The Kite Runner - Book Review

After a long time, probably after I read 'The Life of Pi', here's another book which keeps you engaged till the end. Its a sad and tragic story of a boy from Afghanistan. Its a work of fiction by Khaled Hosseini and his first one, did this in 2003. He is from Afghanistan.

The book starts with a story of a boy in Afghanistan in a well-to-do family with access to English DVDs, good food, Mustang, a influential father and most importantly a divine friend. The book is named 'The Kite Runner'as this divine friend is a great kite runner. A kite runner is someone who runs and loots the cut kites. Amir, the rich kid and the Hasan the poor kid. The story moves easy and well in the beginning with details on Afghan life and mostly about Kabul before Russian war era.

It all funny and good-read till Khaled makes the first blow where Hasan gets badly treated by a group of rowdy boys. Wont tell you the actual thing but I was very shocked and I actually stopped reading this for a while. It seemed like a big effort to again pick the book and resume. From then on the story turns and more tragic thing start to happen. Amir gets into that guilt mode since he could not save Hasan. Then the war happens and they have to flee to Pakistan and then later to US. Amir has lost his mother very early and his Dad was never too excited about Amir for he was more of a creative kind with little or no interest in sports or more manly occupations.

The story then moves leaps n bounds with Amir finally moving to US, finishing his school there, finding a girl, comes back to Pakistan to meet an old friend of his Abba. Its a not a thick tome but Khaled has been able to add so much that you keep engaged and connected. Infact in last 100 pages, there are many new twists and discoveries. Its not only a story of a boy by now and rather takes you to society and a country. In last few episodes so much happen that you start to get nauseating at times.

The finish line has not been decorated too much, it sorts of end on a subtle note. Nothing great happens in the end, probably a realistic end to a heroic story. If you dont like reading tragedies then avoid but if you are interested in reading human relations, those secret aspects of ourselves, the innates then do read.

There is movie on the book and is getting released shortly so read the book first before watching the movie.

Overall Rating - 4/5

Fluid Lounge Bar - Mosaic Noida

There used to be this old hotel called 'Shipra' just opposite sunehri market or Atta as more popularly known. In its place has come up a new one called Mosaic and withit comes a new lounge bar for Noida-ites called 'Fluid'.

Its on the back side and has a very trance-party kind of entrance. Not a very large place, at two levels. Its all white with plush sofas strewn around giving that top luxury feel. Infact there is not much furniture apart from these plush sofas and chairs/stools. Basement is more suited to have a private party but I doubt whether they would give you the whole space.

I always had beer so really can't say on how they do in terms of cock-tails but the collection is decent and you get all the usual ones here. I went as part of group and for a conformation of 35 persons, we got it at 1050 per head for unlimited drinks + snacks (two veg, two non-veg). Staff is polite and responsive. For additional 250 you can also club in the dinner but for a normal walk-in they wont offer the dinner and you would need to walk-up to their another restaurant called 'Latitude' to have food. Snacks were average.

They play all kinds of music, usually loud but nothing special about the music so Superstars would still beat them fair-n-square on music and food quality.

All in all a place with a different decor, same liquor, expensive but worth one visit.

How to reach - Reach Sector 18 of Noida, NCR. Ask for Hotel Mosaic and then ask for Fluids.

Om Shanti Om - Review

Rating - 3.5/5

Ok. So finally I managed to watch this movie. Probably one of the most talked movies in recent weeks. SRK himself admitted that there is not a single TV Channel, Radio Station, News Paper, Magazine etc etc where he has not given interview or has not missed any opportunity to promote the movie. So much so, that when he was there in T20 World Cup Finals early this year, there was hue and cry on him using (abusing) every appearance of his as a promotional event, he was reported to have been distributing music CDs, which is fine I guess. I always happened to find this amusing piece on Saakshi's blog which I feel may not be enough researched. To read it click here.
http://sakshijuneja.com/blog/2007/11/23/marketing-strategies-featuring-shah-rukh-khan/

