The first thing I would tell anybody about Indore is its climate. Though closer to extremes, it is pleasant for 10 months out of 12 (except for 2 months of summers). It is pretty dry with good monsoons and has a wind that is known by a special name (shab-e-malwa). For a person who has spent a lot of years in Bangalore, Indore came as a pleasant surprise coming very close to Bangalore w.r.t to its climate.

Another thing I recount is the sweets and namkeen shops with the amazingly huge variety. I was totally overwhelmed by the sheer number of different kinds of mixtures. Mixture itself is a mix of most other namkeen kind of things, and I thought there could be just one mixture; and here are shops (Om, Apna, etc.) selling atleast 15 different varieties. On the sweets side, if you taste one sweet a day, you will spend atleast 3 months in Indore! The people enjoy the food, and the business of Sweet is good. Being students of management, a question immediately rose in our heads, then why is there just one Haldirams? One Indore localite comes up with an answer: The cooks of Indore themselves can't produce the same taste elsewhere because the secret of the taste lies in the water.

Speaking of water, close to Indore is The Narmada; I met Narmada at Omkareshwar, she was intimidating to the say the least. After the experience of Kerala Rivers in my childhood, Narmada was like a goddess in rage (maybe at people erecting dams on her!).

Coming back to food, there is one other thing that really cannot be missed. And it is the ubiquitous but the simple and humble poha. It is called 'avil' in Tamil, and I for one don't like the way it is made in south. It is mainly liked by old people. But here, it became my favorite breakfast (and many others' too).

We are done with the climate, the food, and the water. Next comes the landscape. This is something of a specialty to IIM Indore. Our institute is on a small hillock and the landscape around our institute is fields and more fields. The view from the hill in the monsoon season is absolutely heavenly. Photos can't describe it (atleast not my photos…). And the sun, everyday during the winter season, we are treated to a surreal sunset; all the 'national geographic' type pictures come alive in front of you. All those "wisdom from heaven" type pictures are also replicated in this clear winter sky. I mean the ones in which sun rays come out from in between the clouds like a shower of rays. You may want to check out pics of sunsets at Joe's (2007 batch) flickr page.

Finally, we come to my interactions with the Indore people, thanks mainly to our marketing projects and Utsaha. The people of Indore are nice, honest, gentle, slightly innocent but open, progressive people. They seem to maintain a cool attitude to life.

After the niceties, the bad things about this place, are the usual complaints of infrastructure, transport, non-availability of things and shops (similar a metro) etc.

There are more nice things about Indore than what I have recollected here, and I still have more than 6 months left in this city, and I am sure to find many more.

  - Vignesh V J (PGP 2)