Boom to Bust

It can be said with absolute surety that Bangalore is in the pits , right now .
Twelve years ago , when I was part of this city , there was hope that this would one day classify itself as a world city counted amongst London , Paris , New York and other such distinguished cities playing their role in world theatre . But , Bangalore today is an abssymal mess . From booming metropolis to busting destination .
The two and half kilometer stretch from the airport to my Indiranagar office takes an hour and a half . Utter chaos reigns as humongous amount of traffic converges at the Domlur layout signal wanting to fan out towards the cantonment area .
The huge corporate offices of Brittannia and Titan on one side and the Leela on the other act as monoliths of commerce through which this commuter mass must pass for their daily work . There are no lanes – it’s a pot pourrie of bikes , cyclists , autorickshaws , taxis , buses , cars and trucks . There is an ambitious flyover being constructed – something that is going to look like an octopus with tentacular roads leading to three-four parts of the city . If you are headed to Koramangla , which years back was touted as the next big premium residential cluster , there’s some relief in the patch after Domlur layout , but beyond that it is crazy . Indiranagar is spared the vehicular deluge primarily because of its residential status .
The airport is in shambles . While most airports have some sanity around the airport area , this one provides a ringside view to thousands of homes with people peeping out to see a dredgy flight go through its motions while landing and taking off . Won’t these guys be deaf in ten years ?
This is probably the only airport that has the smallest toilet . Delhi greets one without electricity , there were no lights in the loo last time I rushed in when I landed .Bangalore greets one with filth .
The taxi queues are mad. Everyone , from the ones who have come to fetch people to the ones who have come to ferry people , from cabs to cars , from localites to transit visitors , there’s no discipline .Everyone creates their own path , like they say .
Houses have windows looking into each other as unabated construction continues . What were premium residential complexes many years back have become mass residential areas with thousands of people moving in and out of the place constantly . There are no gardens in garden city .

Somethings haven’t changed though .
The young women who hand out crepe paper roses from Kids Kemp everyday to passengers on landing , do so even now with the same sincerity .
MG road has the same old brilliance . The same old warm , flat masala dosa that one remembers served in the same old heavy white ceramic plate with a fork and a spoon . The same bunch of junkies that occupied this then seem to occupy this now. Brigade road , the ever eventful . This is one place you are sure you’ll bump into some of your oldest friends . The darshinis , or the small stand-in fast food outlets serve a kind of tomato rice that tingles ones taste buds . Bisse Bele Bhath or Chow Chow bhath – take your pick. The country’s first Kentucky Fried chicken appeared here ten years ago .It has stood the test of some of the most rebellious local politicians looking for a cause . Thousands of farmers led by the local politician had descended on this outlet years ago protesting against foreign invasion !
In fact , the local political powers that be still fight the intrusion of people from other states into Bangalore . Only thirty seven percent of this city is local son-of-the soil residents . That give it the cosmopolitan feel with its cultural ensemble . Kannada movies are anachronistic . The heroes are huge , fat gross guys fighting all kinds of evil while the actresses are nubile young things in their twenties mostly imported from the North .There’s hardly any story and the more brutal the movie , the more commercially successful it is . Then there is a ban on any hindi or English movie releasing in Karnataka within four weeks of its launch in Mumbai . That’s as primitive as primitive thinking can get . King Kong has hit Bangalore this week while the rest of India has seen it many weeks back .
I have fond memories of The Plaza theatre on MG road where I had seen some of the best of movies of those times . Was a small theatre occupying only two hundred or so people with seats in a eighty degree incline like the dome theatre in Wadala , Mumbai . Except the screen was smaller. There’s no movies being screened here . Next to the glittering shops all around , it stands today as a relic . Just a memoir of the great movies gone by .

