the Bengaluru blog

Today morning the magic finally unraveled itself in full glory. Without any official brouhaha. I was the first car at the Sanjaynagar traffic signal. And when the signal went green, I zoomed from that signal to hebbal - all in less than one minute. Kudos BDA, yet another feather on your infrastructure cap. Good work done.

I just wanted to be sure that even the return journey was profitable. I left office at 5:40pm. After a hiccup of 5-7 mins at Nagawara traffic signal, I managed to reach hebbal flyover by 5:50pm. From there I clocked my drive upto Raj Bhavan and it was 12 minutes. Fantastic!

Erstwhile one had to spend about anywhere between 5 and 15 minutes in the stop and go traffic before the CBI magic box, as you drove from Hebbal, and another 5 minutes of harrowing bone rattling car breaking drive next to it.

Today it took 10 seconds to cross all of that mess. Wonderful. I can’t describe my feelings. Pictures convey more. See for yourself.

Technorati : BDA, airport, bangalore, bbmp, bengaluru, bial, blog, box, bus, cars, cbi, circle, concrete, devanahalli, dust, free, freeway, hebbal, infrastructure, jam, junction, karnataka, magic, mekhri, noise, police station, pollution, rt nagar, sanjaynagar, signal, traffic, vehicles

It seems to be that BDA is doing this out of self frustration, or desperation to meet deadlines towards making the BIAL route signal free. So much so that they are testing the uncompleted CBI junction by allowing vehicles to go through always in only one direction at any time.

Though the CBI magic box is a much better designed magic box than the BDA junction one (which by all means needs to get the “Worst infrastructure project of the year award”), one still cant understand how this magic box is gonna work. Lets try and do some analysis here:

There is one magic box between RT nagar entrance and the other side, and there is another more nearer to the police station side. one possible way of traffic entry and exit could be as shown below:

The question mark in this figure is the place where there could likely be a signal of some sort !! and maybe more confusions too in future! Whatever it is BDA, you have got the access to BIAL through somehow and thats probably what you would be looking at in future as well and not really bother how the other people would fight it out isnt it?

I for once want this magic box to be opened up real soon and I am tired of all the dust and chaos this junction is undergoing at the moment. Lets hope for the best!

So common BDA open up those barricades soon will ya?

Technorati : BDA, airport, bangalore, bbmp, bengaluru, bial, blog, box, bus, cars, cbi, circle, concrete, devanahalli, dust, free, freeway, hebbal, infrastructure, jam, junction, karnataka, magic, mekhri, noise, police station, pollution, rt nagar, sanjaynagar, signal, traffic, vehicles

Its about a month or two since the BIAL started off operations, and we have a handful of cab services that now ferry people up and down to and from the aiport. Of these two are appointed by the BIAL as official cab providers - Meru cabs (080 - 4422 4422) and Easy cabs (both seem to be from mumbai).

Both these providers have sourced Mahindra Logan cars from M & M in large quantities and I strongly believe this is the right option as the car is very spacious which is the most required thing for a weary traveller commuting miles together and for hours together. With a big boot, it only adds more value to use this car than perhaps any other car!

Add to this that these are chaffeured by drivers who wear proper uniform and are properly trained to behave with (weary) travelers and that the cars themselves have GPS so that they can be tracked for their subsequent assignments or in general on their whereabouts, and this makes the proposition of using these services pretty hassle free and safe. I heard that these cars have the option of automatically messaging the control room and getting deactivated if the drivers hoodwink customers in any way. I want my readers to confirm this though!

While these services are more point to point, there are two other services that are multipoint to airport on a sharing basis that costs a person just Rs.300/- onwards making that an even better proposition, barring the fact that the safety may be at question. Airlift and Zoom airport express services are two providers working on the sharing model and while the former operates innova cars, the latter uses tata winger cars for commutes.

For more details check the websites! And enjoy your drive to BIAL!

Technorati : airlift, bengaluru, city taxi, commuting, easy cabs, international airport, meru, traffic

I had written about bad driving and stressed out lifestyles in my previous blog post. This post is somewhat related to it closely. If you are driving on a road and you see a lorry stopped in the middle of the road with a twig of leaves sticking out of it like as if it were a flowering plant, then what do you make out of it? Should you assme the lorry owner is relaxing on the road? Well, welcome to India.

In India such a symbol means the truck has taken a hit either with another, or has a flat tyre, or perhaps even a flat axle or engine . It also means that this truck which you see has no immediate plans of being towed away from the accident spot and it also does not say anything about how many people it killed in that accident.

Take a break and come back tomorrow, perhaps it wont be there on the street. And the driver of the truck, well he has already been recruited by another truck company to drive and crash a different truck tomorrow. This is the biggest pity in India and Benglurur particularly.

If its a small vehicle its a HIT & RUN case, if its a large one, its a HIT & DRIVER RUNS case. The occupants of such trucks walk away stealthily into the crowds even before someone understands who did what at the scene of crime. And the police have no records of who is driving the truck, the truck companies have no records of who they recruit and there are also no records of the lost lives in these accidents. Everything is conveniently put into a file which says HIT & RUN case - now closed.

So much so that the entire truck drivers association (or union or whatever nonsense you may want to call it) are against the government for asking them to install speed governors in their vehicles. Their grouse is that the vehicle consumes too much fuel if driven at lesser speeds purposely. And if driven at higher speeds, others bear the brunt of their driving and land up at hospital or even worse - HELL.