Anyway lets come back to movie. Movie is doing very good. After beating 'Saanwaria' heads-down its doing brisk business and would do better then SRK's last movie viz. 'Chak De India'. I also wrote a review on that. Seems like I am getting to watch all this new movies :)

OSO starts with a well edited song sequence from 'Karz' where apna SRK is watching the shot being done by Subhash Ghai, it was really delightful to hear Kishore in his full steam, singing 'Om Shaanti Om' (the old, more popular tune). First 30 minute of the film go really really well, the quality of production is excellant, Farah seems to have a good control in the beginning, Shreyas is impressive, SRK is all overwhelming. Good comedy. So far so good. Next 30 minutes or so are sort of average. I personally felt that during this part, they were trying to establish this point of '.....you want to do something really from your heart....entire world conspires to make it happen....'. Paulo Cohello must be a happy man. During this time, when SRK has a close-time with Shanti (Deepika, she is fabulous) , somehow those real deep emotion handling was , you know, not really happened well. I was expecting to be SRK during this time, a time when actor does something really close to what you feel and then you start to live this life. Farah just gave away, SRK was not giving much time to Shanti and the whole '.........when you love something.....' philosophy doesn't stick too well. I think this is the time when the movie would ideally have stuck with the audience but it was sort of lost.

The next 1 hour or so is pretty Bollywoodish, not much fun except that song where you are served with so many of yester year starts. Its really fun and satisfying to see Dharam Paaji, Jeetu, Rekha and almost all the new breed, wonder where was AB. SRK dies, comes back, is a star, usual stuff.

And then finally time for good to win over evil. So the villain is trapped, old Shaanti comes back as new Shaanti, those spooky stuff. Last reel. The actor-Shaanti is caught by villain as the fake Shaanti so he challeges her and finally the real bolywood happens. Old Shaanti who died comes back and makes the chandelier fall. You tend to real wait to have a finish.

so all in all a decent entertainer, more so because of SRK, Shreyas and Deepika. Some of the things which were really odd were

1. SRK1 dies when he was young but not very young. So his mother must be 50ish. He comes back after 20-25 years and his mother doesn't look more then 60.
2. Shanti1 is a super star. When Shanti2 comes, no-one really says that she looks same as Shaanti1.
3. SRK2 is at least 30 years younger to Villain, his prev-janam Mom, his old friend. But after couple of reels he start to again talk-behave-boss like SRK1.
4. Villain kills Shanti because he fears that he would be bankrupt. Later he makes more money by getting much more insurance cover and marrying Mittal's daughter. Mittal was shown to have agreed to get his daughter married because he has put tons of money in the movie. So if he is killing Shaanti (which means he is also killing Mittal's hard earned money), how come he gets all.

If you can think of more, add your comment.
But then its bollywood :)

'Do Disturb' Regsitry

A country which has more phones then water hand-pumps or clean toilets or almost every other thing really needed a 'Do No Disturb' registry. This is effective from Sep1,2007 and all telecom service providers need to maintain this registry. If you are registered and you get a call then you can complain and there are fines for first fault and greater fines for subsequent faults.

So far so good.

There is no single registry so its a sort of pain, more so when in future we are talking about no portability and so on, but better then not having any thing.

So why I am writing it all here, we all know it, whats new. Well, couple of weekends back I was driving at about 100 KMPH on a not so great highway, between Ambala and Zirakpur, the other important thing was I was driving a big car and the power-assist of brakes were not working. Which means that I was much more alert and tired because it used to take lot of effort to stop the car at times. It was early morning, other passengers were either sleepy or dis-interested, so amid all this a bulb flashed and I thought that why not have a 'Do Disturb' registry. Instead of asking everyone to get added, we would rather do the opposite. It would be nightmarish for tele-callers since the default would be NO, and I doubt how many of us would take the pain to add them selves to 'Do Disturb' registry.

