India Insight

With just six months to go before India hosts the Commonwealth Games, some are already wondering whether New Delhi is loo-ready for the sporting extravaganza.

The capital is preparing to host more than 100,000 foreign visitors for the October Games, seen as an opportunity to show off the city as a major global destination.

Authorities have started worrying about the thousands of tourists — especially when it comes to answering the call of nature.

The sight of people urinating by the roadside is so common that residents turn a blind eye to the problem. But it’s not the lasting memory of New Delhi the city’s tourism department wants to give visitors.

To make it easier on the bladder, authorities will soon launch a Delhi “loo-map“, one that will inform tourists where public toilets are located.

What’s common to a banker, a dancer and a former U.N. under-secretary general?

Answer: they are all contesting the general election in India.

The main battle in the polls from April 16 to May 13 this year, as in years past, is between the centre-left ruling Congress and the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. A loose alliance of smaller regional parties has formed a Third Front, as well.

But Meera Sanyal, the country head of ABN Amro Bank, is not aligning with any of them. She will contest from South Mumbai, an upmarket locality and the main business district, as an independent candidate.

I was stuck in a traffic jam on one of New Delhi’s busiest roads, taking in the sights and smells of vehicles idling in all directions, when my cab driver turned to me and asked — “Are you going to buy the Tata Nano?”

It’s a question thrown at me several times over the past few months and each time the answer has been “No”.

Tata Motors is launching the Nano, the world’s cheapest car, on March 23. Bookings open in the second week of April and the 100,000-rupee car is slated to hit Indian roads before July.

I will have to respect the Indian Standard Time for once.

I was to meet a friend at five in the evening on the day of the serial bombings in New Delhi. But the meeting got delayed — she could not leave office on time and my office elevator kept me waiting for twenty minutes.

We were chatting about good times together in college, how classmates have done well by themselves and making plans to catch up with other friends at the café inside a popular bookshop when the bomb at Barakhamba Road went off.

I had only read reports of how bombs exploded near cafes as people sat there sipping coffee discussing mundane things in life or shopped for household goods or just walked by. Never had I imagined that one day I would find myself in such a situation.

Three days after the weekend serial bombings that killed 22 people in New Delhi, I find the general atmosphere of the national capital almost abnormal in its normalcy.

One of the blast happened right across the street on which the Reuters office is located.

Colleagues who were working on September 13 told me the impact of the blast at Barakhamba Road shook the building and unsettled flocks of pigeons nesting on rooftops of adjoining high rises.