Trip down memory lane

Took my eyes to the once scenic guwahati this bihu. Found myself in the midst of a superficially changed "asom". A sweet and sour trip down memory lane.

Fruits come knocking at ur door

One of my observation was about home service. Right from the milkman to the vegetable vendor to the dry cleaners,thy come right to yr door.

Is it because of their understanding of us, the vendors probably don't trust us moving our asses to the markets, so decided to get the markets to us.

OR it could be foresight into tapping markets right where customers are sitting cosy in their comfy of home.

Whatever it is, here's another example of success indian entreprenuers at the grassroot.

Wake up call

a major change for me was to find myself waking up at 5.30 am, someone who used to set at least 2 alarms in the USA is waking up wihout gadgets, a revelation. Well, first couple days was jetlag, later it was my daugther , now its the cuckoo next 2 my window which puts me to snooze for the milkman to finally do the honors. The irony is I have too much time which sprinkles salt to my "unemployed" status.

Sun fried skins

My already brown skin is getting an extra shade, courtesy the sunny boy. He took BJP's slogan of "India shining" a lil too seriously.

first few observations

1) Mobile explosion, tom, dick, hari and pari - everyone seems to be on the phone, not having a phone is a SIN. Btw, getting a phone connection although easy comes with a customary painful background check, the AIRTEL folks found their most confused customer in me, an assamese guy with a maharastrian c/o address where he doesn't reside. To top it all, the phone is used by my wife, who's maharashtrian. There's another angle - I do not have a job. The guy who came to do the check gave up.

2)Driving - its an art here. Let me leave it at that.

3)Crossing the road isn't difficult, the fastest of the vehicles comes to a halt to a stop wave.

4)People people people everywhere.

The Indian dream

29th March, 2006, 10.05 pm - a warm and humid mumbai embraced us from the AF flight 134. The path to the immigration was filled with excitement, sweat and bracing for the "customs". Thanks to our lil daughter our wait time at the immigration was none, her PIO status did the wonders. The baggage claim was filled with curious eyes and corrupt saviors, one such eye zeroed in on me and a whisper ensured I leave the airport without greetin the customary, the $20 dollar whisper was my acclimatization to the "indian" system. I was the odd man out everywhre, not because of my looks - I was carrying 9 bags + an infant, they didn't know this was my sayonara trip from the US. Anyways, we hit the indian dream around 12 midnight for Pune.