One thing this city definitely is - the IT hub of the world . This is the epicenter of the business process outsourcing revolution that has gripped the developed world . China takes away the manufacturing and hardware work, Bangalore takes away the software work . Ironical that some first generation software emigrants to Seattle in the US thirty years ago should find their children losing jobs in Seattle to their country cousins in Bangalore .
Around the turn of the century , Bangalore played a great role in the dotcom revolution . Its engineers went around the world solving the Y2K problem and gained worldwide recognition . Thousands of dotcom companies ruffled the feathers of the brick and mortar engineering workshops in Peenya industrial estate in west Bangalore , creating high paid jobs like bee eggs . It survived the dotcom bust to reemerge with credentials as an software engineering metropolis , riding the animation and business process outsourcing booms .
On a flight a couple of months back from Bangalore , an bright young American sitting next to me got talking ,
‘ Hi ‘
“Hi”
‘Can I borrow your newspaper ?’ said the bloke
‘Sure ‘ , said me
‘You work in Bangalore ?’
‘No , in Mumbai ‘
‘ IT ?’
‘No, Radio ‘
‘ It feels nice to meet someone who is not in IT ! Everyone I meet in Bangalore is in IT .‘
‘ Ha ! ‘
‘Am amazed with this city , so much of software work is done here . Did you know that Madagascar was actually created by these blokes here ?
‘Yup , read about it . ‘
‘What about you – visiting for business or pleasure ?’
‘ Business – I run this animation firm in Illinois and was here to explore some possibilities of co-creating some products for some of my clients ‘
‘Was the visit useful ?’
‘Yes , exceeded my expectation . These guys are marvelous . Just the infrastructure needs some attention ‘
‘Agree with you . Unlike your cities in the US and other world cities , Indian cities don’t have a mayor or chief minister . Our chief minister rules the state – which is a mix of urban cities and rural towns and villages . The problems of one are the benefits of other . Agriculture and Industry have different requirements . So , the chief minister of Bangalore could lose his job if he performs well for Bangalore but neglects the other villages . In fact , the last minister lost his job because he was focused on Bangalore and not the state of Karnataka . Heard of Hyderabad ?
‘Yes , Microsoft is there ’
‘ Same happened there too ; Minister lost his job there too ‘
‘So why don’t you guys change the system ?
‘As a democracy , we need to take care of everyone’s needs. We don’t do it in an organized manner like you do it in the US with the social security network , freedom of information , equality of opportunity and all that , but we manage the same in some way . And we have a billion guys to please ! ‘
‘Cold towel for you , sir ‘ said the hostess with a grin
We broke our conversation as I dipped into a magazine that I had pulled out of the pouch at the back of the seat in front . After having lost a couple of books enflight , am undergoing a period of no-books-on-flights .
Call centres in Bangalore exist on every road . But as they say , it takes just seconds for data to get transmitted from Chicago to Bangalore and hours to reach office from home .The customer who has ordered a pizza is San Mateo is likely to know where his pizza has reached answered by the call centre girl in Bangalore while if the girl ordered a pizza for herself for lunch , it would reach her at tea.
If you type ‘idly’ or ‘dosa’ , two of bangalore’s staple foods , on a nokia mobile phone , the dictionary accepts them as regular words .
Evidence that the software was made by some nerd in one of Bangalore’s software sweat shops .
This has generated a lot of new money for Bangalore . So , theres’ a flurry of retail activity too as brands and products hit their lifetime high in sales .The malls are only getting better . Around ten years ago , Shoppers stop opened its outlet at the back of the MG’s , and created enough flutter to generate newstories for a month . These days , a mall has to get by with not a mention in the news . Bangalore Central is the newest addition to the city’s list of fifteen malls already . What would happen to the rose-giving largest mom-and-pop store Kids kemp ? As they say , time will tell .

Still queueing at a movie counter ? Not in Bangalore , for sure .
There a peculiar problem that a non-techie faces in Bangalore . If you need tickets to a multiplex in Bangalore and you are the traditional one-hour-before the show buyer , this is not the city for you . The nerds here block every available ticket at every movie running in any multiplex on either the cell phone or the net . Anyone not used to booking tickets on the net , forget catching movies here . Airline ticketing agencies face the same problem , with e-ticketing the norm . Every airline that launched e-ticketing and e-checkins in Bangalore has more virtual tickets than real ones .

