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Gangtok Trip – Day 7 – Walking In Gangtok

gautamsatpathy — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 03:43:35 +0000

April 17 – Day 7 – Walking in Gangtok

Today, the last day of our 3 full days in Gangtok, we had kept aside for the city of Gangtok itself. We haven’t seen the Flower Exhibition, the Handicrafts and Handloom Museum and a few other places.

We had a leisurely breakfast in the Mintokling Guest House restaurant. The service was bad, the prices high and the food passable. We had stayed away from the guest house restaurant on purpose because these places are typically low quality high cost. I will post a separate review on Mintokling.

I carried my back pack with a bottle of water, some biscuits and other snacks, along with my camera bag. Everything went over the shoulders leaving my hands free.

Our first visit was to the flower show which was less than half a kilomter from Mintokling and one streer higher. We had crossed it on our way to Enchyen Monastery the other day and I was fairly certain that I could find it again. We used one of the many staircases connecting the various streets in Gangtok to reach the street above Bhanu Path. From there it was a short walk to the park abutting the flower show. Admission to the Flower Exhibition was Rs. 15/- for adults with Bablu going free. The Exhibition is housed in a 50 by 30 feet hall, with moss covered galleries on the sides and artificial pond in the center. The galleries on the sides have burried pots with a wild profusion of flowers, orchids predominating. I am no poet and will not try to describe their beauty in words. I will let my photograps speak.

We spent about an hour at the Flower Exhibition. On the way out is a Sales Counter selling seeds, bulbs and Orchid cuttings. Padmaja bought some for my father. The share a common love for growing things.

From the Flower Exhibition we walked down to the Handicrafts and Handloom museum, a part of the Institute of Handicrafts and Handlooms. The museum is about a kilometer away, at the Zero Point of Gangtok, next to the Governer’s Palace. This too is a must see. The walk from the Flower Exhibition is picturesque and safe. Gangtok seems to have pedestrian walk-ways along the major roads.

The Handicrafts Museum is a small hall containing some excellent exhibits of the artisan’s work, some older than a 100 years. We spent about 30 minutes in the museum proper before walking around the rest of the Institute, to see the students at work.

After that we went to the attached sales counter. Padmaja bought some trinkets for Mamli and to give away as gifts. The sales emporium has a decent mix of handicrafts and handloom articles, including wool carpets, Sikkimise Paintings and wood carvings.

From the Handicrafts Museum we walked down to M. G. Marg, a distance of about 4 km. The walk wasn’t as pleasant as the one from the Flower Exhibition because of the heavy traffic and resuling pollution. At M. G. Marg we decided to try ‘The Taste of Tibet’ for lunch. A big mistake. It is a low end eatery and everything other than the Chicken Momos was bad. The fried rice was under cooked, the chicken curry looked and tasted bad. We ended up ordering cold drinks to take away the bad taste. Cheap enough and I think we made a mistake by not ordering the local dishes like Ghatak (spelling?), a broth with noodles, vegetables and chiken (or other meat or just plain vegetabless. I also noticed people make a meal of a plate of Momos which are served with a spicy cabbage salad and a clear vegetable soup.

After lunch, we took a cab to the Gangtok Ropeway, a cable car that links 3 of the Gangtok hills. a round trip costs Rs. 60/- for adults and Rs. 35/- for children above 5 years of age. The view from the cable car is spectacular! I have taken many photographs and hope they will come out okay. The ropeway is also a ‘must see’.

After that we walked back to M. G. Marg and spent some time just loitering around till it started drizzling. I found a Kodak Express and gave them one of my film rolls for development and printing. They don’t do 1 hour jobs but promised my the prints by 7.00 pm (it was then about 3.30 pm). Bablu and Mamli wanted icecream and Padmaja as usual was most agreeable to any idea involving icecream. There are a few ‘Softy Icecream’ shops on M. G. Marg and we selected one at random. I had a cup of coffee, priced outrageously at Rs. 10/- for a small cup of vending machine coffee.

After that Padmaja picked up another loaf of bread and a 100 gm pack of Amul Butter. I have never seen packets of Amul butter stored on shelves rather than refrigerated

We went back to Mintokling Guest House by cab and collapsed into sofas and beds. I don’t remember walking so much since my college days at IIT Kharagpur, and definitely not in hilly terrain.

It started raining very heavily about 5 minutes after we arrived at the guest house. The rain kept up till about 6.30 pm. I left to walk down to M. G. Marg for rhe photographs and something for dinner just before 7 pm. The roads were clean after the rain but the stairs going down to Tibet Road from Bhanu Path was a mess and smelled of shit. M. G. Marg glistened after the rains and I immediatly regretted not insisting on Padmaja and the kids accompanying me. I tried calling Padmaja’s cell without success (both our cells are AP BSNL, Cell One, post paid, on national roaming). I gave up after a few tries and went to pick up the photographs thinking that I would go back to Mintokling and bring them back with me. This was our last evening in Gangtok!

