employee with an upcoming healthcare organisation and we started staying in this flat ,when gurgaon was still coming up in the year 2000.
( I remain grateful to my highly placed mentor who helped me get the assignment )
Gurgaon was quite deserted those days and even a cab driver would fear coming this far till sector 56 ,at night .
Shepherds from Rajasthan would often come here in winters with their flock of sheep and build their temporary huts on the large tract of vacant land ,just behind our flat .
It reminded me of Aryans having moved from Mediterranean to India almost 2500 years ago, since there was no fodder for their cattle back home in winters .
Whenever it rained ,I enjoyed sitting in my small balcony to watch rains on the open landscape
.
It has all disappeared since then , over the years and a number of buildings have come up on the vacant land .
We had our parental property at Ambala cantt, where my younger sister , a divorcee from 1987 , but employed as a lecturer at a local college ,stayed with her school going daughter .
She was fortunate having stayed with my old parents, looking after them financially and they supported her and her daughter till their demise in 1997 .
My younger sister was teaching mathematics as a lecturer at a local college and go by small two wheeler called Luna and then by her scooty ( a clutch free two Wheeler) to her college , nearly 20 kms away from our home and taking private tuitions in the evening at home or correcting mark sheets of her students .
After our parents death , we decided to sell this house so that my younger sister could construct her own house near to her college at Ambala City and I could use the money to pay up the loan that my elder sister had taken for our Rail Vihar flat .
We took some money to buy a motorcycle for our son so that he could be mobile ,while I was away to my office daily .
A very peaceful sharing of proceeds from selling our parental,property happened among three of siblings .
My wife always felt that the entire proceeds should have come to me as a son
But I was absolutely clear in my mind that the proceeds had to be divided in three equal parts .
Delhi has been built and rebuilt over the last 1300 years starting with old Delhi during Mughal period ,Tughlakabad made by Mohammed Tughlak and Mehrauli as well as Qutab minar constructed by Slave Dynasty in the year 1298 and then Britishers building New Delhi towards southern side as Lutyens Bungalows and Viceroy house which is now Rashtrapati Bhawan , where India's Prseident stays
A large flow of people from all over the country , extended the Delhi metro boundaries on all fronts towards eastern Delhi as Trans Yamuna or Noida and Greater Noida and towards west of Delhi as Nrayana ,Shalimar Bagh ,Azad pur and going towards Sonepat in Haryana .
Population has been on the increase and people shift from smaller towns from all over the country to Delhi for better job opportunities and better life styles with good infrastructure around . With Haryana border and UP( Uttar Pradesh ) border as well as Rajasthan border on its three sides ,Delhi has now become Delhi- NCR Viz, National Capital region .
After shifting from Chandigarh,we all along stayed at south Delhi for our children’s better education facilities and good infrastructure here ,compared to other parts of Delhi .
Off and on we stayed at Bangalore,Chennai and Mumbai for short periods of time and feeling well settled in a Company leased waccommodation at south Delhi .
Owning one's own flat was to become difficult with escalating costs every year .It wasn't easy to take bank loans even those days , compared to the present times .
Gurgaon was a small village and new Gurgaon was now developed by a real estate builder known as DLF .They built DLF in phases and developed modern glass office buildings ,attracting a lot of multinationals to shift their offices here .Independent bungalows of different sizes and small flats were built for public . Railway and Defence also built flats for their employees at Gurgaon .
Hospitals came up slowly and later on big supermarkets choked the roads of Gurgaon .
Young Boys and girls now had some place to go to and chat at a coffee shop .
Previously they had to go to Gautam Budhha park to get privacy where police would always disturbed them.
Comparatively , Mumbai has huge beaches , where these young ones go and sit in privacy , but not in Northern India .
Over the years, Gurgaon has grown as a modern township of India with a lot of multinational companies and their employees shifting here .I always felt that it was a part of a mad rat race going in a certain direction and finally choking it completely .Like all other major cities in India ,we have acute water shortage in summers and electricity supply is like a vagrant boy who keeps running away from his home .
Commuting from Gurgaon to Delhi or Delhi to Gurgaon has become quite painful process for employees in the morning and towards the evening hours .
Smart builders have built society flats with power generators and underground water tanks , so that residents have 24x7 electricity , water supply and security guards , above all .
There came a time in my career when , I had no job and could not pay the high rentals at Delhi , despite my best efforts .I ate up all my savings during these years , when my ex colleagues were taking easier loans and moving into their own houses and here I was hunting for a job .
We stayed in this small but cosy flat for six years and still recount the good times we had at Rail Vihar, till 2006 .
I got a good job as a General Manager at a local leading healthcare company and was entitled to buy a big branded car but decided to go in for two smaller cars ,one for myself and the other for my family to use when I was away to my office .Although my wife drives car but my son used it more often .
My daughter had passed out her masters in Mathematics from Delhi University .
She was a bright student all through her academic studies .
A highly systematic and responsible child , who never let us bother, as parents , about her studies .
She was an introvert child from the beginning and very responsible for even small things in her daily life .A teacher at her play school used to call her Little lady and she was exactly a like little lady from her childhood days .
Children have their little brains and hearts and whatever they hear or see in the family, gets registered in their mind very fast . My daughter never said anything but kept a lot of her pains in her tiny heart , which I was to learn much later after our separation .
Parents should be careful in the language they use , while fighting with each other or in various arguments, since children may not say anything but keep registering these small incidents in their hearts life long .
This shapes them as adults when they grow up .
There is a serious dichotomy in India on the shift of children from their schools to college