Noble thought.

The other aspect of this could be that there could indeed be folks who do not mind an occasional call for a bargain-deal or about an exciting housing project. And probably by adding some inducing-factor, we can actually motivate people to get added. This inducement could be in the form of
- Get added to 'Do Disturb' and get 15 SMSes free
- Or Get added and receive three caller tunes free

Once such a database is up then we can give access to this DB to telemarketers for a service fee. Also mechanisms could be put in place such that a subscriber to DoDisturb doesn't receive more then 3 calls a month or a some golden no. To scale this system, we can have ip-telephony software and one can call only using that s/w so we also rope-in telecom providers. I am sure if I create such a registry today, we would definitely get some good ideas and can evolve and refine this.

But I think its a decent thought to be pondered more.

Caspian Bar and Restaurant - Noida

Overall Rating - 3/5

We had lunch at Caspian Bar and Restaurant, a not so old chip in Sector 50 market in Noida. This market is gradually coming up to speed but its still looks and feels like old-world (pre mall area) shopping complex with blaring gen-sets, all kind of vehicles, cartons, congested alleys and so on.

Since its close to my place of work, we were there to celebrate a colleagues birth day. We were 11 of us. This place has two level, lower level being more of bar and the first floor as a family restaurant. I think the restaurant can house 40 odd people, not too many but not too less as well. The decor and interiors and not impressive but decent. The staff is polite but not polished, probably they would benefit from some hotel-training.

Some of us had beverages (alcoholic as well else) and the report was not too great. They have happy hours but no happy hours for cock-tails, which sort of takes the fun out of happy hours. The drinks are otherwise priced ok. 150 odd for a bloody-mary is not exciting but thats what the market price is these days. Indian beer bottle costs about the same.

Food is right priced but the potion size is small. It hits all the more since its served in this real deep containers which actually is a set of two containers , the top one being not too deep.

Service is ok. It still takes them quite a white to fetch that extra butter naan, probably kitchen is a little afar.

All in all, a not too bad place to go but nothing great to write home about.

Eden Kitchen & Bar at Noida - Review

In recent years Noida has seen many malls coming up. It all started with a small tiny mall, which noone now remembers though, at Atta Pir junction called SAB Mall. And then came the big one called Centrestage mall. All the action was on Sec 18 till Shipra Mall opened in Indirapuram and then we had Shoprix Mall in Sec 61.

I am giving all this background just to better understand the overall setting. Shoprix mall has a food court with Otik, Sagar, Domino's and others serving hot dishes and then Pulse opened, a express restaurant. Incidentally even after about two years of its opening there was not a single water-hole so no beer vendors and one section of eating-out public would always had to do with Juices and Colas.

In this setup, a new restaurant-cum-bar opened called Eden and boy, it started getting folks, for the simple reason that it serves alcohol. So thats the long background :) and here comes quick review

1. Liquor is good since they dont make it. So if you are stuck in Shoprix and want a few chilled beers head for it.
2. Its very expensive with a bottle at Rs 175 and cock-tails at Rs 199 with no happy hours for Cock-tails.
3. Ambiance is dark and sort of hmmm, something like 'Ice Cubes' of Sector 18 but thats ok, a personal choice.
4. Food is just ok.

So go for liquor, if you are really looking for a new place, else the joints in Sec 29 are still very good.

'Chak De India' - Movie and more

Last week, I watched 'Chak De India' at Spice PVR. It was an evening show, there were 9 of us, all from the same company, same team, and we carry a damn good rapport within ourselves, a swanky plush setting, large popcorn packets, nice and clean setup, terrific air-conditioners, pretty girls and lots of same-team humor-fun and more. Probably a brilliant starting band setting, we were already euphoric, before the real band came on stage, the one with so many girls and getting-old SRK, Shahrukh Khan, along with some good games of our national sport. Everything just fell in place, infact I missed to mention that it was on 16 August so all of us were just out of 15th August, the 60th anniversary of Independence Day and with the advent of still-counting TV channels, a sense of patriotism, a sense of being on the verge of doing big was already pushed-in these tiny minds of 9 people, everything was in place, just everything and it would have taken something really earth-shattering for us to not like the movie.

