6yrs ago when i first came to Bangalore, I was pleasantly surprised on seeing what the pics in all the travel guides promised..Bangalore was really the Garden City of India..The only color prominent in the city (other than black and yellow of the autos) was Green..The weather was truly British..Chill in the morning..Pleasant at noon..Chill in the evening..And i never could tell if it were summer or winter..The roads were broad and clean..Squeaky clean..I loved taking walks on those roads..I even used to catch a BMTC bus to nowhere and back..I loved exploring the city on my own..Life was so laid back here..People were friendly..Buses were empty..Roads werebordered with green strips..And you had long stretches of it to enjoy the view out of the bus window..It was such a pleasant change from the hustle bustle of a spoilt brat city as Delhi..
But then again, that was 6yrs ago..
Now, I'm working..A bike has become a necessity..Auto's are too rude and buses are too pushy..I had always heard of the term 'Population Explosion' but i actually got to experience it first hand living here in Bangalore..Every year more and more people like me have started pouring into the city changing the city's Garden City image to a Silicon Valley one..The s/w industry was at a boom in the '03-'07 period..That meant more coders and decoders..That meant fatter pay cheques..That meant more people flocking in the city with their families..That meant more and more cars and bikes like mine on the street..Even though we pay the highest tax doesn't mean spend at all..While in college, we used to see at least 4 new cars and 5 new bikes getting their Pooja's done everyday in Bull Temple..If the 80's was all about flower power, the new millennium is about buying power..
Today I got a mail in by inbox which read:
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Subject: Yet another traffic jam on
People are delayed in reaching office because of that – Tom, Dick, Harry…
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Reading this I couldn't help but thank god for my silver beast and the new tricks that I've learnt on it..I still explore new alternative routes thanks to the never ending jams..I've learnt how to dodge pedestrians while riding on the foot path..I've learnt how to have an interesting SMS chat with friends while waiting for the red lights to count down from 180..Sneak in a call tucking the phone in my helmet while the traffic moves at snails pace..And most importantly..I've learnt how to go in and out of the maze of cars..I have learnt to hone my physics skills by judging the minimum banking angle and speed required to make through a gap created by a 4555 mm Innova stuck in a jam and a 1525mm wide Santro parked half on the road which is barely 6.5m long..
Doing it day in and day out, I've become so good at it, I'm confident that I can easily thread a needle with my bike now..!
