Soorat Unlimited

When Mom, Masi and Mamaji left for Soorat, I imagined the trio would return with stories from a different era - bumpy rides on horse drawn buggys and lambs squealing by gravelly paths. I was a bit surprised when their odyssey sounded more like a trip to Portola Valley. My distant cousins in Soorat whom I had never even heard of except, perhaps, while scaling the telescopic stretches of our genealogical tree, seem to have created a little self-sufficient universe for themselves there. One which, in many ways, emulates a Silicon Valley venture capitalist's home. A relatively close cousin of mine lives in the valley. He does not have a movie theatre in his basement. My mom saw 3 idiots for the 3d time in a private multiplex, and she feels inspired to build something on those lines. Sometimes, I wonder if it would have been easier to be a doctor, and to have owned a hospital of sorts. Even bankers do not make as much. These guys worked hard. They had almost as much as we did, if not lesser, when they started their hospital. Not just them, the entire town of Soorat is littered with luxurious homes.Thanks to the timeless gujarati spirit of enterprise, India might regain its "sone ki chidiya" glory someday, with Soorat as a diamond in its crown.