I am just back from a 24-hour trip to Bhopal, my hometown and my mind is full of several nostalgic moments I experienced in the last 48 hours. It started with a taking a red-eye flight alone - it's been some time since I've taken one of these red-eye ones alone; last few years I've either travelled with family or with some colleague in tow. As a solo traveler, there's that eerie botheration that I may take a nap and miss some important announcement like the Gate of my flight changing or boarding being announced. While I've never had any trouble like this, but the anxious botheration is a part of travelling solo and I experienced this anxiety after a long long time.    Then, of course, the emotional rush of being in your city of your birth and upbringing hit me as I took a taxi from the airport towards my destination. When the Taxi guy took a road different to what I'd usually take to get around, I gave him some instructions, only to realise that roads and land...

Continued from here . Though Bhopal's claim to fame in bollywood remains the character of Soorma Bhopali potrayed by Jagdeep in Sholay, recently Bhopal has been the shoot location for a few bollywood movies . Prakash Jha who is shooting Rajneeti in Bhopal , said : "... he had come to Bhopal for the first time in 1997 for the promotion of his film Mrityudand which featured Madhuri Dixit, Om Puri and Ayub Khan [and] was impressed by the beauty of the city even then and decided to return to the city to shoot his next film.  Jha said Bhopal now has big hotels and good approach roads and that in the coming days, he may shoot at other locations in Madhya Pradesh." The point here was not to highlight the bollywood connection (of which there are many ... ), but to highlight that praise for Bhopal's infrastructure is not limited to commited Bhopalites like me :-). A quick peek at Bhopal's Wikipedia page would tell you that Bhopal is a promising city - for example the I...

Living in Mumbai, its not difficult to find people who have no idea even about neighbouring cities like Nasik, leave alone cities like Bhopal. It pains even more when people are all praises for cities like Chandigarh (which is a good city, but to be frank a little hyped) and treat Bhopal akin to a village.  Being born and brought up in Bhopal, one knows that this is a city with many positives; to enumerate a few: A beautiful landscape dotted with parks, ponds and lakes. The hilly terrain on which the city is built gives it a unique ambience - roads rising up and down the slopes, formations of row houses on ascending tracts, long winding roads along the lakes and parks ...  Superb infrastructure compared to the size of population it supports. Unlike most old cities in India, Bhopal has very good amenities - whether it is underground drainage or roads and traffic signals. Smooth roads in most arterial tracks Cleanliness in most of the new Bhopal areas is a lot better than other citi...