It is still my good old city. The city I have grown up in. The city I spent 23 years in. It feels good to be back after a long time.
There are not many striking changes except a few. The first thing that bogged me down is the traffic here. It is almost a chaos on every road. The traffic sense of people has stooped to the lowest possible level. They follow no rules while overtaking, parking or driving. People have started parking their cars on both the sides of road, furtively eating up further space on already narrow roads. I suspect Amdavad is going to be like Banglore in a short time. This happens when the infrastructure and planning are not in sync with the growth of the city.
The roads are filled with brand new jazzy glittery cars like Honda, Toyota, Hyundai and even Mercedez. My Maruti 800 seems to have become extinct. Or at least it is an endangered species. The time is not far when they will stop the production of this car. The Corolas, Civics and Mercs are ruling the roads. The city has become rich.
The coffee bars and tea centers have cropped up all over the place. Not that the prices were reasonable at these places when I left but now they look insanely costly. A glass of Cafe Frappe cost me Rs. 60 today. And these economists want me to believe that the inflation rate is around 3-4%. About Rs. 20 price increase for original Rs. 40 is not 2-3% I believe. (For those learned readers who will point out that such things are not in the 'Basket' out of which such indices are calculated, I would say with changing times, these are the things that you should be including while calculating purchasing power and inflation.)
The food at the restaurants is as tasty as it has been forever. And surprisingly it has not become too costly.
Pollution is under control like before. The bus-stops have improved. They are now well lit. The railway station people say looks like Airport. The roads have very neat directional signs, indicating areas in different directions.
I am happy that this place has not changed drastically. I want it to remain my quiet, aged yet modern city. Let's see how long it remains that way.
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5 comments:
I'm having more or less similar experiences about Pune...except that the pollution has become real bad, and things have become costly. Pune and B'lore are probably going through same problems.
Same here too in Bengaluru..:). Nothing much has changed except that people have become more senseless, when it comes to traffic rules.. The first 15mins was bad and then (unfortunately), I HAD to become them.
'I had to become them' LoL ... Too Good :)
yeh...very true bhavin...
inflation rate is not 3-4%.
today u can buy a 2 BHK appartment for rs. 50 lakhs. if inflation rate goes up by this rate than i think after 50 years u can buy only a DIET COKE with this much of amount...
ASAV PATEL.... (asav4u@gmail.com)
Well said Asav. In Zimbabwe thats the condition. People exchange money by weight ... 1 kg Zimbabwe dollar ( ZWD) = 1 USD. Though official rate something like 1 USD = 35K Zimb Dollars..
{
Zimbabwe dollar just crashed again last week and, on the black market, you can now get Z$20,000,000 for USD$1 (the official exchange rate is USD$1 = Z$33,000). }
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