1. It is awesome! It really feels great to be in it. It is quite an experience when you get into it for the first time.
2. It is Air Conditioned! This definitely a boon anywhere in India. More so in Delhi! They have somehow managed to keep the inside of the trains at quite a cool temperature in spite of the 45 degrees outside!
3. It is really affordable! It has to be. But for an air conditioned transport it is surprisingly so. The distance which will cost you Rs. 5 in the Mumbai local train costs just Rs. 10 here. No wonder no metro transport anywhere in the world has been profitable. Neither will this be, otherwise it wont be affordable.
4. Fully loaded! With all the jazz of escelators and automatic ticket entry and announcements in the train regarding which side the station will come (this kinda gets irritating sometime). All of this is great though.
5. It is an equalizer. Where else will a businessman and a normal worker get into the same train using the same facilities and sitting in air conditioned comfort? No matter who you are, no second class or first class here!
6. It is awesomely maintained! Everything looks clean. Minimum littering. Constant cleaning. Helpful staff. Great!
7. It has some weird stickers. I saw one which wanted to say that this seat is reserved for pregnant woman. So it has a 3 figures. One was the pregnant woman, second was a man giving the seat to the shown woman. The third was what bothered me a little. A small boy holding the woman's hand. Why show a boy? Why show a second kid? Errrr, family planning?
8. The entire system looks great from the outside. I mean beautiful! The steel cars with lighted windows whizzing overhead every 5 minutes! Then going underground. Some places have two levels of stations underground! The huge stations above the roads. I like it!
9. I have absolutely no idea how the people living in the national capital managed to commute in the city before 2002! Absolutely sad!
10. I love it! Just like I was in love with The Linker, I am in love with the Metro as well. It represents the same things for me that The Linker does. I cannot wait for the Mumbai Metro to be up and running!

Indians got the first taste of this experience in a big way in 1983 when the Maruti-800 was launched.

Dr. Singh said this is not mean to be any indication of aggression on any country. However, the sea is becoming an integral part of India's strategy. India till now had only capabilities to launch missiles from land or air; this will change once the INS Arihant becomes fully operational in about two years time.

China has recently expanded its position in the sea by helping the Sri Lankan government fight the LTTE. In return, they have got a strategic location in the island country, which is bound to play an important role in the Indian Ocean. This new Indian foray will not only add a new aspect to Indian defence, but also act as a warning to the increasing Chinese naval presence.

It is absolutely poetic. An example of beauty. A symbol of progress. A massive achievement of engineering. A tribute to Indians.
 
Yes. I am still talking about The Linker aka Bandra Worli Sea Link. Didnt matter that it took me twenty five minutes to get on it. What mattered was that I got off it in the shortest fifteen minutes of my life.
 
For those fifteen minutes I felt I was not in the real world. There was something about this monstrosity that enchanted me and I couldnt take my eyes off her. The glistening black road helped by the light drizzle was a perfect contrast to the cables illuminated by brilliant white lights. It transcended me into the surreal.
 
It was anticipation that took me till I reached the portion enforced by the giant cables; and when I did reach them I could not stop looking up. The cables looked like they were suspended in mid air with the support of the bridge and not the other way round. I now can totally understand everyone who took a U turn to go back on it just to have another look.
 
It was midnight and this was already a local attraction. Dont know what tourists will do. This is much more than a bridge linking two destinations to reduce traffic. This is a symbol. A symbol that will mean so many different things to so many different people. To me, it reinforces what Dr. Manmohan Singh said (he was quoting Victor Hugo) before presenting the 1991 budget, "No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come". Yes, I am in love with that idea.
 
That is what this bridge means to me.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I am currently working at Patni Computer Systems Ltd as part of my Summer Project for my MBA course. One of the things that Patni is known for, apart from being one of the leading global providers of Information Technology services and business solutions (this from their website :P), is the awesome transportation service they provide their employees with. The transportation consists of a fleet of buses on contract which follow particular routes every single day. And when I say fleet of buses, I mean a fleet which can rival that of a small city's (say my home city Thane) Municipal Transport (TMT) service! OK I might be exaggerating a little bit, OK quite a bit, but you get the drift.

Once the day is over, it is fun to see two dozen buses, in the white and brown livery, leave all at the same and make their way out of SEEPZ one after another. I know what you are thinking, I was just ranting about their huge fleet of buses and now I am talking about only two dozen buses! Actually, they have close to 30 buses at their office in SEEPZ and similarly they have offices in two other locations in the city. So that works out to quite a lot of buses traversing quite a lot of routes.

The route I take from SEEPZ comes to Thane via Powai. This route passes through the flyover which goes right over the Larsen & Toubro (L&T) campus. I like this flyover a lot just for the way it has been made in between some of the buildings in the L&T campus. At this point, to my left comes the glass covered building of L&T Infotech; and finally I come to the core point I want to make.

Atop this building, every single day, in the evening twilight, I see two men getting down a hoisted Indian Flag, the Tricolor, the Orange-White-Green, fluttering in the wind! And it is one of the most awesome sights I witness. And before I know, a smile comes to my face. I wish more companies would hoist a flag. It is not just about having the Flag atop your building, it is about the emotion behind it. It is about telling everyone, that we are an Indian company and we are proud of it. If it were upto me, I would not only put up the flag and tell the guards to hoist it and get it down every day (which L&T does), I would give this PRIVILEGE to a different person every day. Imagine the precedent one would be setting by doing this. I understand that things like you having the building for yourself and other such issues come up, but they are too trivial.

Taking this a little broader, I don't think there are enough Flags around anyways. Flags to us have become a symbol of the Independence and the Republic days only. I have bought myself a small cloth Indian Flag that I am really proud of. I know there are many issues attached to this, the fact that by law, you cannot hoist a Flag unless you have permission. But I remember a few years back when someone was arrested for hoisting the Flag at his residence and he defended himself and won at the Supreme Court! There some absolutely valid reasons for this law, but there has to be some leeway given in this regard.

For now however, I guess atleast the corporates should Unfurl it!