Ahmedabad!

Its hot out here at Ahmedabad city. It will be hotter in the next two months. Friends told me to expect higher temperature of 40 degree plus in the city by May. I had faced such dry heat for seven years in Delhi and I believe I could face here too without difficulty. However, since I was in Mumbai for the past four and half years where there was no such extreme temperature, I am a little uncertain how I will take it. Anyway, let it come!

We don't spend much time travelling in the city. Compared to Mumbai, I have more time for myself in Ahmedabad. But I realised that if you are not having a family, having more time for yourself only adds to your loneliness here. In Mumbai, if you are staying somewhere 35 kms from your workplace, including the time spent travelling between home to station and station to office, you have to spend around three hours travelling by train and taxi/auto everyday. You dont have much time to spend at home. Lesser lonely, I'd say! But you were more tired and could also not invest much time for your health.

I went to a nearby park one evening. The park looks good and it seems to me a nice place to take a walk. I took a walk that day for one full hour and I sweated a lot. I went for walk the next day, and I continued like that for the next three days or so. My laziness stepped in and I did't go out for a walk since then. I guess I'd continue it later. I started driving and tried to know more about the city instead. I drove to Satellite road, CG Road, Ashram road, SG Highway, etc and crossed some of the famous bridges over Sabarmati river like Gandhi bridge, Nehru Bridge, Ellis Bridge and Sardar Bridge. However, so far I didn't explore much of the eastern part of Sabarmati. In the western side, I went to Vastrapur lake, IIM and Centre for Environmental Education (CEE) which are located in the north-western side of the city and ISCON temple, fun republic and big bazaar in the south-western side of the city. NID, in the southeastern side of the (Western part of the) city is also one institute we always passed through on our way from Kohlapur railway station.

People do watch lots of Hindi movies. While most of the theatres show Hindi movies in a week, only 2/3 theatres show English Movies. This week, only Fun Republic and Wide Angle show (two) English movies. Last week, no English movies were shown at any theatres at Ahmedabad. While I hardly had time to go for movies when I was in Mumbai, here I watched a lot. Forced by circumstances, I even started watching Hindi movies alone ( I generally watched Hindi movies with friends), due to shortage of supply of English movies in the theatres.

On Sunday, I used to go to CNI Church at Victoria Garden in the evening. I happened to come across that Church when I crossed Ellis Bridge one day. Since then, I attended three services in that Church.

I have more to tell about Ahmedabad, but that will come later...