The steeplechase that is Connaught Place has roused the athlete in me. I love jumping over mounds of rubble as I emerge from a Metro station escalator. There are water obstacles whenever the skies open up too. The subway, where the palmist and the trinket-seller pestered me, have gone, thanks to the Commonwealth Games. I just dig CP.
My reflexes have improved, since I have to evade speeding autorickshaws and cars and cover my nose at the same time. So petrified are autorickshaw drivers of CP's jams that even a R30 premium over their turbo-charged metres can't persuade them to go to Delhi's clogged heart. They say the digging work would continue for another year. By then, even the die-hard Connaught Place aficionado, with a heavy heart and choked throat, would bid goodbye to his favourite city haunt. Here's why. To reach Berco's, the landmark restaurant, you have to weather a dust storm and slide into a narrow lane overlooking a cavernous pit the size of a swimming pool.
Rodeo, another favourite with the music-loving crowd, seems hidden from the inner circle owing to hideous construction signboards.
The Clock Tower, a restaurant where the wife and I listened to Kishore Kumar numbers during our courtship, has been demolished to make way for a stadium under construction. And no one dares venture across the debris to go to Gole Market, once the chief minister's constituency.
{{/usCountry}}The Clock Tower, a restaurant where the wife and I listened to Kishore Kumar numbers during our courtship, has been demolished to make way for a stadium under construction. And no one dares venture across the debris to go to Gole Market, once the chief minister's constituency.
{{/usCountry}}The Games organisers may love digging CP. But others dig it more than they do.