my 7 day stay there.
Hearsay #1: Delhites drivers have no road sense. My verdict - True
I reached Qutub Minaar’s ticket counter where the ticketing handed over a person ahead of me a 3 Rs. 10 notes, half torn Rs. 5 note & 5 Re. 1 coins which when refused by the guy ahead of me the ticketing guy gave him a stern nonchalant look and said “aapke yehi bante hai,chalo abhi” translated it means “buzz off”. I tendered exact change to avoid any such situation myself. I forgot all bout this li’l incident as soon as I walked into the Qutub Minaar premises marveled by the beauty and the architectural genius of people of that time. Imagine this it is year 1192 where you had no fancy lifts or cranes or even trucks and the king says to you go build 234 feet high minaret. I am sure it was one hell of a job to get 5 different types of stones to make 5 different layers of the Minaar with some a dash of intricate design to make you want to kiss the sculptor hands. I pity those guys who made it but also am sure they are much smarter than me, who felt dizzy just looking up to see the Minar from close. Anyhow…
As I was walking through these gardens I noticed a hell lot o couples seated their having a gala time forgetting about the world around them and others who stared at the foreigners and slyly took their pics with their mobile phone cameras. This is my country men at their worst ill behaviour. May be not the worst but at least at their socially-tolerated-but-critically-spoken against behaviour. I still love my country but have my doubts about the people of India.
I drove in New Delhi in the parts where there are embassies staying and I could hardly concentrate on the road as the place is clean, beautiful & above all very well maintained. Then in the same part of Delhi I learnt of how damn difficult it is navigating with all the god darned circles. Every circle has 6 to unending number of exits and only a person with orientation classes of Delhi city can get to the right place at one shot driving in the city all alone. To explain how bad it is there let me illustrate with an example. You could reach a circle and have a particular road been pointed on both the side which is because the circle falls in middle of the passing road. At such tough point you have to decide whether you want to go to left side of Niti Road or right side Niti Road. Another thing the city is round so it’s a high possibility that roaming for ½ an hr on a VIP road (which is deserted for most part of the day) you realize that you have come to the same point you had lost your way from.ooof!! I tell this out of experience My parents & I were roaming in the city from 10.45 pm to 11.30 pm just going around in circles and because at night time on the VIP part of the city there is no one walking on the streets we could only find our way back by asking the police man at the Naka bandi for directions.
Hearsay #2: Delhi city is round and confusing – Very tiringly true.
One thing everyone talks good about Delhi is its food. I’ll try to list all the things that I heard are good in Delhi and got to have during my 1 week stay
Dahi Bhalla
Tikki chaat
Chowmein
Double egg roll
Chole bhature
Paneer items
Butter Chicken
Sheermaal
Kheer
Gajar ka Halwa
Lassi
Seek kabab
& some things that I ate at Karims but cant remember the name of.
And should say all of these things were yummy while some were yummy as hell and couldn’t stop my self from having one more of. These things are more or less a good amount of things that ‘You should have in Delhi’ list of things. I can assure you if you are a true foodie like me u'd come back home with excess weight like me.
Hearsay #3: Delhi food is good– True & can I add it’s not just good it is amazing and it is a lot to choose from.
One of the best times I hear to go to Delhi is when it is cool and that is between end of November & start of December because after that the cool become chilling cold till February. I happened to be there in times when the weather Gods played it cool for me though for a Mumbaiite that I am, I found the weather cold for sometime and then got used to it. Though one thing that I was taken aback was the time the sun sets. At bout 6 pm it is dark enough to 8 pm on a normal day. This accompanied with fog made it even worse. I would feel lazy the whole day and understood why Delhiites refused to work or postponed them when I spoke to them (that still leaves the rest of the years laziness unexplained but that could fill up some other blog post o mine). I slept for 1/2 hour bursts through out the day at any point of time that I was reading a book or watching TV coz and that made me feel like a Rank 1 lazy bum but what is one to do when the weather around is so good & when you are out to holiday.
