It can happen only in India.

I am not that pessimistic as some of my friends and relatives are who have travelled abroad are about state of affairs in India. Especially in areas of infrastructure etc. Twice when I returned from abroad I was asked questions by few of my collegues as what makes you take decision to return? Why don't you live nice life here? I keep on arguing with them that we back home may not have best in the class facilities but they are not worst as well. But Monday was really a depressing experience.

I started for office at my usual time at around 9 am to reach between 9:30 - 9:45. But there was something in store for us. Usually it's me and my brother travel together to office (some efforts towards green earth - of course there is money saving as well), but that day we called up another guy in our apartment who works for the same company as he was leaving around same time. So we were three started for office. Till we hit the Mumbai - Banglore bypass at Chandani Chowk, it was all okay. Soon we started seeing that traffic was a bit more. Thought it might be due to some slow moving vehicle ahead. By the time we reached HEMRL at Pashan, it was completely at halt. My brother got out of car, walked some distance and realised that it's choc-a-bloc traffic and no way we can get out soon. We simply came out of the car, locked it and stood road side under a huge tree in scortching heat. It was much better than sitting in baking car. It was about 30 mins and then the traffic was on the move. We reached near the Hinjewadi bridge and again same scene. We decided to take the alternate route which was a bit longer but were hoping to have a moving traffic there. But to our misfortune we had a slow moving traffic there as well. Finally it was 11 am when we reached office. Distance @ 25 kms from home, time taken @ 2 hours.

Well the pain is not about the time taken due to traffic but it is the reason why the traffic was blocked. We had the first citizen of country in town yesterday. Mrs Pratibha Patil was in Pune for visiting HEMRL, attending function to celebrate 125 years of F C Collage and some other functions. The highway was blocked for traffic during peak office hours for the same. It is disgusting. It has wasted time / energy of so many people you can't imagine. And what did you get out of that? Our city mayor and University Vice chancellor was made to sit in auditorium due to "security" concerns. Having said that there were changes accommodated for Mr Shekhavat on the stage. We are unable to understand why the city residents are hold for ransom for such high profile visits. We have all due respect for the position and the person holding that post. But it is unfortunate if they are going to affect us in this way.