Back in Blore

After a very messy streneous but nevertheless good trip.

I was there in Vizag since Saturday evening and took the train yesterday to Bangalore. Didn't blog while at Vizag, was recovering from the trip. Didn't do much of anything at Vizag :-).

Anyway. Here's blogging about the trip:

I flew an airline called SpiceJet to Delhi. It cost about 4000/- Rs, I booked the e-ticket easily online at makemytrip.com . The flight was delayed 2 hours and I ended up spending about 5 hours through lunchtime on the flight, without anything to eat, just a bottle of water. Going by flight saved me a 1.5 day train journey which would have cost 1500/- odd 3AC. I think that about sums up the good and bad of Indian air travel.

Catching up with Panduri Srinivas in Delhi was very good. Panduri was my classmate in Timpany School for a long time and during a couple of those years we were quite close and vibed a lot. He stayed on in Timpany for his 11th and 12th, then studied Civil Engineering at Andhra University and IIT Kharagpur. After that he wrote the UPSC exams and joined the Indian Engineering Services. Since then he's been mostly working with the National Highway Authority of India with postings in Orissa, Hyderabad and for the past several years, New Delhi. He lives in Indirapuram which is the other side of the highway from NOIDA. Construction is booming in that part of Delhi, just like Bangalore. Its quite frustrating to see so much happening and not have any kind of finger in the pie :-).
Srinivas himself lives in a nice little gated community of say 100 flats distributed between several low rise complexes. Its quite striking how similiar it is to a american apartment complex. He says its appreciated in value about 4 times since he bought it :-). Srinivas' wife Suseela works at a nearby hospital as a doctor while also doing a course. She was mostly friendly and hospitable. They have a son Tanmay.
I plumbed Srinivas for fundas regarding how its like working for the goverment and so on. Had a lot of interesting conversation that is difficult to capture on the blog. He does seem to deal directly with the Union minister in charge of roads which is quite cool. He also feels that projects executed by the NHAI are typically done well and without a lot of corruption unlike other road projects. He knew Satyendra Dubey well ( the highway engineer who was murdered) and has a quite different insider's take on what happened there, than the story in the media. I think he's doing quite well in his job and is seen as a rising start, but wants to quit at some point and join the private sector. I hope to keep in touch with him and visit again in Delhi. They are quite constrained by Suseelas' job and the kid's school so they don't travel much nowadays.

From Delhi, on by train to Pathankot in the Punjab.