The Great Bangalore JAM

Just a few months back I was claiming that I enjoy the commute to office, as my Apache RTR would be waiting every morning to zap me through the 12 KM outer ring road stretch in 20 mins, taking a brief break at the few signals that would let me overtake the fast moving 4 wheelers. But this day, it took me 2 hours to reach the office. When I told my friends about this they said that this 10x* delay is nothing when compared to their best scores. But getting drenched both in sweat and drizzles in the same commute, I have my due rights to crib. And here comes this post: on the great Bangalore Traffic JAM

The traffic was fun as I could manage to drive through the small gaps the SUVs would leave for the bikers like me: to have the excitement of leaving the rich commuters behind with their morning radio, the fun that bikers alone would understand and appreciate. And when the theory of particle moment decided no more movement of liquid particles, I stopped.

A moment latter a vibrating tummy stopped next to me, as the scooty carrying it could move no further. The engine stopped when the burning petrol was no longer a global warming concern, but his monthly budget consideration. As global warming and overloading of poor vehicles were not the interesting of the topics, I decided to move ahead to a trail that will take me to the next signal. Apparently there are many more like me on the road, trying to advance. But amazingly the collective effort by all the individual drivers has an inverse effect of the traffic as a whole – it won’t move an inch.

The only cheerful things were the forward jokes on traffic Jams that I could memorize. I remember one of my bro’s friends telling me that he used to take a newspaper with him on the way to office, and would finish reading every corner of it by the time he reached office. If the traffic remained like that for few more days, I would have to think about some innovative idea – a new company till work (female of-course) or a new company to work for (closer to my home)

Am not sure if it’s the weather that responded to my mood or vise-versa, but both of them turned irksome. The sun should have read some twitter update. He came all his way pushing the clouds aside to check out this JAM and bless us with some free vitamins. After what looked like an era the traffic finally started moving. And then the auto guys who were standing on a perfect 45-degree angle to cross the road from the closed drains managed to do the honors. The traffic stopped again, almost– moving at a speed of 2 kmph (~ 1.25 mph for all you NRIs)

The immediate signal finally came within an hour. It’s not just the lack of basic needs of food and shelter; even the frustrating traffic jam drives the senses off people. The rich - poor, educated - illiterate, student - professional, to - fro commuters everybody started squeezing into the small junction – my social teacher john appeared of thin air saying “unity in diversity” to the classroom- me sitting in the second bench. And the realty stuck me “Holy crap! Hallucination – I needed some shade soon or I will faint”

I sure have some powers, within hours* the gods heard me. The sun vanished – probably some other topic was trending on twitter, and soon the clouds took charge drizzling some tears at our apathy.

“Remember SRK’s ‘I DO’, I AM the traffic jam” I said to myself and started steering my bike into the ruthless signal, leaving other poor souls in the back to think about their social teachers.

What was a boring 2 hours in JAM, turned out to be the exciting 15-minute finale. A truck guy with just beard and teeth (if I am to believe only my eyes) started forcing me toward the pavement of the road with his stupid truck blocking my way on to the road. He should be feeling good about helping me- by showing an alternate route he just discovered.

There lies the real reason for the traffic JAM, the fly over under construction. And I am right in the middle of that fbeepng construction. I wonder how these intelligent people think that the red ribbons that they put can really barricade the people entering the site – especially the mini truck terrorists from cross-border.

I turned back furiously to this truck guy and he was gesturing me to go with one hand while his other was on the horn ready to honk if I disobeyed. His only visible white teeth were assuring me that “I am behind you my boy, go ahead”. And few more vehicles followed this Columbus. “Now I can’t really block the innovation”, I convinced myself and moved on.

The road got narrower and the gap between the pits (dug for the pillars of the flyover) smaller as I went on. I turned back, and to my horror, the truck guy wasn’t there. The squander should have found his way towards the Hosur road leaving me in the middle of the construction.

The only spectator was a guy standing at the construction site- should be one of those TV9 Journalists thinking about the right abusive words to blame govt for my death. But to his dismay I managed to cross the patch, thanks to the servicing the previous week, the tires did not skid on that damp scrap.

A twitter post saying “frustrating traffic jam” would have been good enough. But 140 letters are hardly sufficed to let my frustration out. For true, traffic JAM is one of the instances where you realize that it is a myth that you can be in control of your life (circumstances at-least)

eNjoy,
Morus

* PS 1: Time is measured as per Einstein’s theory of relativity "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.”

PS 2: The ending comment is more to keep my mark of giving some gyan with every post of mine.

PS 3: I know traffic jam is not one of the fascinating topics, but wanted to throw a challenge at my writing skills (if I can call it a skill yet). Love to hear your comments

PS 4: The NRI comment is the pitch for my next blog

With the Present - one more time

“It's already late. The traffic of the outer ring road will be insane. And the 3 signals! I am surely to miss the train.” This used to be part of the travel packages almost all the time. Well, you can read that almost as certainly.

But this time it is a little different. Letting 3 buses go at 1 AM, drinking the tea from the platform vendor is not something that I generally do. Just to be transparent to my usual self I chose these reasons - the first bus was crowded, the seats of the second bus were not good and the conductor of the third bus was not shaved properly.

While these reasons will not satisfy my usual self that has mastered the world of reasoning, today I choose to enjoy my journey.
No advance booking, no enquiries of the routes. But this time, the time is spent on all the important unimportant things like copying all the new songs to iPod, thinking about the book to read on the journey.

Part of the excitement is that I am going into the deeper parts of Karnataka to spend time with my dad - the same place that my dad took me when I was 2 feet tall. Now both my Kannada knowledge and my height grew alike (meaning not enough). Nevertheless I can understand if not talk a little more Kannada now.

It feels great to set your foot in a place that you know nothing about - nothing but the fact that you have been there in some distant past.
Yo man! Life is long. (Or I am old!)

This feeling is close to what I used to have back then - the distant past. The magnetic chessboard was all that I cared about and some company to play and loose the game against me, watching the bright round light of the coramandel express.

I think the similarity is that I am living in the present - in both the cases.

Of course it is true that even if I take bike rides, I will reach the 180 odd kilometers by tomorrow morning. But the point I am trying to make here is that I generally loose the charm in life because I am more concerned about the uncertainty of the future, taking it for granted that the present that has not gone wrong is in fact a stage for celebration. (Err, curse my English for yet another long sentence!)

Let me leave you with this thought -
Did you ever have this urge of forwarding all the songs in your play list expecting the next song to be better; while all of them were in-fact the songs chosen by you and your favourites. I have it often - more so when I’m psyched. But now I've been using iPod only to write this blog, enjoying all the songs in my play list.

eNjoy,
Morus