Last morning in Delhi
Last day in India- technically we leave tomorrow but the plane leaves at 3 am and we will head for the airport around midnight. Hope to get E and J to sleep around 8. Today we are going to visit an old graduate student of my fathers from the 1960s. He lives in the Delhi area and apparently has a collection of 6000 cacti in his house. Should be interesting. I remember him quite well from my childhood- he was a fun character then and sounds the same when I spoke to him on the phone. He asked me to bring recent pictures of my father- had some emailed and in the business center at the hotel we were able to print them in color on high quality paper- best business center I have encountered!
After that visit we also hope to squeeze in the Nehru Library and Museum and the National Museum. J is not a huge fan of museums and may sit these out to do homework
Yesterday we toured around New Delhi; saw some of the government buildings. The British built an impressive home for the Viceroy (now the home of the President) with a grand approach flanked by beautiful red sandstone administrative buildings (the real power is with the Prime Minister, not the president- we are not sure yet what his/her job is). We visited a Hindu temple, a park, did some shopping and visited Humayun’s Tomb, which was built a few years before the Taj Mahal and is a precursor and has a similar style, but the exterior is redstone instead of marble and it is less…perfect. But impressive. At Humayun’s Tomb there were many groups of school kids in uniforms- they took an interest in E and J- just kids on a field trip being silly. E and J got a kick out of it. I am sure people think E and J are older than they are- the age cutoff for free entry into museums, etc. is 15; if it was 12 or 11 we would have had to produce birth certificates.
When we got back to the hotel there was quite alot of hubbub. There was a meeting at the hotel that included many high government officials, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the President, all the ministers, etc. There were soldiers every 1/2 block or so on the street for a couple miles on the approach to the hotel, and at the hotel there were Delhi police, soldiers, and what looked like Indian secret service guys. The soldiers looked very professional (according to my sources, drivers, the military is well respected; the Delhi police not so much- a corruption scandal unfolded during our visit involving illegal kidney transplants that also involved multi crore* bribes to the Delhi police). We hung out for a while outside the lobby, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Prime Minister; J especially found this fun. It was quite a scene- government ministers coming and going in little white Ambassadors with blue lights on top, the hotel guys trying to keep the usual hotel traffic going at the same time. Many soldiers taking into walkie-talkies. There was a metal detector set up in the lobby on the way to the large meeting room. We never did see the PM. They had a tent set up at another entrance and I think he came and went out of site, or at yet another entrance.
My pulse on Indian Politics comes from our drivers; PM Singh seems well thought of – but there is a concern that he does not make too many big moves without consulting with Sonia Gandhi.
When we meet local people here they usually initially assume I am an IT guy here on business (says a lot about the booming IT economy here). Guess this means I don’t look too old, or too stupid and appear somewhat nerdy. I can live with that.
* One Crore = 10,000,000 rupees. One Lakh = 100,000 rupees.