Another thing that is famous throughout India during my visit to Delhi are the marriages. And I happen to be in the part of the country which knows how to splurge when celebrating. I happened to go to 4 events out of which 2 were marriages & 1 engagement and as usual I would directly go the best part of the marriage FOOD. The spread of food for all the four events was yummmm and always elaborate. The food always had starters like chat and sev etc followed by main course & at least 3 types of wow! sweets. These 3 categories were religious followed but the spread in all of these kept changing for good. Ya, one more thing about this food spread it always ended with coffee. Piping hot coffee on the buffet spread made me wonder as I am not quiet used to having coffee being served at the end of eating but I soon started enjoying it in the cool weather around. I later gathered that coffee is not just served during winter events but also through the summers as well. And I thought south Indians very true coffee lovers.
Sticking to the topic of food my MBA classmate & friend "Tyagi"Gaurav Tyagi took me out for a day of enjoying the food in Delhi. Before I met him I had had large glass of Lassi & Sev Puri to start my day with then I met him at Delhi University campus where he showed me around the place. I cant resist myself from saying that most of the gals in Delhi are brilliantly beautiful, especially in DU campus you see a lot of them together at one place which makes this place a certified 'Chick Hub' (Excuse my language). While showing me around the place Tyagi showed me all of the big colleges like FMS & Delhi school of Economics and I was really amazed at the vast expanse of space these colleges offered to their students. Every college had a beautiful building with a legacy of who's who of the Indian greats having studied there and of course the lawns which I felt I missed through my college life in Mumbai. Back to the topic of food I roamed on the back of Tyagi's bike around in Delhi and this bike ride gave me chills. Not that Tyagi rides rough but the cool weather at high speed make it chilling cold, especially during the evening time. We had Aloo Tikki, Dahi Bhalla, Veg Kakori Kabab & Rosogulla for lunch. The dinner happened to be something that I had been thinking of for really long time, my first visit to 'Karims'. At Karims I met Tyagi's non-veg eating expert friend Sohail as Non Veg is not the expertise of vegetarian Tyagi. Now at Karims I relied totally on Sohail to order and must say he did a fine job in that. I ate and ate and ate more till I was full after which we order for the sweet sheermall roti & kheer. We ended the day there, then began my finding way back home with great help from Tyagi & Sohail who I dropped till a metro and was guided to reach a point I knew my way back. So at end of this eating binge I was mad full and headed home finding my way through the maze like roads of New Delhi.
Repeating my stance of Hearsay # 3.
Hearsay #4: Delhi people misguide you with directions - Looking at the pain Tyagi & Sohail took to guide me right & of several places where I asked people for directions I can safely say this hearsay is a Big Lie.
On my last day at Delhi I visited Lotus temple which is made by people of Bahai' sect which had really pretty women volunteers who moved around to maintain a decorum of that place, next I visited the Akshardham temple which I didn't go in as there was a huge line to enter & also the main temple was shut for renovation, then I went to Raj Ghat where I found couple romancing just few feets away from the final resting place of Mahatma Gandhi, after this we visited Lal Quilla having walked around I felt like the Mughals really knew how to live lavish as they made every provision to keep themselves exclusive and had all the possible luxuries that one can imagine in that time n era & lastly I went to the most majestic presidential palace in the world. Of all these places Rashtrapati Bhawan & the area around it awed me the most with its grand building and even grander history which swells into you as you look at it. The view from the Rashtrapati Bhawan to the India gate made me want to come here for the Parade on the Independence Day.
During this journey I found that I didn't encounter all the ill things I heard about Delhi. May be I was there for a short time to actually face it but what ever it is I am glad that we have such a well maintained Capital and I found the people really warm and the weather fun (at least of the one week that I stayed there). But still at the end of the day I love Mumbai and would not want to go settle there. And I told my mother while leaving "Delhi is a good place but good as a hill station not ass a permanent address".
I was warned by my parents and again warned by my friend Tyagi that “It gets really chilled in Delhi get some warm clothings along” but when the captain of my flight declared the weather outside as 25 degree Celsius I thought is everyone kidding me 25 is jus 2 degrees short of what it is aamchi Mumbai, so started my stay in Delhi. As I got out of the airport I was hit by the chaos on the street caused by unruly drivers but that was not much considering I drive quiet a bit in Mumbai. I heard a lot about Delhi and what it is all about. How this place had arguments on every street corner or how people misguided you when asked for directions and more. I decided to check these things for myself and so I set out on a mission guised under the pretext of roaming the Delhi city….
