Meeting Old Friends

 This time, it was a colleague of my wife's, and her husband. They had taught in a school in Bangalore, many years ago. He worked at Bosch, and is retired. We went to their place for a delhicious lunch! It was actually in Gurgaon, but that's almost Delhi. We escaped from Delhi before the pollution levels hit the record levels that it is famous for.

Mr. Ramesh and Mrs. Madhu Mathur, who hosted us at home for lunch.

A Green Campus-Indian Oil Institute

Visited the IIPM (not that one!) at Gurgaon, set up by Indian Oil for training their executives. Great campus, green certified and nicely laid out. Here are some pics-

If I Were the Delhi CM

If I were the Delhi Chief Minister, I would do the following (since there's no chance in hell of this happening, I am free to make promises I can''t keep)-

Move all VIPs to Hissar, Haryana where they can't bother the average Dilliwala/wali. Obama can visit them in Hissar on his next trip.

Move all malls to Connaught Place. So you don't have to go too far. All movie halls will also be in CP, or most, if you do that.

Build one IIC in every locality in Delhi, and make membership available at a modest fee.

Build a couple of badminton and tennis courts in each locality, and move all the gyms to Gurgaon.

Ban cars and make the metro move everywhere, with e-ricks to ferry people to and from the metro stations. Also solves the lal batti problem plaguing VIP cars.

Make 4 more Golf courses in Delhi by moving out some old factories.

Give free crash courses in politeness to the macho guys.

Ban winters.

Move NOIDA to Agra and Ghaziabad to Lucknow. Half the traffic will vanish.

Education Seminar at Sohna

I attended a seminar on higher education at an upcoming Haryanvi town of Sohna, beyond Gurgaon yesterday. It was organised (very well) by a media company called nine dot nine floated by the erstwhile Dean of ISB, Pramath Sinha, and his team.

The town of Sohna, about 25 kms. from Gurgaon is reported to be another Gurgaon in the making. Not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing. Anyway, the venue was the Westin at Sohna. Why Westin went east into this place is a question, but having got there, they have managed well. The food was excellent- they had an Italian-Spanish mix of some yummy stuff the names of which I can't begin to remember.

The turnout at the seminar was good, ranging from the ex-chairman of UGC, to a lot of Vice Chancellors, of private and public universities. I also ran into an IIMB alum from three batches after mine. Many new business ideas were apparent from various sponsors of the seminar. Adobe, Oracle, Naukri.com and so on.

The best presentation was by the founder of FLAME, a liberal arts school in Pune, Parag Shah. He explained 'Dil se' (from his heart, literally) the reasons and reasoning that went into founding the 4 year degree program-offering institution. He is also a builder, and has built some real estate including a golf course around the school. But his philosophy of how to combine music and mathematics in the same school on the lines of similar institutions in the West struck a lot of chords. Of course, he had Dr. Indira Parikh, former IIMA professor, to help him as the Dean to implement his ideas. True innovation, in the way courses are offered in different streams, and students grow up as a complete person, rather than as an engineer or doctor. Great idea, I would say.

Malling in Delhi

Malling in Delhi versus malling in Bangalore - Space is at a premium in Bangalore. Not so much in Delhi.

Malling in Saket- Select Citywalk- is reasonably comfortable, though the book collection in bookstores is not too inspiring.

Most foreign brands of everything you always wanted to buy- perfumes, garments, are available at a mall near you, if you are in Delhi. So now, how do the Singaporeans (or Dubaians) reposition themselves. I can go to a Delhi mall without spending the airfare to Singapore or Dubai. Ok, maybe I can still get a good deal on a 43 inch LED TV there!

Malling in Gurgaon versus malling in Delhi. It's a capital against a provincial town. But Gurgaon is the pioneer in malling.

Obviously, all these observations are born out of a recent trip to the Saket mall. One interesting thing I saw there was a simulated golf range where you can hit a ball into a screen which calculates/simulates the flight path of the ball and so on, for a fee of course! 150 bucks for 15 minutes. I did not try it.

Delhi Musings, Customer Service and More

Two incidents of customer service first. We had gone in a group of seven to eat lunch at a fairly expensive restaurant in Bangalore e-city recently. The lunch buffet was excellent. But at the end, we had to wait 20 minutes for the bill, because the cash register had failed!

The second incident is of a private sector bank which did not feel like crediting a cheque I wrote, because my payee's (wife was the payee) middle name was not written along with the long first  AND name. I am sure the idea was to prevent large gangs of cheque-stealers from raiding a poor prof's account, but it was not amusing!


Anyway, on to more pleasant stuff. I have found at least one good bookstore (Om book shop), though it's in Faraway  Gurgaon. But there is a metro station near it (MG Road), so it's accessible. I also found the bus system is good to use on weekends. Friday evenings, the traffic seems quite terrible, but OK on others.

Also celebrated the 50th birthday of a dear childhood friend yesterday at his place. Having had mine a couple of years earlier, I know the feeling- of having lived about two-thirds of your life. And I caught up with more friends from my teen years a few days earlier, so it's not too bad.