So did I not like the movie ?

No, I did. Its a wonderfully made movie, it caters to Mass Market Indian sensibilities, its quick, there are no songs (did we have songs in Ab Tak Chhapan ? ) , lots of sports, beautiful girls and most importantly SRK.

So did I not like the movie ?
Well, to be honest I was as engaged and as engrossed in those 2 and half hours that I didn't think of anything else and for any film-maker, that itself is a decent barometer of success so I must have liked it.

So did I not like the movie?
I did, c'mon, its a good movie. But its just another good movie and probably nothing beyond that.

Oh, so you didn't like the movie, haan, say it, c'mon, did ya or did y not ?
I did but would it have done equally well if it has not been SRK ? Probably not. SRK is god in these times and he did so well. He should more of these roles, more of Swadesh, more of Paheli and certainly more of 'WE-can-do-it' kinda roles.

To cut this (read to cut this crap), I liked the movie and I can watch it again. I would recommend it any day. Lets talk more about the movie now.

CDI is a movie about loss of face and resurgence of a young man. Kabir Khan misses a Penalty stroke against Pakistan in a world-cup match and loses the trophy. Being a muslim, he is blamed for being with them and loses his esteem. After few years, he gathers his lost esteem, gets courageous and offers to train the Indian Womens Hockey team and claims that he would actually make them win the world cup trophy. An offer which non one can refuse (remember Godfather) so the management buys into that and He actually does that in the end. Losely based on the life of Mir Negi, a goalie who conceded as many as 7 goals in a similar match and then goes to train India women hockey team which actually wins a gold at Commonwealth tournament.

The movie runs like a charm with SRK in full control and probably everyone is hinged on to see what magic this guy will do to pull this off. This is one big thing where Shimit (director for this movie, has done Ab Tak Chappan) has been wildly successful, even though there is no secret, it keeps you thinking on 'how will this bunch will do it'.

So far so good, no songs, some real beautiful tracks played in the background. I liked the one which is ".... maula meri le li meri jaan..." or something like that. No lady love, no skin, minimum to zilch action, lots of sweat and lots of hockey.

Ok. Why did i sound like someone who was not impressed ?

So here is the reason. When you go and watch a movie, that movie stays with you for a long time and as you think more about it, you tend to discover things which probably you have missed while watching it.

CKI has done so poorly on developing the 'Characters' , not a single 'character' has been established well enough. Lets start with Kabir. Who is kabir ? Just a captain who lost a penalty stroke and everyone started to dislike him, so much that he was not only thrown out of team but no one knew where is he and what is he doing. What did he like, where were his team mates, it was just ONE penalty stroke. Shakil was India's one of the greatest Penalty Stroke specialist ( I am talking about the era of 1985 - 1990 or so) when Pargat was captain and boy he missed too at times. He was a muslim as well. Mir left as many as 7 goals and thats really too many. But for one goal or one miss. Where did he go ? Was he someone who we all thought as a resilient quiet guy or a one who would joke around and is a team person. When Kabir comes back, he is shown as gritty, firm and a hard-brain person, remember how many times he said OUT in first workshop. If he is someone like that then why didn't he fight when he lost that goal. Was he tamed, or was he shooed away, or was it just that some Tom Dicky Harry-er called him a cheat. What was the reason which director would throw to the movie watcher to like the character. Probably none.