My first day in Delhi was pretty much normal with only a visit to our family friends and then watching TV the whole evening only to go to a small event where children put up a small show with fancy dreaa & dancing & singing for the chief guest who blasted the inhabitants of the colony for absentism of most of the people of the colony. This by the way went on for 30 minutes witn the man repeating himself enough number of times that people actually wished they too were in the list of absentees. As this ranting got over we made way to the food filled garden. The food was good but this was not the best of Delhi that i had in my trip...
On the next day I went to Qutub Minaar, one place every person who visits Delhi for leisure visits so I thought I was not different and headed there in my car. The roads as such were crowded but only thing that bothered me was how people driving in the left most lane took a decision in a jiffy to go to the right side cutting a whole lot of drivers short of getting the biggest dent on their car. Then there were people who decided that “I own the road” and drove past you and cut your path without any kind of provocation on a Red light of a signal. And this I’d say continued through out my 7 day stay there.
Hearsay #1: Delhites drivers have no road sense. My verdict - True
I reached Qutub Minaar’s ticket counter where the ticketing handed over a person ahead of me a 3 Rs. 10 notes, half torn Rs. 5 note & 5 Re. 1 coins which when refused by the guy ahead of me the ticketing guy gave him a stern nonchalant look and said “aapke yehi bante hai,chalo abhi” translated it means “buzz off”. I tendered exact change to avoid any such situation myself. I forgot all bout this li’l incident as soon as I walked into the Qutub Minaar premises marveled by the beauty and the architectural genius of people of that time. Imagine this it is year 1192 where you had no fancy lifts or cranes or even trucks and the king says to you go build 234 feet high minaret. I am sure it was one hell of a job to get 5 different types of stones to make 5 different layers of the Minaar with some a dash of intricate design to make you want to kiss the sculptor hands. I pity those guys who made it but also am sure they are much smarter than me, who felt dizzy just looking up to see the Minar from close. Anyhow…
As I was walking through these gardens I noticed a hell lot o couples seated their having a gala time forgetting about the world around them and others who stared at the foreigners and slyly took their pics with their mobile phone cameras. This is my country men at their worst ill behaviour. May be not the worst but at least at their socially-tolerated-but-critically-spoken against behaviour. I still love my country but have my doubts about the people of India.
I drove in New Delhi in the parts where there are embassies staying and I could hardly concentrate on the road as the place is clean, beautiful & above all very well maintained. Then in the same part of Delhi I learnt of how damn difficult it is navigating with all the god darned circles. Every circle has 6 to unending number of exits and only a person with orientation classes of Delhi city can get to the right place at one shot driving in the city all alone. To explain how bad it is there let me illustrate with an example. You could reach a circle and have a particular road been pointed on both the side which is because the circle falls in middle of the passing road. At such tough point you have to decide whether you want to go to left side of Niti Road or right side Niti Road. Another thing the city is round so it’s a high possibility that roaming for ½ an hr on a VIP road (which is deserted for most part of the day) you realize that you have come to the same point you had lost your way from.ooof!! I tell this out of experience My parents & I were roaming in the city from 10.45 pm to 11.30 pm just going around in circles and because at night time on the VIP part of the city there is no one walking on the streets we could only find our way back by asking the police man at the Naka bandi for directions.
Hearsay #2: Delhi city is round and confusing – Very tiringly true.
One thing everyone talks good about Delhi is its food. I’ll try to list all the things that I heard are good in Delhi and got to have during my 1 week stay
Dahi Bhalla
Tikki chaat
Chowmein
Double egg roll
Chole bhature
Paneer items
Butter Chicken
Sheermaal
Kheer
Gajar ka Halwa
Lassi
Seek kabab
& some things that I ate at Karims but cant remember the name of.
And should say all of these things were yummy while some were yummy as hell and couldn’t stop my self from having one more of. These things are more or less a good amount of things that ‘You should have in Delhi’ list of things. I can assure you if you are a true foodie like me u'd come back home with excess weight like me.
Hearsay #3: Delhi food is good– True & can I add it’s not just good it is amazing and it is a lot to choose from.
