What a Tour
Our first halt was at Pune, the stay was reasonably comfortable, with individual rooms (no sharing;).
Glorious ! India from first world glitz and glitter, state of the art technology Reliance Petroleum Refinery to the third world, the familiar stench, the water logged streets, muck thrown around all over, highly polluted congested township of Jamnagar. All in a space of twenty kms. Are we surprised, no, not really because we have simply got used to these two Indias that we inhabit and come across daily. The life outside our cocooned environs is BAD. But Gujrat is the most progressive state of the country, with even the likes of Suhel Seth gushing over the corporate style of functioning of Narendra Modi, so what has gone wrong here ? Is governance restricted to Gandhi Nagar alone in this state, because there is practically no system in place here. Welcome to the real India. What a striking contrast from the RPL refinery, the exact anti-thesis of all that chutzpah of Reliance. So is this model recommended model for inclusive growth, the Senior VP there was gloating over their success stories of successful land acquisitions for the SEZ, the sworn loyalties of the villages sapanchs to Reliance as their saviour, the mai baap,anna-data.
What is Rajkot all about ? A casual evening walk laid bare the dirty underbelly, with filth every where, people did not seem to care as naturally they had not seen better days. It was business as usual.
What a tour!! Nonstop binging, one was not aware of the elasticity of the stomach, as the meals were not restricted to the three meals but just went on and on, may be a dozen a day. In fact now we start to feel hungry after every ten minutes if a snack is not on offer. The briefings have become secondary, as we are greeted by a snack before the briefing and one after that. As if this much of gorging was not adequate to spoil us , we have these cocktails thrown in and then there are those occasional treats where drinks are on the house, then By Bacchus , we make sure that we do not let our brethren down and
Occasionally we also get to admire the sunset on the beaches!!!