Lets go further. The team which played had so many girls. If we leave Preeti, Komal, Vrinda and Vidya, who were other girls. The only thing which was told was they come from various states. But what do they carry with them. If you have someone from Sundargarh (Orrissa) then how many of us know that you have someone who knows hockey by heart because everyone plays hockey there, with bamboo and those wooden-cloth-padded balls. When Preeti takes the ball, did you feel assured that now the ball is with the champion, we will get the goal. Or for that matter, why and how Vrinda break the man-to-man shadowing in the game against Korea. If Kabir was so certain of not dropping Vrinda from the squad then was it just her seniority or something else. What did each one of these players carry home, who was Aaliya aur Nethra reddy or Soi-moi or Prasad.

calm down, calm down.

I would possibly save my further thoughts for some other day but probably down the line people wont remember the details of the movie and the big reason for which you feel the excitement is because its a movie based on a game.

Yes, I did like the movie but then I wont buy a DVD of it. :)

Independence Day - 15 Aug 2007

Everyone was making a big thing out of this year's ID. It is our 60th independence day so that would make it two generation old. In my apartment block, we had the traditional flag hosting and I clicked some pics. This is from my 8th floor so its not clear but nevertheless.


And here is the video, courtesy youtube. I do not have the complete thing but the guys actually did fire from guns, so as to salute and then did a small march.




There was sweets (Jalebi) distribution to each household later.

Lovely Complete Rainbow

Smita was driving back home when she called me on my cell to look out of my office window, I work for Adobe India and my office has this large glass windows which overlooks the fields between Adobe and Spice World Mall, So I looked out and after some directional tuning, I could see a Rainbow.






I went out and I could see the whole bow, guess for the first time in my life, I have seen such a complete thing. Being in Photoshop Elements group, we have some of the better cameras so some of us rushed to the terrace and Swapnil clicked this.

Lovely. There are two of them. This is shot from Adobe Sec 25 A Noida and the road which you see is the one which connect NTPC with Chauda Mode.

Enjoy !!

Donnie Brasco - Movie Review and more

Last weekend, I watched 'Donnie Brasco'. I have not heard about the movie before and so did Smita who picked the DVD since the cover had Al Pacino and Johnny and she thought that I would like it.

And boy, I liked it like hell. Brilliant work by Mike Newell. Its a 1997 movie about a FBI undercover Agent Joe Priston (played beautifully by Johnny) who gets into mafia, gets close to Al Pacino who sort of acts like his mentor, falls in love with Al and after a while he finds himself so much into mafia-dom that it gets difficult to get out of it, for the simple reason that if he does then Leftie (thats the name which Pacino carries in this movie) gets whacked. Its so simple out there.

Mike is an old chap and one quick search on google will let you get up and think more about him, off late he directed 'Harry Porter and the goblet of fire' and I just came to know that recently he finished 'Love in the times of Cholera', an amazing love story by Garcia Marquez, king of reality-n-illusion. To read more about Mike, click here

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001565/#director

Coming back to movie. It starts with Joe trying to get inside the gang by feigning as jewel-guy. After the usual tricks (where Al Pacino tries to validate his jewel knowledge), Left (Pacino) starts to like him and introduces him into the gang. He gives him a new name 'Donnie'. Some of the gang terminology

"....while introducing if I say.... meet Donnie, a friend of mine..." then it means that you are a in-guy or someone to be trusted and all that where as if you say
"....meet Donnie, a friend of ours......" then you are a made guy :)

So Donnie joins the gang, unlike hindi movie he doesn't have to do any stunts to win hearts. The movie goes with usual Mafia killings, new bosses, whacking etc etc. Over time Donnie gets more and more involved, his relationship with his wife starts getting bad, then to worse. Donnie is now a big cat among them, he starts to neglect FBI. His wife wants to get out of relationship and goes to a counselor. All this while, Donnie and Al Pacino gets closer and closer. When Left's son gets admitted to hospital (because I guess he took more coke then he could possibly swallow) Joe spends time with Left.

The beauty of the movie is the gradual change in character of the agent, from a normal agent in the beginning to more of a Mafica guy in the end, Joe fights the battle. The character has been developed so well that at all points of time you can feel the dilemma which Joe is having over whether he should expose the mafia and get 'Leftie' whacked.

