Gurgaon : Another Pune ??

1 month in this place, and I keep thinking more and more that Gurgaon and Pune are more similar than people care to think of. Having just moved from one city to the other , I can't help but think on the similarities.

Big brother is there

Both Gurgaon and Pune are expanding at the rate they are today due to the presense of the MegaMetro cities ( Delhi and Mumbai respectively) I would say.

Pune's growth started off as a retreat for the people of Mumbai. Filmstars and otherbig shots found Pune near enough and having a pleasurable climate for their weekend retreats. Add to it the cultural history, and Pune became a weekend trip to chill out. Even nowdays, the Page3 articles in Pune Times mostly talk about which movie superstar has come from Mumbai for a quiet weekend in the city. The proximity of Mumbai also means the proximity of an International Airport which makes access to the IT world of the West easy. With the making of the Mumbai-Pune expressway ( where, btw , bikes are not allowed) - the time taken to travel between the two cities has almost halved. Mumbai being on a peninsula really does not have much space to grow. The growth is mostly vertical with older buildings being pulled down to make way for skyscrappers. As such, people looking for a cheaper place to live in ( and a better climate) look at Pune - and started to push on to Pune. Pune also has quite a lot of universities - which makes it easier to access the young pool of fresh graduates.

Gurgaon, has a similar situation. Though Noida is also adjacent to Delhi, the close proximity of the airport from Gurgaon makes it a more appealing option for IT companies to set up shop there. Nokia, Flextronics, Alcatel to name a few, have made huge offices here. Delhi, being the capital of the country has a constant influx of people , and is now spilling over its boundaries into places like Gurgaon and Noida.

Infrastructure Woes

Both Gurgaon and Pune are suffering from Infrastructure woes. The government it seems is too slow to move with the fast pace of growth of these cities ( you can also add Bangalore to this list, but I am not going to talk about Bangalore as of now).

Lets take one thing at a time here.

Roads
Pune roads are almost gone by now. The recent rains there has quickly dispatched the roads. I will not entirely blame the rains though. The roads are just not being made properly. I was amazed when I came to Pune to see the road repairs being undertaken - the guys were just putting in the tar and stones, and there was no roller to flatten it. 2 days later, and the pothole was again there - that was before the rainy season. Now, its a matter of finding a piece of road in the potholes.

Gurgaon is a little better - as it does not rain here that much. However, 2 weeks of rains has suddenly left this gaon with a lot of bad roads. It rained equally in Delhi also - just 6kms to the boundary from here - but the roads there are still as smooth as ever. If this place was to have rains like Pune - god save the people !!

Transportation
Both places have almost non-existant transportation. Bus service is really bad. Gurgaon has a link with delhi with the DTC buses though - but the commutation within Gurgaon is tough for anyone coming from outside. Thankfully, being the nomad that I am , I rode up here on my bike - or else it would be really tough for me to go around. Distances in Gurgaon are huge as compared to Pune though. In Pune, my office was 13kms from my office - which most people thought too far away. Here, most people travel an average of 20kms 1 way. Weekends jaunts to Delhi for me is almost 60kms round trip. Thank god for my bike !!

Gurgaon is more dusty than Pune. I am a biker - and it is easily figureable when you keep getting mouthfulls of dust whenever you go out. Delhi though hardly has loose dust anywhere.

Electricity
Pune is slightly better in this department - as it has scheduled load shedding. Gurgaon seems to have a love and hate relationship with electricity. Most of the places here have powerbackup - without which you would probably fry in the summer months.

If you take away the change in weather , and the local lingo ( Hindi in Gurgaon , Marathi in Pune), the places are similar. Like a colleage of mine said about Gurgaon - take away the malls from Gurgaon and it is just a Gaon !

Why the Rant ?
Why am I writing all this ? Because people have the concept that Gurgaon has developed a lot - with all the pics about the Malls etc. Well, this a heads up for those people - guys, its not what it seems. I came thinking this place will be better in terms of infrastructure at least to Pune - but now, I find its almost similar.

