subject: Rains in Delhi [print this page] August in Delhi has been quite pleasant this year what with it raining every other day. But life has been anything but pleasant thanks to the city's non existent drainage system. This has meant that a city with more cars than Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai put together has had to turn their beloved vehicles into amphibious craft capable of negotiating over land and water.
Talking about having more cars than the other three metros combined, did anyone notice that those three cities have given up their original names in favour of names that are supposedly rooted in the soil and uncouth and provincial Delhi carries on with its original calling card. Before one preens and pats oneself on the back in this game of inter-city oneupmanship, I just remembered that we have already renamed most of the streets of Delhi, replacing the original British names with traditional Indian sounding names. The most glaring example of this re-naming affliction is of course the renaming of Connaught Place as Rajiv Chowk.
I had thought that nobody would ever refer to Connaught Place as anything but Connaught Place or CP, but I was wrong. The Delhi Metro proved me wrong. Rajiv Chowk is the hub of this sprawling and ever expanding network and nobody who travels by the Metro calls it by any other name than Rajiv Chowk. In fact if you were to ask the man or woman at any of the token booking counter for a token to Connaught Place you would be met with a blank stare. As a matter of fact a whole new generation of people is growing up that knows of Rajiv Chowk not for its colonnaded piazzas, but for the immense metro station. Which is just as well, for the way Connaught Place looks today, thoroughly ravaged, dug-up and sand blasted one would be able to shoot a movie over there about the siege of Berlin at the send of second world war.
This brings me to the much debated subject of the Commonwealth Games. I am absolutely certain that barring a few minor exceptions the games will go off without a hitch. I am quite sanguine that most of the facilities will more or less be in place by the time the games begin, and Delhi will shine for not only the period of the games, but for a few years after as well, until we mess it up again. Or perhaps not. India is changing, and who knows we might just endeavour to keep it that way, just as we have manged to do with the Delhi Metro.
