Strange feeling in a strange country...

After a few things that happened in Gujarat, I no more feel that I know Ahmadabad – Gujarat, as I used to. It’s a place have grown up close to have had friends, have chilled out, spent my most boisterous days in. This is not the best blog I would have written, though it was something which needed expression for me, so just penning down an attempt of becoming a stranger in the city which has become strange to me.
Even as I write this blog – in a min bus a loud spoken, tobacco chewing idiot looks over my shoulder and I catch him reading over screen of my laptop. I give him a very ugly look at what he is doing, in a way enough to suggest that it is most unappreciated thing.
Yes so this is how Ahmadabad keeps annoying me these days. Any way with a lot of conviction, I try to become a stranger and rediscover the place to overcome my biases; this for all reasons has not stood the test of events, though my shot at it. When I landed the beginning of the week, had decided to drop all the unpleasant feelings I had about the place and give it a new try. Make my way through city as I would operate in any other city which was not known to me.
To begin with I have this very critiquing taxi driver dropping me to my destination from the airport, who was talking about the general attitude of the people and how annoyed he feels with the growing indiscipline ( in this case in traffic). He asks me more specifications on where I have to be dropped and I tell him about a petrol pump in the area which was landmark. Ahmadabad has had this, long time back, of having petrol pumps as land mark. He asks me which one and tells me that 3 more have cropped up in the area. Then we talk of times when the one I knew was the only one which was there in the area. He goes nostalgic sharing about the changes the city has gone through , further driving me nostalgic enough to the times I have spend in that area with a bunch of friends. Some pleasant memories flash back.
Later in the evening I join one of my extended family and we plan to have eggs for the evening. As I am from Pune, an egg based menu would need shopping not more than 5 minutes of distance. But, yes for sure I braced myself. As I with my relative spend more than 15 minutes on the bike; I am being told how he has identified this one egg shop in one of the corners. We go to this lazy old shop, and I order eggs. The assistant waits for the owner to ask him to give them to us and he also hands over a black plastic bag, so that it would not be identifiable what is that I have purchased. The next hunt is to buy some good bread. So I guess the city has grown in terms of size and the diversity of brands and now I just got to know that Ahmadabad has just been identified as the 3rd fastest growing city , but I guess it still does not have diversity and multi-cultural growth in its plans.
The city for sure has become very machoistic and women being assumed more dispensable, my confidence of traveling alone in the city which had shaken in between in late evenings is slowly growing. Some of the administrative aspects really take you by surprise; the infrastructure development is something which is really noticeable. But you scratch the surface and people tell you how the gap between the ‘have and have nots’ has been growing wider. I don’t know when for me this city will just be another place that does not matter or I will be able to drop my difference with it. But I guess my experiment as a visitor in the city seems to be helping, just that acting bit doesn’t come easily to me.
Signing out form Ahmadabad, till the next time.