Finally in the end, FBI catches him, gives him a reward of $ 500 for his good work. FBI reached out to Mafia to tell them that its all over. They don't believe that Donnie was a rat and think that FBI is bluffing them. In the last shot, Left gets a call, he tells his wife that it might be a long evening, gets off his ring, watch and other stuff, most likely he is....

Its based on a true story and if you search on Joe Pristone or Donnie Brasco, you would find lot of text.

Watch it

The Google Story

Recently I wrote a review on 'The Google Story'.
Over last few weeks, I read 'The Google Story', yeah its an old title but Google is still hot I guess. Its very well written and reads like a fiction. I personally do not know much about David A. Wise, author of this book but a quick google search yields good results and after reading 2 minutes, it comes out that he has done big things to write home about.

Read the full story at
http://booksvoyage.blogspot.com/2007/07/google-story.html

Cobra - What a fine beer

My little daughter Pihu was off to my in-laws last friday and that gave me and Smita a valid reason to check out a smoky eating joint. She also had some work where she has to see how the 'HT Interacts' event is going on (she works for Zee and it was sponsoring some part of it) and that was in Deshbandhu Gupta Apartments, Kalkaji. I am familiar with the city but that in no way means that I can find some place quickly, though it does mean that it would take a much worse traffic to get me frustrated then someone who is not been here. So we found the place, saw the event and then started to scour for a good eating joint.

We zeroed in at Ego's at New Friends Colony, referred as NFC in eating-out circles.

Egos is one of those old places who have lot of old wooden furniture and those old sofa-seats, round low height wooden tables and bar stools with non-granite table tops. They serve continental, italian, sort-of-indian food and a have a very decent collection of wine and liquor. The staff is not-very-young, much more calmer, they play Eagles (Hotel California) and not ver well lit, a very good enough setting for a dinner-for-two.

A cock-tail costs 270 bucks so Smita ordered a Cosmopolitan and I chose the easy option of Indian Lager Beer (Rs 155 a bottle). We told the guy and he asked me whether I would like Cobra instead of Kingflisher which I asked for to start with, after a brief non-decisive-gestures I asked him to get that.

And BOY what a beer it was. Simply amazing. I am not sure that whether I have had Cobra before or not (I was in UK for about two weeks few years back and its a UK based beer and we had beer every night but I was young and stupid so I dont remember whether it was Cobra or Corona) but it was well worth it, it really drove me home and I guess all the international awards which it has won are all real. Its a UK based beer but I checked out the bottle and it seems its avail for Rs 40 a piece and is being bottled somewhere in Alwar. At Rs 40 a piece its a steal and my hunt to get few cases of this beer is on.
go and have a glass of Cobra beer and enjoy it. - http://www.cobrabeer.com/

- jha (Read my travel blogs at www.ghumakkar.com )

Did Himesh always look like this ?

Did Himesh always look like this ?

Strange thought. I am now used to of finding Himesh in his traditional stuff and a cap, always and I often used to wonder that when this guy gets his cap off, probably never.

So I thought more and my common sense, whatever of it is left after all these years of testing all kinds of code (you can read some of my software testing tips at http://test-software.blogspot.com), tells me that there must be a time when this middle class born Gujarati would not have spotted a head-gear.

So I hunted and found what, well the old Himesh look. Look at some of these pictures and you would get a good break from the monotony of this current look.

Just this and I actually wanted to write this as a post, well I thought why not. He is riding really really high and with every new day I am growing a liking for his songs, my two year old daughter Pihu now recognizes him, probably I taught her that as part of ever-educating-juvenile-dad, and also knows that he is the guy behind songs like 'ek baar aaja aaja aaja aaja aaaa jaaa' and 'a aa ashiqui mein teri'. He has been around long enough to carve a world for him, infact he directed music as back as 1988 (Bandhan) but was hit only by 1998 with Pyar Kiya to Darna Kya. He did few TV sops as well for Zee and our motherly channel DD. So its not an overnight or couple of years of hit movies to get where he is now. Enough of my justification for liking him.

