Friday, November 26, 2010

Ashoka Pillar and Headache Conference

I made another visit to the "Magnificant Discovery". The ticket booth was not yet open and the guard was not there either. I wanted to see the Ashoka Pillar up close. It is surrounded by a tough looking fence. I circled all round and could see some garbage inside the enclosure so I knew people had been inside recently. I tried to force open the locks, but had no success. After another circle I found that one of the rods in the fence was missing. There was enough room for me to squeeze in. I went all the way to the base of the pillar. It has plaster all over it except the bottom ten feet. The plaster had fine writing covering the pillar. There must be over a thousand lines of text. I was looking at the oldest written law of the land. King Ashoka had written his teachings, which were basically the law of the land. I read that there were graffiti on the column too. One graffiti was an inscription about the local king winning a battle in 1213!

On the way back I could not find the entrance/exit door. Here I was lost inside of the ruins. I found out that it is no fun if you are forced to stay in a place, even if it is a beautiful place. After another long walk to the pillar, I retraced my steps and got out.


When I returned, there was all this commotion in front of the medical school. So I made my way over and found out that they were hosting a headache conference! The whole place was beautifully made up! Once you were inside of that place, it was like you could forget all the realities outside of the medical school. The whole thing is being paid for by the drug companies.


 There were more drug representatives then the doctors attending the meeting.


I went to the registration booth and asked to be registered so I could eat at their lunch buffet. The food arrangement, as you can see, looked superb. The registration clerk took out the brochure and said the registration fee was Rs 4000/- (about $100). I was in no mood to pay $100, after having saved 12.5 cents on the entrance to the magnificant monument. I picked up one of the registration kits of some other doctor who had not shown up and told the clerk that I will use that, and if the doctor shows up, to call me and I will return his registration. She was not buying it. I gave up and moved on. Maybe I could just show up there at lunch time?

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