Well guess who's become a corporate! i should have seen it coming. All the lunch time bitching about the company, changing proxies to access chat, staying late night surfing the net, gulping down amounts of coffee that matches Brazil's annual export(World trade! :O) - So obvious that the business card that proclaims i'm an engineer seems redundant! (the work done may fit in somewhere?)
Apart from letting me show off on my blog page to the 5-6 people who ever visit this page(I generally over estimate too), this brought me to Bangalore! 10 months in this place so far and I still can’t speak more than 3 words in kannda. Every 2nd guy u meet speaks fluent hindi and every 3rd guy has a girlfriend!! (I’m the 1st person here - broken hindi and …)
Banglore- supposed to be the city of gardens. One visit to the garden here, Lal Bagh, and Richard Gere would go into conniptions at the Indian hypocrisy on PDA!! Banglore- the city of endless traffic jams, of balding software professionals, of fat chics who dress up as if Mallika Sherawat is their first cousin, of divas who can prop open jaws as frequent as India can lose matches(both are reducing nowadays) and that of extremely stylish dogs!
According to me the dogs of a city are the true index of its style quotient. One look at the dogs and u can comment on the life style of the city’s people and the climate. Let me explain with an example. Chennai – The tired and scared dogs that bask in the shade, scourging for food all day, keeping their distance from people can be extrapolated to the life style of the people in the city. Booming with middle class and lower middle class, these people work hard and try to stay out of trouble and still radiate warmth.
In Banglore, the dogs are least scared of other people. They even sit always cross legged and don’t bother to move away from the foot path. When we extrapolate it to the people what we get is a city of thousands of software professionals with an income of 5 per year, who aren’t bothered about anyone, busy in their own world. Though it’s a cool way of living in an already cool place, the right amount of warmth is just found wanting.
One more thing that you’ll notice if you pay attention is their cleverly disguised war against all other languages. It is not just bad English that I’m talking about, u might find that in any state or city. Here they purposefully slip in a terribly spelt common word in permanent paint on some major hoarding and none of the buses write the destination in English. Our canteen menu is where I realized they actually do it to play around. One day for lunch we had a menu that read “Kosu Kootu and Baygon Dry”!! (Kosu is mosquito in tamil). And for all the regard they have for engineers, one of the shops proclaimed “Yenjineering work done here” (mallu mostly I suppose!)
And here is also the city where joggers and pedestrians take over the road early in the morning (I can’t give witness statement as I wake up at 8.30!) and the bikers take revenge by taking over the foot paths after 8!!! One look at the road and u would see dented cars and autos on 2 wheels battling between the buses while bikers detach themselves from the road only to block the footpaths! If you get bumped by any of the above mentioned, u get to be the target of multilingual abuse by the entire junta on wheels for causing a traffic jam. Seriously in no other town where I have gone before would I need to start 2.5 hours before time for a train and still catch it on the run.
And yet this is a city I have kind of fallen in love with. Not just the chics or the food (which btw I’m not too fond of), but the sense of indifference of the people that allows one to dissolve into the mob where u are just a face in the crowd somehow suits my current mindset. Trust me, I know most of us want the exact opposite, but for me this is just fine.
So here’s to Bangalore – my new home away from home(Chennai - always :) )!!
