Saturday, June 05, 2004

SAT 2 Woes and a Visit to "India Shining"



OK, so the SAT 2 didn't go all that well. I got royally jacked in Writing, unable to finish my essay, and messing up grammar completely. I'm sure that you'll have experienced the same on my blog, but the way I see it, who needs grammar when you have MS Word, eh?

Maths was better than I expected, and I might pull off 750, but again, just might.

Chem was the silver lining, on what was quite literally a cloudy day. If the good lords be willing, I'm getting a nice 800, it was that simple. Tiddly om poms.

After this unholy event, we went for dinner and afternoons entertainment to Damini's house, where she fed us well, and slaked our thirst, and kept us in much merriment.
Unfortunately, we were afterwards dragged off to this sodoff hell hole called Gurgaon, and to its unholy chapel, the Metropolitan Mall.
The Mall is a terribly boring place, and is designed for people who like to shop for clothes. It has all of one bookshop, OM Book Shop, which has 4 shelves on cookery, 3 on fiction, and 1 of those fiction shelves is stocked entirely with multiple copies of the entire works of Paolo Cohelo, which, lets face it, suck. The Alchemist was a decent enough read, but the rest are just quite terrible. The childrens section is also quite large, and filled with little kids who are at about Groin level, and there's no need to go into how dangerous that can be. Little kids have a habit of running around a good bit, lets just leave it at that.
I did not as much as notice a music shop, or a technology bazaar, but lets face it, places where two whole floors are dedicated to clothing aren't exactly going to be big on computer goods. The only music the Guppies probably listen to is Remixes, and the new Rock-Pop nonsense, thats got a lot of glaring and blaring, but not a lot of content.
Another decent reason for avoiding the place like the plague would be that its apparently a common hangout for my favorite school's denizens.
Basically, the only reason to "hang out" at a mall would be if you've got no electricity at home, and you need decent air conditioning, to prevent melting. Since BSES has taken over, this is happening less and less frequently, at least at my residence. For the few times it actually does occur, I'd advise going to the pool to take a dip, trust me, a mall is not worth it.


Now, call me an envious dilliwalla, but I just can't stand the place(Gurgaon). Its too artificial; they say that its like a little Singapore in India, but its not. Its Gurgaon, its a created township, that stinks of every created subarban paradise in the world. Cities, you see, have character, they have charm, the have a certain pizzaz that simply cannot be recreated, untill you decide to found a city, and not a suburb.

Basically, give me Dilli anyday, or give me Bombay, or Bangalore, or Chennai, or London, or Singapore, or any city in the world. I'm sure each will have a charm of its own. Just don't give me some builder designed subarban concrete paradise, with high rises to nowhere, and Guppies galore.

You want an example of planning that inculcates charm, head on over to Lutyens Delhi. Its the trees really, you have to have trees. And the architechture. Furthermore(I'm obssesed with this word now), its got something to do with the fact that the buildings generally aren't more than 2 stories high. Thats the way they should be.

No comments: