Delhi - Gurgaon Expressway !

For those of you in outside of India this will not be of too much interest. Or.... maybe it will.

Delhi has now got a new highspeed road connection to a town on the border of Delhi. Gurgaon is the name of the town and it is very important to Delhi as there are alot of BPO setups there as well as an affluent population.

The road itself is very smart. It has turned a 40 minute minute journey into a 15 minute journey !! Excellent you may say. I would agree it is excellent.....except there is a problem. To get onto this "expressway" one must pay a toll. I have no problem with the toll, one must pay for progress. The problem is the traffic jams that have built up to get to the toll gate to pay for the toll. I noticed that the Times of India website was running a poll as to whether the use of the highway should be made free or not. !! ??? I find it somewhat hard to believe that such a high profile newspaper organisation has even thought about running a poll like this let alone actually do it !! The whole focus of the poll was ill thought out. The poll should have leaned more towards something about fining the ill diciplined drivers who are causing all the jams in the first place. The road sense in the capitol city leaves much to be desired. It is the thoughtless drivers who decide that they can use the smartcard gate to pay cash that are holding up the system..... not the system itself. We in India need to be more thoughful about our driving. Having new roads like this is a boon for India yet this poll tries to denigrate what has been done. Would somebody please tell me what is going when this kind of progress is being critisized so vehemently when really we should be looking at ourselves and how we conduct ourselves on the road. Surely this is also a reflection on our society which is supposedly going to be a world leading power in the very near future.
I look forward to your comments.
Peace and Love

Is It Just Me ???

Or is time totally flying by at the moment. At a time when I am desperately trying to hold on to my thirties sods law says "This year will be the fastest year on record".

Also.... the news we are getting about the UK here in India suggests that Facism in mainstream politics is the order of the day. What with banning of doctors from India and all that. Some elements of the UK population also seem to have the nerve to be able to vandalise important memorials to crimes that should never be condoned like the death of Steven Lawrence.

Perhaps someone could also clarify something for me..... Is it true that you in the UK are being further ripped off on your basic foodstuffs now ?? OH Boy !

I think the year has gone fast for a couple of good reasons though. We have had a death in the family. My fathers elder brother died. The cremation was a very somber affair. He did live to about 70 though. The rituals that were performed were quite heart rending at the time and when I think back on it it still moves me. One example of this is when the body of my uncle was laid out at the front of the house after having been bathed and clothed my aunt was made to stand over the body and a priest broke off her bangles one by one onto the body. You would not liked to have been there for that. Poor thing was weeping and weeping. It was symbloic to say.... you are now no longer married. Personally I did not like that bit... it seemed very harsh.

On a brighter note though we have also had a wedding in the family. My cousin sister got married last week in an epic 10 hour wedding !! There was plenty of audience participation though so that was good. The whole thing lasted for 4 days. We did get to sleep at nights though :))

We have another wedding next week so are currently getting ourselves ready for that. One common theme about Indian weddings is that generally the food is reaaly good. Now if you know me then you will know that this is fatal for me. At the last wedding there were fresh Dosas being cooked. Straight from the Tava onto my plate. Man I had 3 of them plus all the other food that was on offer. Just as well that I had been exercising alot in the 2 weeks prior to this event.

I will post a couple of photos when I have uploaded them onto the computer.

More soon.

Peace and Love