Saturday, March 27, 2010

Reporting from Ahmedabad Part-1

You take a flight to a manicured infocity and start liking the comforts of clean air, plenty of greenery, embarrassingly wide footpath- not a hawker to block your way, or make you offers of questionable thingummies. Your office is a leisurely three minutes' walk away. You can stay in your room and watch a Bergman or listen to music or read on Reader and there's no mother to keep bugging you to go to sleep in time.

But there are little things that suddenly catch you unawares. An otherwise boring HR video that has a shot of the Governor House or the Victoria Memorial chokes you in the middle of a session. The city sounds when someone from the city calls you make you loath the soothing calm of a planned town. Sometimes when the poo will walk down from Chandni towards Park Circus along the main road while talking to me on the phone I can tell how far she's reached from the sounds on the road. 

'Don't cross the road now. Please wait for your turn. Abhi rasta paar na karein kripya pratiksha karein....'

And I know she is at the Park Street crossing. You know what that feels like, don't you?

I am not saying I don't like this place. The people are blunt and it's impossible to have conversations with them. Everyday when I come back home from office I feel a strange emptiness inside me. I think of how hard I have been trying to talk to people. I genuinely try to like them. But I cannot. They have not heard of The Beatles and they don't know who Norah Jones is. They listen to 'soft romantic numbers' and their past time is 'watching or playing cricket and watching tv and orkuting'. They think Indian Classical is boring. The other day someone walked into my room while I was watching Summer With Monika. He stared at the screen for sometime and said don't you have some better movies? Non black and white? What do I say? I paused the movie and made polite conversations with him, apologizing for my clearly inadequate collection of movies.

All the people here are tech-retards. They know less about the internet or technology than any humanities people I know. They do not know what a browser is (well, many of them) or what a URL is for that matter. They can't differentiate between the internet and an intranet and have never heard about phishing or keyloggers. 

They are shocked to see that I know how to differentiate a single-breasted suit from a double breasted or that I use keyboard shortcuts for most things. I regularly hear taunts about how I must have prepared for almost every subject being taught here ahead and how lame that is. I smile awkwardly, not knowing how to react. I guess there are better engineers than these. It's just that I am stuck for two months with the lamest of the bunch. I know things will be somewhat different once I am out of the ILP. At least I won't have to stay with them 24x7.

And that will be the end of my rant for now.

16 comments:

  1. Sympathy. Lots of it. Ar ki bolbo. You'll get by.

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  2. The video had a shot of Victoria memorial? why?

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  3. But you know, the whole of Ahmadabad isn't so planned and cleaned and all that jazz. There are ghettos of Muslims and dalits hidden away in various extremities of the city. They have swanky malls and mutirises in front of them blocking them from view. Juhapura and Vatva, the two main Muslim ghettos, are referred to as 'Pakistan' and locals living in the ghettoes and outside refer to 'borders' in normal everyday conversation all the time. there are also 300-500 years old mosques which still lie among broken pillars. and of course there's Gulberg Society with its abandoned, burnt apartments and bungalows. Parle jash.

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  4. Summer with Monika ta toh hebbi-i. shey bishoy discussion er bishesh labh nei. have you seen Summer Interlude? similar theme.

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  5. I know what you mean. At least you dont get choked. at least you can still write.

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  6. Yes. This is a place called Infocity and is between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar. It looks like Sector 5 mostly. Only better. I have been planning to go to the main city but have not been able to so far. May be when my first exam gets over I will. That will be next week. I particularly want to visit the Masjid areas south of Sabarmati. And Paldi too. There are some good eateries there. Any good food places you know of?

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  7. Summer interlude ami dekhi ni. Dekhbo. But it is difficult to download large files here since I am using a wireless broadband service and it is quite expensive.

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  8. What is it with these people? Even the most intelligent people here are culturally impaired or blunt to talk to.

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  9. It had scenes narrated by Kabir Bedi about how Jamshedji Tata went about convincing the then viceroy. It is shot inside the governors house.

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  10. worse where i am. youd think that creative people would be more exposed.

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  11. give it time dude...i felt the this way for the first few days...but trust me, there are like minded people everywhere...just like you and me, they are disgusted with the general crowd as well, hence they keep to themselves...you're bound to come across them sooner or later....believe you me....

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  12. when you leave here U know how much Calcutta/people here satisfies ur intelligentsia, but well I hope U can find some there too! btw finally I left that place & well shared some thoughts quite provoking for those ppl..

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  13. Vaishala. Near Juhapura. Celebrated, it is. With pictures of famous people who ate there: from Indira Gandhi to Sachin Tendulkar and Amitabh Bhachchan.

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  14. or it might be vishala. But quite famous. ask, ask.

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  15. Let us see justice for all innocent deathsBy: Rahil Satta | Tuesday , 1 Mar '11 13:25:52 PM Reply | Forward Sounds about right. Wait for maybe 25 years for a report on which no action will be taken.

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  16. This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Tomorrow, we'll post the rest of his responses. TCF: What niche or role does your report fill that's different from other guidebooks on bus operations? And who do you envision using this report? ...

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