Crops in the Indo Gangetic Plain,Steam Engine,Abu Lane - 3

This is a sight you can no longer see. Maybe you would like to know that the names of those two little children in the foreground are Prashant and Priya. This is the city railway station. Read a leaflet from the Railway museum at Delhi. Use the browser back button to come back here.

Those were the days my friend , we thought they'd never end. They did - for steam engines - in May 1993. This is 1st Jan 1993.

What, no rush hour? ... Well you see most people here live on the 1st floor and have their shops on the ground floor. For work they just take the stairs, instead of the tube, rail or highway and they manage to do away with the one of the major diseases of the post industrial revolution world. You almost believed that did you? Think about it.. the rush hour is the creation of the industrial revolution. You see people enjoyed traveling by rail / automobile so much they were willing even to travel underground, and stay miles away from the place of work so that they could do it twice every day. Now it is the most switched off period of their day. Think I am joking? Guess again. I am seriously proposing that overlapping business and residential areas should not only be permitted they should be unequivocally encouraged. I am sure in the US they had Henry Ford and GM executives on their Town planning committees.

Sorry this is a fooled you picture. This is not Meerut, Mumbai, Delhi, KolKutta, Bangalore or Chennai. Even the Indian Metros are going to take at least 5 decades before they reach this slickness. This is Taipei( 1993 perhaps). They seem to have exceeded even Western regimentation ideals. Tell a self employed Meerut Walla he is going to be transplanted to a place like this and he will die. Mumbai is the place where all western ( latest) dictates are pursued with more vigour than in the West itself. Personally I would like Mumbai if they put in a wheat field in the cross maidan and had a mango orchard just outside Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus. I fail to understand why an Industrial mess is rated higher than a Rural mess.

1. The first picture is a field of wheat in April on the Meerut bye-pass. Looks great, but a lot of hard work and suspense goes into making it look nice and pay for the labor input. I understand that in the West it is bad economics to put trees in fields, here it is unimaginable. By the way when city dwellers ( 'Shahri' ) buy farmland they put up fences and walls, that too is illegal according to ancient traditions.
2. The second is a Sarson field lined with Mango trees on the right. Whoever said 'money does not grow on trees' must have known only an alley of New York or London. That is where it does grow here, and on the ground.
3. The third is a sugarcane field on the road to Lalsana Gaon. Want to feel as if you are the 'Monarch of all you survey' ? Then this is the place to be in. It will not be fantasy, as you may be the only surveyor.
   
4. The fourth is a bunch of Vikrams near the Sister's of Mercy Home. Did I say there was no rush hour here ? Well that is not entirely correct. There are many rush hours, starting from about 6 a.m. to well past 10 p.m. Loads and loads of village folk descend on Meerut for their purchases and to sell their produce, as well as for a host of other services. This flood of people is a major player in the Meerut economy. A similar function is performed by almost all towns in the entire Northern region. Towns like Saharanpur, Muzaffar Nagar, Khatauli, Modinagar Roorkee, Dehradun.
   Mention must be made about good medical facilities, a number of good nursing homes and good doctors , dentists. People come from as far as Uttaranchal and Haryana for them. Ultrasound , Catscan and even MRI ( Dhanvantri ) is available. Some nursing homes have the latest computer assisted monitoring devices. Also Meerut is less alienating to village folks than Delhi.
   Meerut is a great place for any company's regional office. A very good hospital has opened up ( in the last few weeks or so ) at the site of the old SWATI nursing home - it is a branch of the well known METRO HOSPITALS of Delhi.
5. The fifth is a smart village salesman ( bottom left corner ) he is selling stickers some of them religious in an upturned umbrella. Very effective. They did not teach him this technique at Harvard Business School for the simple reason that he did not go there.

And she shows you where to look ...among the garbage and the flowers there are heroes in the sea weed. There are children in the morning. They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever, while Suzanne holds the mirror
- Leonard Cohen

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