Ahmedabad

We're in Ahmedabad these days - Aman and I and a friend of mine - to attend a couple of conferences that I'll write about later. We came in on the Gujarat Sampark Kranti -- air tickets were too expensive and it didn't occur to me untill it was very late that I could ask my office to sponsor the trip because I am presenting a technical paper in the conference and have my employer's name all over the "about the author" write-up.
In any case, the 2nd AC journey was comfortable enough but for a really boring character we ended up having as an unwelcome companion for the enitre part of our waking travel time.
This guy had the fourth "birth" in our coupe -- the other three obviously being the three of us. This was an AC marketing guy working with an MNC and completely frustrated with his life, job, and everything. He had a firm beleif that IT people had very little work, no pressure, and unnecessarily bloated pay packets. A myth I did not even try to clear up him... and the entire duration, he kept trying to ask how much my salary was in different rounds of "involuntary interrogation" sessions he had with me.
He had a firm opinion that he should have an opinion about everything that everyone else was talking about around him and so, he will poke his fairly ugly and very fat "whatever" in any conversation that the three of us will try to make.
By the end of it Aman was so bugged up with this guy that she stopped recognizing that he even existed in that space -- complete ignorance of all actions and words -- but anyway by this time, it was time to get down.
We had someone pick us up from the station and delivered to the house of someone we hadn't ever met in our life earlier. These were a family friend of Aman's father. It is a nice and comfortable house and the people are really nice. Preeti, our hostess, has been taking care of us, having us dropped and picked up from the conference venue everyday and taking us out for shopping and dinner -- all this in the middle of her kids' terminal exams. I couldn't imagine doing this ever....
And "Baa" has been cooking really tasty guju breakfast for us.
Aman went and shopped for Lehanga Cholis yesterday and has plans for more today.
We're eating a lot of Guju food and yesterday, we had "Kathiavarhi" which is food from Saurashtra -- I didn't know the difference or even the fact that a "KathiaVarhi" quezeene existed untill yesterday.
We haven't done our usual tourist stuff so far on this trip -- visiting famous/historical/significant places of the city -- I guess that'll happen on another trip. We have our hands and "tummies" full this time round.