My Pug Marks

I have always been passionate about long drives. Sight of a meandering endless road in front & in the rear view is pretty exhilarating. However, with the increasing fuel prices and my Ford Figo Petrol being a big time guzzler - I haven't been able to follow my passion like I wanted to.  However, a recent Friday night got better of me and a bunch of friends and I decided to try out the new Yamuna Expressway and zoom of to Agra for an early morning visit of the Taj Mahal. What followed was simply legendary! My respect for the guzzler went up a notch as it hit a comfortable 170 kmph without shuddering or much noise. It was steady & handling was superb (that doesn't mean that the petrol bill came down!). Driving at almost 3 km/min with not a car in sight or rear view is something that one needs to experience himself. And when a car was actually visible now and then - it was an altogether different feeling to see it vanish at such a pace in the rear view - feeling ...

A couple of days ago, I was returning home after a mad binging spree from the same good old road. The Mehrauli Road, or as they call it fashionably these days; the MG Road. I have seen this road that connects Mehrauli to Gurgaon; change from a sleepy long isolated track to the buzz of commercial activity all along. I guess, it is these changes in the roads, the infrastructure along side them, that eventually change the entire city. This is what happened with Gurgaon. I have been using the MG road since I was in the fifth standard. That was 18 years ago. Those were the times when you could reach IIT from the IFFCO chowk in flat 30 minutes, if you drove fast enough. Fast, not rash. And now, it could take you anytime between 45 minutes to 120 minutes to meander the same stretch through malls, stray cattle, Metro construction and the ill-filled pot holes. So, while maneuvering for a spot to wait for the light to turn green at the Chattarpur crossing, a bright maroon Wagon R edged past me i...