Delhi - 2010

No. This isn’t going to be about the XIX Commonwealth Games to be conducted at Delhi. Twenty six and a half odd years since I was born was what it took for me to visit the Indian capital for the first time. A trip that lasted 2 nights and 3 days was indeed a very memorable one. I had the opportunity to attend the first ever India Today Youth Summit with the people who I have been closest to in the past year and a half. This post is going to be about all these.

Intentionally preferring the Rajdhani Express from Mumbai over flights to Delhi, so that we as a team could get enough time to discuss things among ourselves, we set out one fine morning from Pune. Ever since I was a child, long train journeys have always fascinated me, and given a choice, I would any day prefer a train journey over a flight journey.

Murphy’s Law always works!! Some wiring faults led to the power connection in only our bogie to be tripped for close to 40 minutes and that meant staying inside the coach without the AC. Other than this, there was no major hiccup anywhere and the train was infact ahead of schedule at all its scheduled stops including the destination New Delhi.

I had an opportunity to travel by the Delhi Metro as soon as reached Delhi. Impressed was I to say the least. Metro in fact has to be the best thing to have happened to Delhi in the recent past. Kudos to E Sreedharan and his team for executing such a complicated project in record time, which has benefitted people in a huge way. Metro perhaps has helped decongest the roads of Delhi to a large extent. It is connected to literally every part of the city now and even places like Gurgaon, Noida and Faridabad which is an icing on the cake. So much is the convenience of the Metro that I hardly travelled by road in Delhi during my 3 days in the city.

An impressive thing to be noted here is the way Metro is being maintained. I was surprised to note the cleanliness in every Metro station that I visited and every Metro coach that I travelled. No stains of paan were to be seen anywhere, nor were any waste papers, bottles or anything for that matter. All the infrastructure, seat cushions, gliders, advertising hoardings were really clean. At a minimum fare of Rs. 8, the services are quite expensive compared to the other modes of transport. But that doesn’t hinder people from using it. I have seen people from all classes of the society travel in the Metro.

That brings me to the crucial point here. It’s not the implementation of discipline that’s a problem. Rather it’s the willingness that needs to be there. It’s more or less the same demography of people who are present in every other major city in India. But can we think of a clean local train in Mumbai? Can we think of everyone travelling in Mumbai locals by paying the right fare always? I have nothing against Mumbai, in fact I love Mumbai, but this question struck me when I was travelling to and fro in the Metro lot of times.

The Youth Summit went on very well. It was very professionally organized. I had the opportunity to listen to my idol Nandan Nilekani among a lot of other speakers. Believe me, I was thrilled to listen to him and he was indeed very inspiring. Viswanathan Anand, Pranav Mistry, Saurav Ganguly, Katrina Kaif, Sachin Pilot, Chhavi Rajawat, Sanjeev Sanyal, Mukul Deora, Jaideep Sahni were among the prominent speakers of the day. One thing that was common between all the speakers was the simplicity that they appeared with and the modesty that they portrayed. In spite of being so successful in their life, each of them was down to earth and interacted with the 600 strong audience.

At the end of the day, I was one proud person having been fortunate enough to have got an opportunity to attend the summit. I would personally like to attend Youth Summits in the future, atleast for the next 5 years or so. Who knows, after that I might just be one of the speakers :P

Murphy’s Law struck once again during the return journey, this time with the engine of the Rajdhani Express. The train started half an hour late and arrived at Bombay Central an hour behind schedule. All said and done, it was a really memorable trip. Gobbling food all through the onward the return journeys, card games till late at nights – which actually can be good teachers of business strategy, teasing each other on loads of issues, some serious discussions on important issues and all this marked my first trip to Delhi. Would love to be there again soon, in a relaxed mode, with ample time at hand and enjoy watching the actual reasons why Delhi is famous for!!