We have no branches

There are many shops by the name Aggarwal Sweets that sell sweets in NCR region. They use the same font for their name on a red-background in their signboards. Sometime you might find multiple Aggarwal Sweets in the same locality. The ambience inside these shops is very similiar to each other. They have different varieties of sweets. Besides that, they have a big tawa (frying pan) to make different types of chaats and another big pan to make jalebi. Similarly, there are a few Evergreen Sweets in Noida (one in Brahmaputra market, Sector-27 and another in Sector-41).

Initially I thought that these Aggarwal Sweets and Evergreen Sweets are some chains. But if you read there signboards carefully, you'll see one more sentence somewhere below there names: We have no branches!

(This was a topic of discussion in my earlier lunch table group in Cadence Noida. I'll write about my lunch-table group sometime later.)

Riot

At about 9:30am today, Parthajit called me and said that there was some accident on the Bhangel road. He asked me to take the Expressway while going to office.

It was about 10:55am when I was at the T-point from Sector-82 to Bhangel road. I saw some crowd; which I thought is quite normal at that place. But when I approached the crowd, I saw something crazy. It was actually a riot! A frenzied mob stopped a bus and asked the passengers to get down. They went berserk and started to attack the bus with lathis and stones. There were already about 6 or 7 cars including mine. Mine was the first car facing the mob. Those people threatened us with stones. It was difficult to take an about turn. Somehow I could take an about turn. Then I took the road by the side of sector-82 which reaches the petrol-pump. But I saw crowds all along the road. Then I decided to come back home.

I'm still very frightened. At one point, I thought that I'd leave my car and just run away.