Tagged: bangalore

Thursday night. I had gone to sleep quite early thanks to a darned headache. I heard the landline ring. Irritated again that people call to the stupid landline rather than to my mobile (technology has grown, wake-up sheeple!), I got up and picked up the call. It was Bachu, my roommate, all excited telling me that if I don’t want to miss Sachin’s 200 better come fast to Shyam’s house (we are a TV-free home, you see). So I get dressed quickly and run to our very own homely sports-bar.

There’s some excitement going on in there as I reached. Sachin has reached somewhere around 170, Bachu is yelling trivial anecdotes about Sachin, Tony’s not combing his hair or looking at the mirror and even Shyam’s not playing TF2! That was when I knew this was going to be something special. So I took a seat and joined in. As soon as I sat down, Raina gets out. Hmm.. I thought I brought my bad luck with me. Boy! Was I right.

The game was taking interesting directions; with Ravindra Jadeja keen on taking singles every last ball of an over and not giving the strike to Sachin; when I first noticed an unlikely visitor in the kitchen. A pretty big rat; let’s say the biggest I have seen; not that I have seen many. I announced our royal visitor to the other friends in the room; and the usually cool Shyam all freaked out. “Oh! Its going to bite me when I’m sleeping. I’m going to get swine-flu and stuff”.. hmm.. swine-flu from a rat? Well, let’s discuss that later.

So we decide to fight this guy. And by chance it got trapped inside one of the plastic carry-bags lying around. The rest of the party wanted to kill the rat; but I somehow found a bit of compassion towards the animal and convinced them not to do it. Since the rest of us had an excuse that we didn’t have shoes on; we assigned the task of capturing the rat in the bag to Tony. Naturally the rat gnawed away the other end of the sheet and was on its way to its next hiding place.

Meanwhile in TVLand: Tendulkar has no chance to reach 200; but India can still win. If only Mr. Jadeja gave some strike to him. We are all in a dillema now whether to watch the TV or mind the rat. Every 3 balls or so, the little guy would peep out from its hiding place and as soon as we make the slightest of movements; it would go right back in. This hide and seek continued for a while… and then the unthinkable happened … Tendulkar got out

While we were mourning the departure of Sachin, our hero peeps out from his hiding place and runs right into the sink drain. Sensing the kill, the brave Tony Thomas strides in for the final act and closes the drain with a mosaic tile in pure ‘Quick-Gun Murugun’ style. That’ll do, we all thought. Shyam runs out to get something to seal our hero shut. But alas before he reached, the little guy, amasses all the power he has; slides out the tile; rushes out; and winks at us proudly for the effort (ok it didn’t; but I’m sure it would have, if it could).

The Indians are sinking to deeper trouble; while the rat is still playing hide-and-seek with us. Finally we managed to trick it to go back to the drain. Everybody quickly swings into action and we trap that darn rat finally. Victorious we set our focus back on the tv set. India may have lost by 3 runs and Sachin may not have hit a double-ton; but we did win our chase against the rat!

So what’s so blog-able about this? Small moments like this; tend to be lost in bigger memories of the past. I just wanted to treasure a few ‘big’ small moments… so that I can be all nostalgic in the future

A few years ago, I had an email conversation with my friends regarding life in Bangalore. Most were of the opinion that it was just too trashy and mundane a life and that the main reason for that was the city itself. I had more or less concurred with those thoughts there. But many days and months after, I think I’ve slowly started coming into terms with Bangalore.

I come from a sleepy suburb of the small city of Trivandrum, with all its old world charm. Compared to Bangalore, the hustle-bustle, the traffic and the noise is almost non-existent there. So I was brought up, being used to a bit of peace and quiet. The transition to the metro life of Bangalore was quick, and it wasn’t a very easy one. It was like you had gone fishing beside a serene lake and then suddenly getting kicked into a Metallica concert.

One thing Bangalore gave to me (and a lot of us) is freedom - financially and otherwise. Used and misused it, and in the meanwhile enjoyed it a lot. It gave me new meanings to life and allowed me to see things in other dimensions. I appreciated all that but still it never felt like home. I could never imagine a settled life here. There was always a feeling that I was a stranger in a strange place.

But that was some time ago, and time changes perspectives. I spent last week in my dear own Trivandrum celebrating Onam with my family. It was good, but strangely for the first time really, I started badly missing Bangalore - the congestion, the traffic, the crowds and everything associated with it. That was when the realization came that I had indeed accepted Bangalore as my new home. Bangalore has now become the routine, and Trivandrum the (welcome) aberration. They say home is where the heart is… I guess I have learnt to give some part of my heart to Bangalore… 3 years down the line.

Went for a trip to Nandi Hills early in the morning today. We wanted to see the sunrise there, and we were lucky enough to reach there on time for that. Contrary to my expectations, it was a real nice place indeed. So close to Bangalore, yet so far from the hustle and bustle. Too lazy to write a long blog post, so I leave you with some pics. Didn’t come out as good as I expected, but trust me, it was more beautiful than what the photos could record.

