I was born and brought up in Hyderabad. We were in Bangalore
when I was an infant, and I hear that Bangalore was a very different city then.
It had many more trees, cooler weather, and the IT boom didn’t hit Bangalore
yet. It was still called Bangalore.
Why change the name of a city? People need to throw away
perfectly fine letterheads, repaint the display boards outside their
businesses. It’s just a waste of resources. This simple change from Bangalore
to Bengaluru, for political reasons, would have cost the country at least 10
crore Rupees. I’m sure that this is a very conservative estimate.
Why am I surprised? We are ruled by idiots who’d like to
spend 17 Crores all over the state on Jalabhishekams
and Jalayagnas (prayers for rain). Seventeen Crores from the taxpayer’s
money! I’m okay with people praying to
the gods, people do have a right to believe in god, and I don’t question that.
I feel that the taxpayer’s money should be utilized properly; drought relief
would be a very good idea. Rain dances and prayers do not justify an
expenditure of INR 17 Crore from the public exchequer.
Prayers are not going to help, because god has forsaken us a
long time ago. Bangalore shot itself in the face about ten years back, when the
IT boom occurred. Improper planning has resulted in high population density,
and a loss of tree cover. My grandfather told me that back in his days, when he
was posted in Bangalore as an IAF officer, Bangalore had the status of a
“non-fan city”. This meant that officers were not entitled to ceiling fans in
their quarters. The weather was so cool in the 1950s, that during the rains,
they’d need blankets at night. He also told me that Bangalore started getting
warm around 1955, and that’s when he went and bought a table fan for the house.
That’s all they needed. Just one fan, for the entire house.
I remember how Bangalore was in 1999-2000. It was not as
populated, there were fewer high rises, and many more trees and lakes. I
believe that the rapid expansion of Bangalore is what ruined it; the city
didn’t have any place to expand at all. The Ring road is usually a road that
circles the city, but by the time namma
brilliant Civic Authorities finished it, the ring road was just like any other
road with serpentine traffic.
How did they solve this problem? They decided to lay another
road, and these creative geniuses called it the Outer Ring Road. Flyovers are
still being built today as an upgrade for a road which is too narrow for the
amount of traffic it’s fed. It’s an upgrade to a problem that shouldn’t have
existed in the first place.
There’s an Outer-Outer Ring Road, which is called NICE road
(yes, that’s an abbreviation), which now circles the outskirts of Bangalore. By
the time the NICE road is finished, they’ll need to lay another road around it,
and soon, Bangalore will start resembling an atom. A dense nucleus made of
atomic particles, with orbits around the nucleus in which the electrons exist.
I see examples of such myopic vision all over the place. The
Bengaluru International Airport is a fine example. They decided to build it a
few light years away from Bangalore, and then, just for kicks, they decided
that the airport only needed to be as big as an anthill. Take a flight during
peak hours, and it will resemble a termite colony. I once flew down from
Hyderabad to Bangalore, and it took me 7 hours, door-to-door.
I’ve worked out that it’s faster to drive to Hyderabad, than
take the 10 AM flight to Hyderabad. The car needs to be powerful enough. If you
think that I’m wrong, I’m up for testing my theory. If you have a sedan which
has more than 150 horsepower, please book a 10 AM flight to Hyderabad, leave
your luggage with me, and I shall meet you in Hyderabad. I reckon that to avoid the unpredictable
traffic, you’ll need to leave your home early in the morning and the check in
takes a really long time. It will be interesting
to see who wins. I should warn you that the Hyderabad – Bangalore highway is
like one of Sharapova’s legs. Long and smooth.
Talking about highways and roads, I always thought
Bangalore’s narrow roads were a disadvantage. Until I went through the horror
of driving down the Old Madras road during peak hours, that’s when I had this
profound realization. Something that made me dive deep into the way we think
and how we’re wired.
Indians are chaotic. We were never meant to be one country,
we’ve always fought against each other, and we’ve always had differences. It
was the British rule that brought us together, and we still find it difficult
to inculcate discipline into ourselves. The Bangalore roads have instilled
discipline into people (as compared to Hyderabad), because there’s always a
fear of being run over by a monstrous truck if you cut lanes without checking
the rearview mirrors. Or, if you turn without your indicators on. If you
compare the roads to Hyderabad, the roads in Bangalore offer much less room for
error.
In Hyderabad, you tailgate the vehicle in front of you, and
if the vehicle in front of you moves left, you follow with the same maneuver.
This is a beautiful phenomenon, where you know that the person has cut left
because he’s spotted an Auto or a cyclist in the fast lane. It’s all intuition
and anticipation. Here’s another example. There’s all the space that one would
want, but why would that Innova in front of you cut left? If there’s no traffic
around that Innova, this could only mean that he’s centering a pothole. You
then follow up by sticking to the side of the car (if you’re on a motorcycle),
so that you end up avoiding the pothole.
Bangalore traffic lacks this sense of brotherhood.
Everyone’s tolerating each other and being careful because there’s no room for
error; there’s just no space. But once you let them loose onto a wide road like
the Old Madras Road or the Outer Ring Road, it’s just pure madness. Think of it
this way; what would happen if you break open the gates of a Zoo and set all
the animals free? Pure chaos. Or what
would happen if the Tihar Jail’s walls collapsed. We’d have rapists, murderers,
a few politicians and other criminals all over the place. A very unpleasant
sight indeed.
Yes, I agree that Hyderabad’s traffic is way more chaotic,
but drive around in Hyderabad and you’ll understand that the wide roads there
create opportunity for sharing space. Like I said, you start “understanding”
the traffic, and it’s the same whether you’re on a narrow road or a wide road.
There’s this mutual understanding between motorists. It doesn’t matter if I am
on the wrong side of the road, they’ll always share their side of the road with
you. And pass funny comments like “Rocket mein paida hua kya?”, if you’re going
way too fast.
But let a Bangalorean out on to a wide road, and he’ll
behave like a dog let loose. He’ll sniff every single part of the road and mark
his territory even though another dog will come along and piss all over it
anyway. Bangalorean traffic needs to be leashed. It only works well on narrow
roads. Just like Huskies, which work well when you tie them up together and
force them to work together. It just doesn’t work otherwise.
You may wonder what the solution to this problem is. Isn’t
it obvious? We need Namma Metro to be up and running as soon as possible. We
need to get all the people off the roads, and into safer places like trains
running over our heads. That way,
they’re packed into a tiny box running on a track above the roads, where
they’ll have to tolerate each other because of the order which has been forced
upon them. Like liquid helium, which has very low entropy.
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