Coming back to my daughter, I really wonder whether she would be able to recognize him w/o his head-gear. Enough Himesh, go get a shaver, you look much kewl-er and neat without this.

It happened in India - By Kishore Biyani

It happened in India is a candid and close book by Kishor Biyani, the king of retail as often called by lot many with every growing day. This book which is sort of a young biography of Kishore is co-authored by Dipayan Baishya.

Kishore or KB as often referred to in the whole book starts with telling the Big Bazaar story esp the 'Sabse Sasta Din' campaign of 26 January 2006 and it reads like one hell of a fiction. I wont leak the story but how much you can imagine a grocery store can make by selling Atta, rice and low priced tops and jeans. They do sell TVs and Washing Machines but these are not the ones which get picked up in large nos. Ever heard someone who wanted to buy one AC, actually ended up buying three of them. This happens all the time for folks who go to Big Bazaar to buy a T-Shirt or a Juice can or even a shampoo.

Coming back to fiction, the first story is very well sold to readers and that sort of binds you to read the remaining book. Some of the things which KB talks about are how there store are never a few steps up guarded by a inhibitive security person or on how not to have long aisles and how the concept of having mini-bazar is so much common sense. One of the things which everyone keeps telling us is that when WalMart or other such biggies come here with their expert inventory systems, people like KB will go bust. Well after reading it doesn't seem like as KB tells us stories and stories on how we need to Indianize things.


After the big bazaar story, KB tells us about his background, how his parent came from Bikaner and setup shops in Mumbai as traders. He is a Marwari like some of the other big businesses but he didn't chose to do what his parents were doing. He dabbled in many things, from tailoring patlooons (yeah thats what it was called way back) to setting a fabric factory.

You would be surprised to know that KB even produced a movie called 'Na Tum Jaano Na Hum' followed by another flop and decided to stop. He talks about the future and the 'future group'.

Pretty easy and good read for all. He finishes with another equally fascinating fiction which they pulled off next year on 26 Jan 2007.

Read it.

More land development near NH58

More land development near NH58

Just back after a 2.5 hour drive to a new area which is being developed. Its near NH58. If you are coming from Delhi and going towards GZB towards Anand Vihar, Dabur, Vaishali, Vasundhara or from the Shahadara side then you hit Mohan Nagar (yeah, of Mohan Meakins fame). From Mohan Nagar, drive towards GZB and you will hit Hindon, cross the river and look for a exit on the left. Its a kuccha road, sustain the drive for 7 odd KMs and you would start to see the development work.

This kuccha road is billed as the swanky 6 lane expressway which will connect to NH58, the road that leads to Roorkee and then to Haridwar. It will take a while to get this work done but once thats done, you would be able to avoid a better part of GZB. Currently there is nothing much in this area, some villages, couple of re-hab colonies and an Ashram here or there or few nurseries.

Some of the builders are Garg builders (River Heights), KDP Infrastrutre, Grand Savana from someone, Ashiana etc. There is no big builder of repute (ATS, Supertech, Unitech, Ansals, KrishnaApra etc) who is active as of now. The quoted price is Rs 1750 per sq feet. I guess if you go with the money in your pocket, you should get it for Rs 1500 and withs other goodies thrown in like Free Parking etc.

Does it make sense to buy - Well, it depends on your risk appetite. My personal safe recommendation to first time house buyers would be to avoid this place for some time. It might be worth buying the same flat for 1800 per Sq Feet, 6 months from now if that means more clarity, bigger builders or simple more peace of mind. But if you have a house and if you are not in too much of loan then do evaluate it. I still think that the big realty boom is yet to happen, so if you have got some spare cash, then go and take a look yourself. You might get rich :)