Eastward Ho!

There was a time that I never expected to travel much east of Delhi on work, and while over the past five years several trips have been made to Hong Kong and China, going east of Delhi inside India meant travelling to Uttar Pradesh. But in the past two weeks I've managed to find myself in Calcutta twice (once for family-related stuff) and I just got back from Bhubaneshwar. Of course, this didn't involve a Airport-Hotel-Conference-Hotel-Airport trip but a dictat from HQ to travel to the back of beyond and meet some really unsavoury chaps. And I had a blast. And far too many prawns when I should be trying desperately to lose weight - I've even started hitting the treadmill. Surprisingly, I reached Bhubaneshwar the day after the Bandh and got a distinct feeling that few urbanised parts and most coastal belts of the state have swung quite a way to religious nationalism, and that is evident at the scale of the protests there. But I wasn't there to cover the riots, so I won't get into that.
More later...