Millennium City
Gurgaon has been fancifully named Millennium city, but craftily, politicians have not specified which Millennium. I was thinking about it yesterday, and it's a toss-up between the 18th and 19th, but certainly no later than that.
We start with the premise that electricity has not yet been invented or is in its infancy as a concept. So our day begins with a powercut between 6 and 7 am, then the power goes off any time after 8 and comes back between 1:30 and 2:30 in the afternoon. It goes around 3:30 and comes by 5. It's then off again between 7 and 8 pm at night and makes a brief appearance before going off yet again between 8:30 and 9:30 pm. Since the nights are too cold to permit any staying up, we don't know for how many hours it's gone at night.
Then of course, paved roads were neither invented nor necessary in the 18th/ 19th century since people commuted on foot or by horse-carriage/ bullock cart. So the roads in GG have been made fit for those forms of transport; by first of all, the complete absence of public transport, and secondly the abysmal quality of roads, full of potholes and ruts.
Many years ago, when we had just moved here, we saw an episode of KBC, wherein a contestant, when asked by AB as to where he was from, stuck out his buck teeth and nasally intoned Gud Gaawan. The new, would-be-hip spelling and pronounciation of Gurgaon is not really suitable for the place we live in. I propose a shift back to the rural-sounding Gud Gaawan, as more reflective of its character.
We start with the premise that electricity has not yet been invented or is in its infancy as a concept. So our day begins with a powercut between 6 and 7 am, then the power goes off any time after 8 and comes back between 1:30 and 2:30 in the afternoon. It goes around 3:30 and comes by 5. It's then off again between 7 and 8 pm at night and makes a brief appearance before going off yet again between 8:30 and 9:30 pm. Since the nights are too cold to permit any staying up, we don't know for how many hours it's gone at night.
Then of course, paved roads were neither invented nor necessary in the 18th/ 19th century since people commuted on foot or by horse-carriage/ bullock cart. So the roads in GG have been made fit for those forms of transport; by first of all, the complete absence of public transport, and secondly the abysmal quality of roads, full of potholes and ruts.
Many years ago, when we had just moved here, we saw an episode of KBC, wherein a contestant, when asked by AB as to where he was from, stuck out his buck teeth and nasally intoned Gud Gaawan. The new, would-be-hip spelling and pronounciation of Gurgaon is not really suitable for the place we live in. I propose a shift back to the rural-sounding Gud Gaawan, as more reflective of its character.
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