I then went looking for that ‘Rolls & Momos’ shop I had seen the other day. They only have veg rolls but I went ahead and bought some for our dinner. The rolls were good but not great.

I went back to Mintokling but could not convince the tired kids to go back with me again. I gave up and had a shower bwfore dinner.

Tomorrow we leave the Himalayas and Beautiful Gangtok to retun to the sweltering plains of Bengal and Kolkata. Then on to my home state of Odissa and the temple city of Bhubaneswar. The city our parents have made their home.

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Gangtok Trip – Day 2 – A Bengali Village

gautamsatpathy — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:49:38 +0000

April 12, 2009, Day 2, 3.15 pm:

Falaknuma Express stopped outside a small village in Bengal. A large crowd of men, women and children quickly gathered to gape.

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IBM Offers To Move Laid Off Workers To India

gautamsatpathy — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 05:52:13 +0000

IBM Offers To Move Laid Off Workers To India « LayoffBlog.com

Go work in India they say. Well it is to be expected. But will they come? And if they do, will they stay? We already see white faces in our offices, streets and shops. Not many. Just a handful but the numbers seem to be growing.

The Indian technology workers moved to the US to look for many things, money being one. Opportunity is another. The press of people competing for limited job opportunities is so high in India that children are taught to compete from a very young age. Without this learning they will not be able to survive. Imagine this – half a million students appear for the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) of the Indian Institutes of Technology. A few thousand are selected.

This very learning helps the Indian worker to shine anywhere in the world. And remember that the conditioning starts at a very tender age, in fact from Kinder Garten itself. So can the Americans compete in India with Indians for technology jobs? I think not. They don’t have what it takes to survive here.

It is not about the climate, the food, the dust and the 3rd world living conditions. If you are working in IT you can afford good housing, good food, good clothes, good transport. The good things in life. You can also afford to pay somebody to insulate you from the worst of the local conditions. A good driver for your car costs Rs. 6,000/- a month. That’s about $150/- a month. And the driver will clean your car everyday. And he will be available from 7 am till late in the night. He will work weekends too. A maid to clean your house, do the dishes, wash clothes costs about Rs. 800/- a month or $20/-. You can have people pay your bills, buy your groceries, deliver cleaned and cut vegetables to your door step. All for a few hundred Rupees a month. Total cost of insulation – less that Rs. 15,000/- a month. Or about $350/- a month. Very affordable. Even on the pennies-to-the-dollar salary that the LayoffBlog says is the catch in the offer.

So where is the real catch? Competition. Can the Americans survive the punishing work schedule that the typical Indian IT worker routinely puts in? Week after week, month after month. The day starts early and ends late. During the average work week I get about 3 hours of sleep everyday. And about a couple of hours with the family, if I am lucky. I am tied to my laptop and mobile phone the rest of the time. I sleep with my mobile phone under the pillow. Every morning I take it with me to the bathroom to check emails while I crap. I again use the phone to check emails and respond before I fall asleep. I survive on multiple cups of dark, caffeinated coffee every single working day. Towards the end of the week my coffee consumption can go up to 9 or 10 cups a day, each with two teaspoons of strong coffee in it.

If I don’t work at this rate there are many others who will happily replace me. I get a decent salary that enables my family to live comfortably. My children go to the best private school in the city and hopefully we will be able to afford the best college education this country can provide. I am comfortable. Not rich. But comfortable. But the pace is punishing.

Can you survive here, dear Americans?

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Who Killed The Children?

gautamsatpathy — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:04:40 +0000

My day started with the horrifying headlines of the death of 3 small school children burnt to death when their LPG based school van caught fire. The same tragedy left 8 other small children aged between 5 and 9 with serious burns. Rukayya, 5, suffered 95% burns.

Their school van was illegally fitted with LPG. No doubt to make an extra buck for the owner who used it as a private school van to ferry 12 children to school. These Maruti vans are designed to carry 6 – 8 passengers.

So who is to blame? The owner who cut corners for profit? The authorities who turn a blind eye to such operators? The school authorities who do not provide transportation and quickly washed their hands off? The desperate parents who trust their children to such death traps?

Today it was front page news. Tomorrow it will be forgotten. This nation where a few million children die every year of diease, hunger & accident has a very thick skin. Film actors like Chiranjeevi get headlines but who cares about a few small children who die a horrible death?

Times Of India Front Page, Jan 30, 2008

Another child died in a hail of bullets on the India Bangladesh border. Another young life lost without cause.

Does anybody care? Can we do something? Can we make this country safer for our children?

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