The advertising capital of the south , Bangalore has its fair share of great creative opportunities . Titan , Brittannia , Itc foods , Lee , Wrangler all lend themselves to some great advertising . The ad agencys’ Maa Bozell office on Airport road is an architectural wonder . Right at the centre of the entire four storey circular glass office is a large tree . the desks are arranged haphazardly giving it a wonderful appeal . I had met Nitya Premkumar here , the bookish classmate Nitya who stood first when I stood second in my ninth standard in Ambala . She was a media planner then , someone who operates at the bottom end of the advertising agency food chain . Today media planners rule the agency system . Martin Sorell , for instance , owns Mindshare , the mecca for all guys who work in an agency anywhere .From making wire and plastic products , Sorell got into the advertising business and created advertising history when his company became the largest media planning agencyin the world . His wealth was amazing . Sorell recently , settled ,alimony with his wife , an unprecedented twenty nine billion pounds including three parking lots at the harrods in London , fifty percent of his net worth . The world’s biggest negotiator lost out in negotiations to his ex-wife . Money makes for good irony .
As martin sorell looks for healing , Bangalore could be s good destination .
Bangalore needs healing , too . So it has Sri Sri Sri Ravishankar , the architect of the other AOL . Art Of Living . This guru of good cheer officiates over devotees in a hundred and forty five countries , by helping them make sense of life , consciousness and compassion. His thousand buck one-hour-five-days course on breathing skills , the sudarshan kriya , has spawned a massive following amongst all and sundry from movie stars to housewives .It’s international headquarters is the Ashram , twenty one kilometers off Bangalore in a hundred acre area around Kanakapura road . Like others of his ilk , he is always seen in an angavastram – which is a plain white seamless robe with an embroided border . Yet he is different . Unlike Rajneesh , who captured the imagination and wealth of the first wolrd with his unique philosophies on the serious mysteries of life , Sri Sri is more at ease . His simplistic solutions - like how to breate easy – make his charisma enduring . Rajneesh on the other hand constantly reinvented himself .One fine day , Acharya Rajneesh became Osho . His white robes changed to orange and then to maroon . His RIP plaque reads – Acharya Rajneesh , never born , never died, visited planet earth between 1945-1994 or some such date . He escaped impeachment and imprisonment in the US with his three hundred and sixty five Rolls Royces and landed on Indian shores to create a beautiful Ashram on the filty Mulla river in Pune . He had many sanyasins , pretty firang women of all origins ; german , dutch , british , Australian , chinese and some Indian . He would preach free sex ; which is always an inviting opportunity to join his elk . He had a treatise on everything – love , work , money , world , peace , relationships et al . He had enigma , mystery and undoubted hypnotic charisma . His remarkable Ashram in Koregaon Park is a landscapers marvel . It’s noiseless huge mosquito netted meditation hall with a capacity of squatting a thousand meditators has a cool granite floor and is sheer delight . The maroon robe is a cult fashion statement , desired , bought and worn by many . Then , one day he wore a bandana on his forehead , followed by a neat rich fur cap a couple of months later . When his ashram was coming of age many years ago , a local politician was preparing an army of young martial arts experts to attack Rajneesh and destroy his creed . It was spoilt by the police as they intercepted . The episode created massive international news , adding effectively to Rajneesh’s persona . He emerged from that episode with his halo brighter than before . For each session in the evening , he would emerge slowly in the main hall , walking with his sanyasins in tow after the entire mass of followers had assembled . Each discourse is recorded and reproduced in cassettes , audio disks , VCD’s , DVD’s and books . There are exclusive book stores selling his wares . All mystery , even after his visit to earth has ended .
Sri Sri , on the other hand , is a simple achiever . The photogenic guru of joy sports a naughty , mischievious smile , is very energetic and has a spring in his step . He walks around his acres of greens , mingles with his devotees and bonds ;the fact that he was recently nominated for the Nobel prize for peace rests easily on his shoulders . The Bangalore police expects two and a half million people to turn up at the twenty fifth year celebrations of the Art of Living course in the second week of february . Said to be held at the 250 acre Jakkur airfield , it is the world’s first and largest meditation for world peace .
Am just disgusted traveling through the roads and the traffic and the mess with it’s existing forty million people . The thought of an additional two and a half million people on these roads is scary .
Am marking my calendar , so I don’t plan to travel back to Bangalore anytime close to this date . My peace is more valuable than world peace .

The headlines in the paper lying in the car caught my attention , just as I left the hotel to the airport to catch my eight forty five flight to Mumbai . ‘The Son rises ‘ , it screamed .The news detailed the overnight events of January the eighteenth of a split in the party , Janata Dal , of India’s former prime minister Deve Gowda in Karnataka by his son Kumaraswamy who was breaking up from him with a huge set of members . Dislodging the father’s political party that was currently ruling the state by gaining a majority in the legislative assembly would mean two things for the son . Gowda would enter political wilderness and his son would get to be sworn in a Karnataka’s chief minister with the help of right wing hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya janata Party . The State Governor has given the son two days to prove his majority against his father and stake a claim to be the chief minister , banishing his father from politics . Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb imprisoned his father , the mighty Shah Jahan , many centuries ago and took the throne .
Et Tu , Kumaraswamy .

‘Ladies and gentlemen , Jet Airways announces the departure of its flight 442 to Mumbai . All passengers please board the aircraft from gate number two .’ The announcement spurred me to action as I moved to get through the security check counter .

A newly wedded couple stood at the other side of the security check counter , waving at their parents . Two sets of old couples on this side waved back . They were fragile , in their sixties and wore simple woolen sweaters to keep the Bangalore cold away .
All of them were pretty much of the same height . Couldn’t make out who was on the brides side and who on the grooms’ .When I reached the other side , I saw the freshness of the newly wedded couple . The elaborate mehendi on the girls hands was still new. The guy was unsure whether to hold her around the waist or to put an arm on the shoulder or to keep away till the parents dissolved from sight . The bespectacled girl had a clear jaw and was wearing a bright red leather jacket on brand new blue jeans . The guy had a diminishing hairline , had a spanking new blue overcoat and looked confident of giving this girl a time of her life .
Did he ?
I will never know .