This is a place that will dwell in my heart forever. I have spent the 25 most wonderful years of my life here.
Baroda is the commercial capital of Gujarat.
A small city full of palaces and forts built by the late Maharaja Sayaji Rao , its a cute little city with a right balance of business, education and sightseeing.
unlike Ahmedabad, its less polluted, unlike Bombay less crowded, unlike Pune more sophisticated in terms of infrastructure and buildings. But It has a flavour of these three cities in terms of cosmopolitan crowds, shopping malls, restaurants etc.
Some of the popular sightseeing places in Baroda are Ajwa Nimeta (a miniature version of Vrindavan gardens), Kamati baug (which has a zoo, museum, planetorium and spectacular clock etched on the ground, still ticking away), EME temple (an aluminum temple of Lord Shiva maintained by the army officers) and other old palaces like Laxmi vilas palace, Nyay Mandir etc.
Baroda has a cosmopolitan crowd though dominated by gujaratis. The localites are very friendly, hospitable and fond of festivals. All around the year, Baroda celebrates Uttarayan (kite flying day), Garba (a nine night festival of dance and music) and other regular festivals like Holi, Diwali, Ganesh chathurthi etc.
Barodians love to socialize, celebrate festivals and be merry. Neither very ambitious, nor very easy going, Barodians are a mix of simple yet fun loving people.
Weather in Baroda happens to be one of its not so positive traits. Baroda has a dry climate, its unbearably hot and dusty during summer, winters are not very severe and overall the climate is dry.
Unlike Pune and Bombay, Baroda does not have too many colleges. Everything is a part of Maharaja Sayaji Rao university.
M.S.U (as it is popularly called) offers many courses and degrees from Arts, Commerce, Science, Engineering to others like Home science (one of the top ranked programs in the whole of Asia), Mass communication and other courses.
Maharaja Sayaji Rao made a rule to offer free education to girls which increased the chances of women education by leaps and bounds.
Even today in most faculties the semester fees is just about 60 to 80 rs. for girls ( this amount is the curriculum and tuition fees, keeping in league with the current economy. ;) )
The college atmosphere is full of fun and friendship.
There are not too many incidents of brutal ragging, eve teasing and other kind of teen menace here. Everything is relatively controlled and under order.
I have been a Barodian , the last 25 years and I have always spent my evenings hanging out with my friends till about 8 or 9 and sometimes even 10. I used to ride home in a two wheeler and find myself reaching home safe all the time without a single untoward incident on the road.
I have also never really experienced any kind of eve -teasing or any bothering blank/crank calls during my stay.
When I listen to horror stories about these topics from friends and cousins in Chennai and the North, I realized how lucky I am to have lived and raised in Baroda.
Baroda also has a lot of eating joints and hotels like Express hotel are a benchmark for an extravagant mouthwatering gujarati thali.
Overall Baroda is a very interesting place and a colourful place to live life.
I wont trade my years in this beautiful city for the world !!!!!