Bangalore Rising

Our India move is now over three years old. And it has been one heckuva ride. And Bangalore is an awesome place to live. The weather is great. And …and..umm.. yes… .the weather is really awesome. To become a true-blue bangalorean (and I must confess, I am nowhere close), I had to unlearn and relearn a few things. But the experience is real fun. So I thought – why not pass on these experiences to future migrants? So here are some tips for would-be Bangaloreans. Since the learning is huge, I thought I should attack this topic in parts. Today’s topic is DRIVING. Driving in Bangalore is worry-free, and a real pleasure. Know why? Here are some reasons. 1. Drive wherever you want. You can drive up on the left side of the road just like the British did when they ran India. Or on the right side of the road, like the Americans do.. or like the water tankers now do. Or drive right in the middle if you are unsure. If you find traffic thick on your side of the road, just hop over to the othe...

As I sat in front of the TV, watching P Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal and Ambika Soni justify the government's....oops, the police's decision to arrest Anna Hazare, I was dumbfounded at the arrogant and condescending attitude of those three senior members of the political establishment. Their attitude towards a million strong peaceful protesters was summed up in PC's statement towards the end 'Laws cannot be made by some social activists sitting in a maidan'. This is tantamount to saying that people should not hold their elected representatives accountable. That people should elect them once in five years, go back to do their chores and workplaces, while these representatives ostensibly go about their duties of passing laws. To take people to be idiots is bad enough. To go on national television to broadcast this message is arrogance to the core. I have my views on the Lokpal Bill. The question is not about whether the Anna version of the bill is perfect. Or whethe...

When I got a call from my friend Ram in Cupertino about a week back, I thought it was an April Fool's joke. He said he had tickets for the semi-final and final of Cricket World Cup 2011, and wanted me to join him and his three school buddies from Mumbai - Sundar, Kindi, and Visu. Then, recalling that Ram was a cricket nut who flew down all the way to the West Indies to watch one India game during the last world cup, I knew this was serious business. I soon found myself on a plane to Delhi on Tue eve, met the gang at the airport, enjoyed a relaxed dinner at the Radisson, and finally started our five-hour road trip on a cool night to Chandigarh. Our WC expedition had begun! Now, take a well-laid out residential colony like Jayanagar of the 80s with its hundreds of independent homes and their manicured front-lawns, and criss-crossed by narrow, tree-lined, grid-like streets and lanes. Now pluck out about eight blocks of those homes and plonk in a cricket ground with a sm...

1984. I was in Kolkata on a business trip. I was watching life go by through the large bay windows at our office, sipping hot chai, when I noticed a flurry of activity. Shops pulled their shutters down rapidly, swarms of buses pulled across to block streets and white cars with flags wove dangerously through a melee of people scurrying away. I soon learnt why. Indira Gandhi had been shot. We closed business and wound our way back home. I innocently agreed to walk a frightened sardarji to a safe house couple of miles away. Having safely deposited him in his gurudwara, I ducked, hid and ran the eleven miles back to the guest house I was staying in as I watched, without comprehension, mobs with hate-filled eyes go after people that till then were woven into the fabric of the city. That day, I saw hate and anger like never before, and read more about it the next day. A small part of me died that day.   Many years later, I was visiting my city, Mumbai for an extended stay. Singapore had...

Street Names Are Fun   Naming of streets has always invoked passions in India. For Bangaloreans though, Gandhi and Nehru are passé. Back in the 70s, when new suburbs were mushrooming, city planners decided on the grid structure, a la New York. So when time came to name those new streets, they left dead netas (and their road signs) secure in their graves and instead opted for the Main and Cross street system. That worked fine for a while till our elected officials decided that urban planners were a drain on the city coffers and dispensed with them.  After rotting away for a couple of decades, planners returned with a vengeance. By this time however, Bangalore had become an IT hub. And so street names went decimal. So we now have several 100 Feet, 80 Feet and 60 Feet Roads. Damn the fact that most of the feet on the road are those of pedestrians who lack a sidewalk. When I went over the weekend with a tape measure, I found that Indira Nagar 100 Feet Road should actually be calle...

I am, like a true neta, breaking my promise of a story on our trip to the tailors. I thought a story about the recent near-demise of the UPA government would be better. But the media went wall-to-wall with it. And then it happened! Yes, the blasts. Don’t you agree that a story on my version of the serial bomb blasts here makes a better read? Mumbai, Madrid, New York, London and now Bangalore! Informed sources tell me that you've gotta get bombed to get into the big league. And we finally made it on Friday. The same source tells me that till recently, an average Joe from overseas (btw, I learned that the desi variety is called the average Jai) got off his flight from Benguluru International Airport and either made his way to Electronic City for meetings with the tech biggies or took a long cab ride to Mysore to see Mysore Palace and the Vishwesaraiya Dam. The bombings however have changed it all. Rumor goes that an enterprising tour operator now offers a tour called “A Blast into ...

The monitor in front of me spat out the time. "12:15 AM". A thousand thoughts whirred in my head as the jet tipped its wing to the left, then banked right, before swooping down to drop its wheels on the hard tarmac below. As the plane rapidly decelerated, the stewardess began the announcement she must have made a thousand times before. I paid no attention to the drone of her voice. I was lost in thought. Life had come a full circle in eighteen years. We were back where we began. India is home once again. Except that this time, it is Bangalore. A city none of us had ever lived in. And a place where we did not speak the local language. Bangalore has been a regular stop for me for several years. But a city responds to you a whole lot differently when you start living there. Thirty minutes into becoming a returning resident, I was reminded to dispel those romantic notions of living in India that I had childishly entertained. No sooner I entered our nice rented apartment, I emptie...