One of the best times I hear to go to Delhi is when it is cool and that is between end of November & start of December because after that the cool become chilling cold till February. I happened to be there in times when the weather Gods played it cool for me though for a Mumbaiite that I am, I found the weather cold for sometime and then got used to it. Though one thing that I was taken aback was the time the sun sets. At bout 6 pm it is dark enough to 8 pm on a normal day. This accompanied with fog made it even worse. I would feel lazy the whole day and understood why Delhiites refused to work or postponed them when I spoke to them (that still leaves the rest of the years laziness unexplained but that could fill up some other blog post o mine). I slept for 1/2 hour bursts through out the day at any point of time that I was reading a book or watching TV coz and that made me feel like a Rank 1 lazy bum but what is one to do when the weather around is so good & when you are out to holiday.
Another thing that is famous throughout India during my visit to Delhi are the marriages. And I happen to be in the part of the country which knows how to splurge when celebrating. I happened to go to 4 events out of which 2 were marriages & 1 engagement and as usual I would directly go the best part of the marriage FOOD. The spread of food for all the four events was yummmm and always elaborate. The food always had starters like chat and sev etc followed by main course & at least 3 types of wow! sweets. These 3 categories were religious followed but the spread in all of these kept changing for good. Ya, one more thing about this food spread it always ended with coffee. Piping hot coffee on the buffet spread made me wonder as I am not quiet used to having coffee being served at the end of eating but I soon started enjoying it in the cool weather around. I later gathered that coffee is not just served during winter events but also through the summers as well. And I thought south Indians very true coffee lovers.
Sticking to the topic of food my MBA classmate & friend "Tyagi"Gaurav Tyagi took me out for a day of enjoying the food in Delhi. Before I met him I had had large glass of Lassi & Sev Puri to start my day with then I met him at Delhi University campus where he showed me around the place. I cant resist myself from saying that most of the gals in Delhi are brilliantly beautiful, especially in DU campus you see a lot of them together at one place which makes this place a certified 'Chick Hub' (Excuse my language). While showing me around the place Tyagi showed me all of the big colleges like FMS & Delhi school of Economics and I was really amazed at the vast expanse of space these colleges offered to their students. Every college had a beautiful building with a legacy of who's who of the Indian greats having studied there and of course the lawns which I felt I missed through my college life in Mumbai. Back to the topic of food I roamed on the back of Tyagi's bike around in Delhi and this bike ride gave me chills. Not that Tyagi rides rough but the cool weather at high speed make it chilling cold, especially during the evening time. We had Aloo Tikki, Dahi Bhalla, Veg Kakori Kabab & Rosogulla for lunch. The dinner happened to be something that I had been thinking of for really long time, my first visit to 'Karims'. At Karims I met Tyagi's non-veg eating expert friend Sohail as Non Veg is not the expertise of vegetarian Tyagi. Now at Karims I relied totally on Sohail to order and must say he did a fine job in that. I ate and ate and ate more till I was full after which we order for the sweet sheermall roti & kheer. We ended the day there, then began my finding way back home with great help from Tyagi & Sohail who I dropped till a metro and was guided to reach a point I knew my way back. So at end of this eating binge I was mad full and headed home finding my way through the maze like roads of New Delhi.
Repeating my stance of Hearsay # 3.
Hearsay #4: Delhi people misguide you with directions - Looking at the pain Tyagi & Sohail took to guide me right & of several places where I asked people for directions I can safely say this hearsay is a Big Lie.
On my last day at Delhi I visited Lotus temple which is made by people of Bahai' sect which had really pretty women volunteers who moved around to maintain a decorum of that place, next I visited the Akshardham temple which I didn't go in as there was a huge line to enter & also the main temple was shut for renovation, then I went to Raj Ghat where I found couple romancing just few feets away from the final resting place of Mahatma Gandhi, after this we visited Lal Quilla having walked around I felt like the Mughals really knew how to live lavish as they made every provision to keep themselves exclusive and had all the possible luxuries that one can imagine in that time n era & lastly I went to the most majestic presidential palace in the world. Of all these places Rashtrapati Bhawan & the area around it awed me the most with its grand building and even grander history which swells into you as you look at it. The view from the Rashtrapati Bhawan to the India gate made me want to come here for the Parade on the Independence Day.
During this journey I found that I didn't encounter all the ill things I heard about Delhi. May be I was there for a short time to actually face it but what ever it is I am glad that we have such a well maintained Capital and I found the people really warm and the weather fun (at least of the one week that I stayed there). But still at the end of the day I love Mumbai and would not want to go settle there. And I told my mother while leaving "Delhi is a good place but good as a hill station not ass a permanent address".
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