For those of you who are still unaware, I have been transferred to IMS Jaipur. I am not going to sit here and draw a pros and cons list because let’s face it – it is not going to make any bloody difference. I guess I will be joining sometime next week and till then I have to spend my time in the sleepy little town of Bharatpur. As Juhi says in the excruciatingly annoying Kurkure commercial – Tedha hai but mera hai. I always used to wonder that how can a town not evolve and the static nature of Bharatpur used to baffle me. I guess that is one factor I can blame my laziness on. I have spent most of my childhood here and I never noticed that many changes. However, this visit is different in some aspects as I have ample time to roam around.

I visited one of my Dad’s friend’s new house couple of days ago. It wasn’t exactly a social visit. He has recently purchased a flat in Jaipur and I wanted some more juice on the deal. As it turns out, the flat that he has purchased is so out of my budget that it is not even funny. He then gave me a tour of the house that he has built in Bharatpur and then I understood the difference in economic standards. There was a photo of his daughter, who I used to have a crush on as a kid, placed in the middle of a wooden structure next to an ottoman. Yeah! The guy is rich. Don’t bother, the daughter got married last year and is not there on facebook / orkut / twitter. I already checked. I just hope I did not linger too much around the photograph. Then he talked about property prices in Bharatpur and it was more than a shock to me. Land rates in an average residential colony are around 10000 to 12000 Rs. per square yard. Now to someone who is in tune with the realty market this might make sense but I know for a fact that land prices in the area that I lived in Kolkata were around 20000-25000 Rs. per square yard. Apparently there has been a surge in prices in the past two to three years in Bharatpur. The reason which is cited is reopening of CIMMCO wagons. It is the only big factory that the town had and I guess it was the biggest contributor to the local economy next to tourism. It had been shut down thanks to labor trouble but Titagargh Wagons, which is headquartered in Kolkata, has taken over. Disclosure: I own an inconsequential number of shares of TWL and I had no role to play in the takeover.

I guess that in the days to come I will put my camera to good use and visit the bird sanctuary. That’s the target for the weekend.

Cheers.