So the government and the unions are not only putting at risk many a life in the city, but also sometimes their own kith and kin by doing such immoral decisions at their own cost.

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, Accidents, Trucks, Lorry, Rash driving, Outer ring road, Marathahalli, Unions, India, Bengaluru, Blog, Bangalore, Hit and run, Police, Traffic, Case, Government

Gone are those days when you thought this city is a pensioner’s paradise. Or for that matter even a Garden City. With the winds of change come necessities for better connectivity, transportation of essentials day in and out to the city and a whole bunch of people from all over the country entering this city daily on one pretext or the other. Today all you have are zipping cars, slugging trucks and buses, whizzing cyclists on the wrong sides of lanes, and struggling two wheelers managing to find their space in this ocean. I am so ashamed to see that I myself have been driving my vehicle faster than what I did say 5 years back. I am not sure why the urge to do so, but I do so. And thats bad. Perhaps its the state of mind after or before office. Perhaps its just plain attitude. Whatever it is, it does sound like an irreversible change this city’s state has made on me.

What is this all pointing to? Well one for sure is IMPOLITENESS. Today we are always of the notion that ONLY the other guy is WRONG. Have you ever thought about whether you can be wrong as well? No, right? Well I do so. And I am happy that I do so. It gives me a chance to correct myself and be more calmer on the roads. I give way for pedestrians even now. I give way for vehicles who are in a tearing hurry. I apologize if I did a manouvre which might have been wrong on that road at that instant; to whoever suffered because of me. I have borne a few scratches on my car, just to let a weary cyclist go home in haste. Are others behaving the same way towards me? The one word answer is - NO. And it hurts that people have become insensitive. To everything around them. I mean what is the hurry in life? Where do we all want to go? Die soon? Whats gone wrong with us that we dont allow children and elders cross the road while we wait in peace for that to finish?

The animal instinct in us is more than the human one. Do you know what happens if you just touch some two wheeler or someone who is walking by, at 80-100 kmph in your car? Well the other person can easily die. A death he never wanted, never imagined will come to him - all because of our urgency. Add to that our rudeness and callousness, and what are we giving the people we hit and run? - Only salt on their wounds.

Sorry for becoming a bit sober. But the life I had was so good and I feel bad it cannot be the same for others being born today. Are gated residential enclaves the solution to this? Well heck, no! Change in our attitude is. The our includes the government too. The business leaders too, the LEAD INDIA’s too.

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, Bengaluru, Bangalore, Blog, City, Traffic, Lifestyle, Rudeness, Impoliteness, Vehicles, Accidents, Garden city, Paradise, Cars, Two wheelers, Cyclists, Cycles, Death, Lead india, Government

You must be wondering why my articles are dwindling on this site. Well I ll let you in on a secret. I ve been into many things of late. Lots of useful work at office, 30 minutes of Yoga in the morning and 45 minutes of Yoga in the evening, 15-30 minutes of acupressure during the day, and the usual phone breaks, lunch breaks and the two hour commute into and out of office. Enough to keep myself occupied. But that did not prevent me from enjoying the interesting things that Bengaluru provides. A couple of days back, I had lot of time to kill at a signal light near Sony World, Koramangala. I was always interested half heartedly in the knicknacks that the beggars sold at this signal. Well they aren’t exactly beggars, perhaps street urchins or jobless people would be a better word to use.

The person for the day was trying to entice me to buy an LED desk light. It looked powerful and intuitive too. The top portion had about 8 LEDs of white colour and the power source was from a mouse shaped based (in fact its a mouse lets say!) holding 3 AAA batteries. In between these two was a flexible cord which could be bent in any way desired.

"Esthu?", i asked (how much).

"120", came the reply.

Agreed I haven’t really seen something like this for Rs.120 anywhere around Koramangala. But still for a moment I felt its too high.

I looked a bit disinterested when the girl asked me "Kitna dega saab?" (how much will you give sir)

I said "50".

"Less 20 bucks and give me 100", she said

I stuck to my stand : "50"

She nodded her head and walked away. For a moment I believed that this light wont be mine. It is useful here to say I had bought the same light at the same junction from another person earlier in the week for the same amount that I quoted. But he was desperately hungry and it was almost the end of the day, past 9pm. So he had no choice but to take the fifty bucks. On the other hand this girl was neither hungry, nor was it the end of the day with scores of potential customers yet to come.

I felt doomed with this item. I let her go. The signal light was still red. She went around and I observed out of my rear view mirror that no one wanted that light except me.

After a while I got a knock on my left window. Rolled it down and she said "70". I took out a fifty buck currency note and held it in front of her. "If you want to give it, give it, else walk away" I said.

She said 60 bucks atleast. I just gave her the fifty, and took the light. Period. I won the battle for this second light. Although at the bottom of the heart I still know maybe that the light itself costs say 25-30 bucks only. As a product it can consume quite a lot of batteries in a short time, but then the light it gives can put any other branded emergency light to shame.

So my street shopping continues …..

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, Streets, Sony world, Koramangala, Bengaluru, Bangalore, Blog, Shopping, Led light, Led, Mouse, Stand, Cord, White, Oasis, Traffic, Signal, Red, Emergency light, Urchins, Beggars