Namma Bengaluru Part 1

Hi friends,

I have been thinking of writing a blog for a few months now. I finally decided to write a few nice experiences of mine. Hope you will like it. Here goes the first one

Yours Truly,

Thejus

First Day of the Internship

The alarm sound seemed to go on for eternity. I pressed the snooze button a hundred times only to realize that every time I pressed it the alarm just became louder. Why wasn’t the darn alarm switching off?? “Bloody hell” I said and threw the alarm clock on the floor. The very next moment I woke up and saw my mobile lying on the floor with each of its parts hiding in different corners of the room. The alarm was actually in my dreams and it was still 5:30 in the morning. Bechara my mobile had to pay for my stupid dream. Being the first day of internship and all I was quite tense and hadn’t slept that well. Tossing and turning on the bed I somehow killed time till 7:30. It was finally time to dress up, get ready and go to office.

Namma Bengaluru has always struck me as a place where even in the middle of a hundred people we feel alone. It’s not a complaint but a fact that in fast moving and happening cities like Bengaluru people hardly have time to socialize. Forget socializing there is hardly any time to smile. Well now I had to work, live and the toughest of them all TRAVEL for the next two months in this city that never sleeps. Pumping myself up with the song “Eye of the tiger” I finally embarked on what has been a truly amazing month and a half in Bengaluru.

When I said the toughest part of Bangalore was travel I truly meant it. There are a few reasons why I feel so. First of all my bike was in Kozhikode and my family was against getting it to Bangalore. So I was forced to stay away from my one true love for two months. This meant I had to travel by bus. Second I dreaded buses. After all it was only a year ago that I was dragged by a BMTC bus, like Draupadi was dragged by Dushsyasana into the Kuru Royal court, for around hundred meters. All that I was trying to do was to get down. I guess any person would be scared after such an incident where I almost lost my right arm. Third the auto “maamas” here will loot you till you’ve been “looted beyond recognition”. Finally due to these three reasons the moment where I had to exorcise the ghosts of my past had arrived. Saying all my prayers I got on a bus. The experiences from that moment to this day have changed my perception of BMTC, the people of Bangalore and Namma Bengaluru itself.

Bus number 201 (the whole series of 201 buses actually) is famed to have one of the longest routes. The only buses that beat 201 in term of route length are the 500 series and the 600 series of buses. Well as life would have it one of the three buses I had to travel by to reach office every day was this bus 201. To ease a little bit of tension I switched on the radio on my mobile. I tuned into Radio One 94.3 and before I knew it I had found my new best friends in the RJs of Radio One 94.3. The witty RJ dialogues and a good collection of songs on this station have given me company on all my bus journeys from that day. That’s that and now back to the bus. For some reason I expected to see a lot of fights and arguments on the bus. But what I saw on the first day was something I never expected. One guy who looked like an engineering student was like most of us youngsters head “bhanging” (banging in other words). Lets call him “Dude” for our reference. From the look of it I felt the ear piece Dude was having looked like an iPod ear piece. It’s truly amazing how technologists and companies can come up with more and more gadgets that help us humans to stay aloof from our surroundings. First the mobile radio and now portable MP3 players all make us live in a world of our own completely separate and away from the surroundings. Dude might have been on a BMTC bus but from his actions and expressions it seemed like he was in a rock concert. The rock concert was where he was actually. I myself was mentally in the studio of Radio One sitting with MJ Prithvi and sipping coffee. I looked around the bus only to find that one in every four or five people were listening to music on their earphone!! Music I must say is a great stress buster. As expected, people on the bus kept to themselves and were least bothered about the person sitting next or opposite to them. I was imagining how people would push and pull each other for a seat if even a single seat became vacant. Raju Srivastav’s standup comic performace in “The Great Indian Laughter Challenge” came to my mind. He had portrayed how the people of Mumbai would search frantically for a seat. I was expecting to see more of what he had portrayed in the days to come.

My imagination came to halt as I was truly surprised by what I saw next. Though Dude looked lost in the world of rock concerts he was well aware of his surroundings. An elderly gentleman entered the bus and to his dismay found that no seats were vacant. A sadist would have truly felt happy seeing this elderly gentleman look for a seat. Dude who was still head “bhanging” saw this elderly man and then looked around the bus to see if anybody would offer this gentleman a seat. Seeing that no one even bothered to look at this ederly gentleman Dude “bhanged” (banged) his head sideways as if to say, “You people. When will you ever learn to respect the elderly?”. After “bhanging” his head a few more times sideways he called out “Taatha!! Banni (in Kannda it means come). Please sit here”. So saying he got up from his own seat and let the elderly gentleman sit there. My heart felt warm and it felt good seeing this gesture. Seeing one human care about another without any profit or gain was the last thing I had expected in Bangalore especially in a BMTC bus. Of course I had seen “majnus” holding seats or even giving their own seat to their “lailas” but what Dude did was the first of its kind I had seen. I was wondering if I was feeling good just by looking at this gesture how good must Dude be feeling about himself?

Was this incident a one off incident or was Bangalore and BMTC really different from what I expected? This was one of the few questions that lingered in my mind as I got down at my stop. From that day onwards I have waited for an opportunity to give my seat to some person who really has to sit but have been unable to do so till now. Now that my perception of things were changing I was eager to get on to a bus in the evening to find out if my perceptions would change completely……