Update : 10th Oct '05

I seem to be getting on the nerves of friends from pune as they seem to think that I only have negative points about their hometown, and that my posts are anti-pune. I just want to point out that I am not being anti-pune or pro-pune or anything. I am just stating the negative points which exists. There are many ways that Pune is much better than Gurgaon, but those points were not my crieteria of comparison - because I feel that they don't really relate to the choice of workplace - at least for me. Here are a few points :

• Rich Culture and history : Pune has quite a long legacy of history, and many events shaping modern India have had roots in Pune. From the adventurous life of Shivaji to the Freedom struggles of Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The Yerwada jail is also a historic monument as Bapuji has been jailed there for quite some time. The surrounding hills of Pune house the crumbling remains of Forts of yester years.
• Better Weather : Pune's weather is better than that of Gurgaon anyday. Gurgaon/Delhi have extreme weather pattern. Scorching summers with temeratures reaching 48 deg C to freezing winters with night temperatures dropping to almost 0 deg C. The monsoon also is a hit and miss affair here. Pune on the other hand is more temperate, and you can possible spend the entire year without wearing a sweater ( unless you are like me wanting to go for a ride at 2 AM in winters ;-) )
• Education heaven : Pune is known as the Oxford of the East - due to the large number of colleges and Universities. However, sadly, none of the Univs occupy the top spot in Engineering or Management fields.
• Women safety : Pune scores way above Delhi/Gurgaon/NCR when it comes to the safety of the fairer sex. Pune and Bangalore are that way really good for females. Gurgaon and Delhi make me feel sick with the way the women are treated here. A single woman going alone after 9PM in Delhi is just asking for trouble . But in Pune/Bangalore I was pleasantly surprised to find that kind of behaviour to be absent.

If you see the above points - they don't really come into my equations when I am looking at a job. Some points do come when I am looking at living in a place - most notably the weather. But if weather was my only criteria of find a job, I would be based in Bangalore.

:-)

BikeNomads turns 3

Bikenomads group is now 3 years old.

Hip Hip Hurray !!!

We have 192 members as of today. May feel quite less when you compare it with other sites, but the amazing part is that the group has grown of its own accord. There were no tie ups with other groups. There was no sensational publicity. There was no shouting our name out at every concieveable opportunity.

There was just this feel of a group which one can call its own. Just a meeting grounds for people to meet up and plan their trips.

Trips - that is the saans or 'breath' of BikeNomads. We live so that we can just travel on our bike ... or any personal mode of travel. Almost all of us have been given strange stares which seem to say "are you crazy?" before they say "Are you crazy ? Why don't you go by train or bus or plane??".

Unfortunately, there is no way we can tell why we do it. Its a feeling - and there is no simple way of saying why we do what we do. All, we can do is offer you a ride the next time we go out.

We have got a website dedicated to bikenomads at www.bikenomads.com . This year, we will be making that a better place for all riders. We want to make it the destination online when people plan to go to a destination on their trusty steeds. For that, I need your help. Help me to make BikeNomads a great place.

I am back here !

Well...

I don't have much of an option. I am back here after I could not access my website from the company , and so cannot update my blog there.

Stay tuned for more posts from me ! :-D

For now, check out this blog :
http://minimsft.blogspot.com

which is about :

Let's slim down Microsoft into a lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine! Mini-Microsoft, Mini-Microsoft, lean-and-mean!

New company - no access

I have joined this new company called Flextronics in Gurgaon, North India.

It does not allow me access to my website at http://www.employees.org/~vibhu :-(

A world class company, and it restricts site access ! What kind of place is this ? :(
Thankfully blogger is not restricted, and so I am resuming my postings here. After all , once you are bitten with the blogging bug, you cannot leave it.

The last few weeks have been interesting. I have ridden up from Pune to Gurgaon on my bike. It was a boring affair as I was covering too much distance per day, which prevents me from really checking out the country. Some pics are over at bikenomads.

I covered 1500+kms. The route was :
Pune -> Mumbai -> Baroda -> Ahmedabad -> Gandhinagar -> Udaipur -> Ajmer -> Jaipur -> Delhi (Gurgaon).

The first day was rainy. There after it was dry and dusty.

The weather here in Gurgaon is also dry and dusty - although we had an evening shower today.

Work in the office is boring to the extreme. It is confusing and I am feeling all at sea. Also, I need to find an accomodation to stay at :(

Lets see how life goes.

Blog's moving

Hi All,

I don't know how many people really read this blog ;-) , but if you do, or you somehow stumble upon this place by some freak accident, I have stopped blogging here. From now on, I will be found happily banging the keys at :

http://www.employees.org/~vibhu/blog/

Why ? Cause I have my home page there ! http://www.employees.org/~vibhu is my home page, and I feel it to be more convenient to have everything at one place.

