Another Rangoli

It started in 4th year of my college when I participated in a Rangoli competition for the first time. And since then I have been participating in a Rangoli competition once every year. I participated in my fifth year and have done so after coming in Gurgaon.

My company organizes a Diwali party every year few days before Diwali. As a part of celebration the entire staff is divided into different teams and each team is then given a space in the office which they have to decorate. Side by side few members of the team work on Rangoli. A winner is then declared in the end based on the points earned in Rangoli making and pod decoration. This year and also the last year, I participated in Rangoli competition. This is the rangoli that my 3 colleagues and I made this year.

The theme that my team chose this year was "Angry Birds". For those of you don't know what it is its a (pretty addictive) video game played on touch screen devices. The story of the game is that the pigs have stolen the eggs from the birds and the 'angry' birds then take their revenge by breaking the homes of the pig. By the way, does any of the birds actually look angry?

Anyways, we did win the first prize in rangoli this year and I hope this streak of participating in rangoli competition doesn't break. It really feels nice to just stand back and look at what you have made once you are done.

Gurgaon - Really the millennium city ?

Before I was moving to Gurgaon, a relative of mine said Gurgaon is India's America. To be fair to that relative, one can be misled to think that if he/she is going from Delhi to Jaipur passing through National Highway 8 where all the fancy buildings lie. But after having lived here, the only comparison (which is admittedly exaggerated) that I would make is with the America before Columbus discovered it. And I am sure the native Americans with their arrows, spears and feather dress (pardon the stereotype) would still be more civilized than a typical coarse, uncouth native of Gurgaon. All it takes to uncover this is a left right turn into the city from one of the exits.

I am super miffed these days. Gurgaon -the city with countless malls, out of place residential buildings with inexplicable Mughal domes and names taken from American counties, depleting green belts, expensive autos driven by people with no respect for the traffic rules(which I am sorry to say is something that reflects the behaviour of most of the natives), a virtually non-existent public transport system.

But none of them is the cause for this burst of frustration. What is irking me these days is the state of roads, which I can safely say is the most pathetic among all the cities that I have lived in. With literally no drainage facility, many of the roads have been converted into puddles in this monsoon season. This in turn causes traffic jams on the crossroads. Given the fact that Gurgaon generates a large chunk of revenue for the Haryana government, what surprises me is the government's apathy to this most basic infrastructure support that they are supposed to provide.

The differences between a city that has grown over many decades and the city that has grown over the past 5-6 years become very clear here. New sectors are being planned on the land which until few years back was used for agriculture.  But the city authorities have failed to catch up with the private builders when it comes to development. I am not sure how much revenue they make from such land deals but somebody has to be made accountable for this. Either the authorities or the developers who have been making unlimited profits from these deals.