Photo Credits: Espresso and Me!

A typical Sunday in our house would be not much to speak of. It would only rank slightly above watching paint dry. So this particular Sunday we decided not to put to the dust bin, like so many before it. Someone had told about this place called ‘Sivasamudram’ and partly to quench Ranjith’s dying thirst to go on a trip on his Apache we decided to give this place a try.

We were pretty punctual to start off with, planned being a 6 am start and realizing a 7 am start - pretty good for our standards. We took the Mysore road from Bangalore, knowing that it is probably 30km extra. We had a quick bite at one of the many ‘pure’ vegetarian dhabas en route and rode along. The road was excellent and the guys had a great time ripping along. We left Mysore road at Maddur towards Malavalli. That also meant pretty much the end of proper roads. The road from then on were glorified country roads at best. The traffic though was light and the scenery awesome. It was hard to believe all this was less than 100 km away from the hustle and bustle of Bangalore.

We reached the place by around 11 having taken some lavishly long breaks on the way. It was not that difficult to find as there were plenty of signs to guide us. Sivasamudram’s claim to fame is its two waterfalls and the fact that Asia’s first hyro-electric power plant is situated there. As we were not very interested in the latter, we headed straight to the first of the falls - ‘Gaganchukki’. The waterfalls were just grand! The sound, the view everything was amazing. But there were just too many people and it seemed highly commercialized even for Indian standards. We spend some time there taking snaps.

The second waterfall, the ‘Bharchukki’ even though visible quite clearly from here was actually an 18km drive away. That place looked grand again, but was more crowded and dirtier (I mean extremely dirty) than the first one. However again the view just made up for it. There is another waterfall quite close to it and you can go down and have a dip in the water if you want to. We did go down, but the water was too crowded to warrant a dip. A word of caution though - going down would seem quite easy, but bear in mind that the farther you go down, the greater the panting you’ll have to do while you climb back up

Just after noon we started off back. We made a horrendous decision to take the Kanakpura road to Bangalore. The road was just about navigable at best. It took us a lot more time even though the distance was much lesser. On the way, the only notable incident was that the Splendor (our other bike) lost its headlight. So we had to guide Bachu all along back to Bangalore. It was a little bit too tiring for my liking going on a bike. Well, I am more of a car person I guess Anyhow it is a nice getaway if you wish to kill some time when you are in Bangalore. Its worth it, just to soak in the peace and calm of the villages despite the crowd at the destination.

Route: Bangalore - Maddur (via Mysore road SH 17) - Malavalli (SH 33) - Sivasamudram (NH 209) 134 Km
Alternate (highly not recommended) : Bangalore - Kanakapura - Malavalli - Sivasamudram (NH 209 all the way). 119 Km

We take a lot of things in our life for granted. Every day’s morning newspaper carries reports and pictures of terror and suffering from around the globe. I read it, think about it for a while, then feel that I am all insulated from this, things that won’t remotely affect me.. until today afternoon.

I was passing by the same Bangalore bus stop which the bombs tore apart just 5 minutes before it happened. Makes you realize doesn’t it? Life is fragile and nobody is insulated from it all. It was just a matter of timing, it could have been me, you, anyone instead of the poor garment factory lady who got killed. I just can’t stop thinking of her, going out for another day of work to make ends meet and suddenly end up at the wrong place at the wrong time. Hmmm….

All my big problems looks so tiny now. Life is short. Life is fragile. Enjoy it while it lasts.

As you might be well aware, green seems to be the “in” thing nowadays. Everybody wants to talk green and the corporates have jumped into the bandwagon - a simple effective way of gaining some publicity as well as getting a good Samaritan image. So in keeping in line with this tone, one company in Bangalore (the one I work for BTW) organized a run for promoting clean air in the city. Well nice idea! But.. It was held on a Sunday. So all the 1000 odd employees who ran for this, came in their gas guzzling, CO2 spilling engines all the way from distant places, while on a normal Sunday morning they would all have been sleeping in the comfort of their homes. So if a typical car emits 200g* of CO2 per kilometer traveled and taking an average of 5km traveled per participant, total additional CO2 that the city had to deal with that day equals 200 x 5 x 1000 = 1,000,000g or 1,000 kg in the 2 hours the event was held… plus the amount of pollution caused by other idling vehicles caught in this road block… well I rest my case So much for clean air!

Going green is a great thing and I am really happy that it is in fashion. But I think we should be wise enough to think of better ways to do it and ensure that what we do results in more good than harm. And probably the time has come when we should stop preaching and just start doing things. You and I may not be able to be angels when it comes to the environment, but we can do the small things that will make a difference in the end. There is this nice little green book from Morgan Stanley (yeah again Corporate ) that might help you get started - The Little Green eBook