Drop by sometime and leave a message for me :-)

Review : The Digital Fortress

Rating : 2 Nukes


A story about how a coder writes an unbreakable program for encryption, which makes an agency known as the NSA go all bonkers trying to get the algorithm so that they can break the encryption - all for the "greater good".

Now, the book is an easy read, and you may even like it. But , if you are technically inclined, keep away from it. Dan Brown should probably keep to art and history at which he excels. But, tech talk is something he is very green at, and does not really understand. So, its a thriller - with a maniacal assasin thrown in for good measure - and a bunch of tech jargon.

Not worth a read ... and not at all upto the standards of The Da Vinci Code or Angels and Demons.

What is a game?

Let's be blunt. Games are drugs.

A game is a pre-packaged set of stimuli and directed player responses that piggy back on existing human risk / reward systems and create a measurable psychological addiction.

After reading the above, you just gotta read this article on the Genere addict !

The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing

This is a cool writeup on interviewing candidates that a friend forwared to me. Talks about how to interview candidates and what one should look for in candidates. Its not about what they know - its about if they are smart and can get things done.

Makes a lot of sense.

Just a passing Hi !

Gawd, back to work and already I am getting massacred. No, its not my work. Well, let me rephrase it - its not 'just' my work. Now, I am being pushed into the role of a Manager from the role of a Tech lead . However, since the folks I work with think I am good technically (hey ! that's news to me ! ) , I have to do my usual 'bug-fixing' work *and* take care of the team.

Team is pretty good :). The guys are good and work hard. Ummm... too hard at times I feel. But, nowdays I am bugged with small issues that crop up with their work as wlel.

No body said life would be easy - but they did not tell me it would be so hard !

So, I have been unable to write my trip log of my mamoth trip through india. And on top of that I have been thinking of revamping my website - seems like a distant dream now.

The bit of solace that I had was that I went and bought a couple of games - War of the Ring and Cultures.

War of the Ring is set in the Tolkien world , and is based on events which go in parallel to the main story of Lord of the Rings. So, in one mission you are Legolas fighting of Orcs overtaking your country. Well , you get the ideah ? Haven't yet come across Gandalf, but I guess if I keep on playing it a bit more, I will stumble across him too.. and where the heck is the Balrog hiding ? Come on baby ! Light my fire !

Cultures on the other hand is a totally differnt game. Its about city building. You build a city in ancient Viking Land. The graphics is like the Asterix comics and the pace is quite slow. For reading more about the fun story, click here !!!

Nothing much apart from this.

Trip done

I am now back in my office. After covering 5380kms which took me through quite a big part of india. On my return leg, i visited Pushkar and Mt Abu.

Pushkar is a small town in Rajisthan. It's claim to fame is that it is the only place in India which has a temple to the god Brahma.

Mt Abu, is a hill station , again in Rajishtan, which has Jain Temples , carved from marble. The carving is exquisite, something which is to be seen to be appreciated. Some other pilgrimage sites are there too, but this was the main attraction for which i had gone. Unfortunately, photography is not allowed inside the temple, and I could not get any pics of the amazing karigiri.

The return leg was :
Delhi-> Ajmer ( pushkar is 15kms from here) -> Mt Abu -> Ahmedabad -> Pune.

In all the return leg took me 4 days. The longest distance was covered on the last day, of approximately 650kms which I covered in 11.5 hours. The only issue was that it was getting hotter the more south I came. Finally, reached pune in the evening, feeling tired for the first time in the journey - more from the heat, than from the exertion.

The trip log will be up soon at my website, will blog here once I have done that.

India on 2 wheels

This blog is being written from Dehradun.

What's different this time around is that i covered the distance from Pune to Dehradun on my bike. In all I passed through 8 states and covered 3000+ kms, and that is only one way. Unfortunately, I can't upload pictures from here as the net speed is quite slow.

The route I followed was :

Pune -> Hyderabad -> Pench National Park (near Sioni, MP ) -> Bhopal -> Darrah National Park (near Kota, rajisthan) -> Jaipur -> New Delhi -> Dehradun.

I will be going back also on bike, the route being a different one. The only concern now is that, the further south I will be going, the hotter it will be, which would make riding a bit of a problem.

A note to all bikers and car enthusiasts - avoid MP as much as possible. There are no road there. They may have been there 20 years back, but now all you have is a landscape worse than a lunar one.