Bengaluru: In the Wrong Lane

This article probably needs some attention. Because the big authors who travel in cars probably won't be able to see this issue that closely as the average guy on the bus would. Therefore I, a guy who travels to and from office on a bus, decided to write about the small changes being made. Changes that become a loud message as they hit tens of thousands of citizens everyday.

While Bengaluru is desperately waiting for Namma Metro to get into work mode from its present tourist mode, the traffic is not in a mood to wait, and is increasing every day. The number of cars is going up by thousands every month. And while there should be encouragement for public transport users and cyclists in order to not just keep the traffic smooth but help save the environment as well, we seem to be making traffic rules for cars instead. It seems we're forgetting that cars can hardly be the lifeline of a city, even if it's the CEO-city of Bangalore.

Let's talk about the buses in Bangalore. The bus services in the city is in general good, and with a few new buses launched every year, things are not in a very bad shape at least. But other than that, the convenience of a bus taker is a different matter altogether, and depends a lot on the wishes or whims of the drivers and conductors.

First of all, even though there are a lot of buses on the 'popular' routes, a little less popular routes seem to get not enough attention from the BMTC officials, and then bus conductors/drivers as well who may decide not to go on a route if they don't so wish. In fact this is not limited to unpopular roads as I can tell I've never seen a bus going from my home (that is the bustling Whitefield bus stop) to my office on Outer Ring Road, near KR Puram. That is irrespective of the fact that I have caught bus 504A from Whitefield, which should take me to my office.

On top of that, in almost every place, bus stops have been shifted or are being shifted ahead of their earlier locations. This creates inconvenience for those who need to change buses as one needs to walk hundred to three hundred meters extra on an average. Such things definitely discourage any people who think of taking a bus, especially at times when one is in a hurry to reach the office or back home.

Talking of another environment friendly option, i.e. cycling, there are very few cycling tracks for the cyclists, and travelling with all the cars and bikes and superbikes in every nook and corner of the city, things are getting unsafe for cyclists. But that is not all. We now have longer U turns and signal free corridors, which make path much longer, creating unnecessary load for cyclists. In such a situation, even proud cyclists are forced to rethink over their commuting options, leave aside a person who might be still thinking of getting a environment-friendly bike.

So while it's good to give space to cars to travel smoothly, it sends a wrong signal to the city when they get priority over public transport and environment friendly commuters. This discouragement to the latter two, even if looking like creating minimal problems, will in turn force more private vehicles on the road, making this a vicious circle which would harm us even more in longer term. We need to get our priorities right. Right now.

Review: Aliva (Fritolay)

Well, I just wrote a music review for Himesh Reshammiya's new movie Radio, and now after reading some pages of Cecelia Ahern's Thanks For the Memories, I was having some new biscuits that I got for the first time. And while eating, I suddenly felt like telling people about the biscuit, and so here I am, writing a review for the biscuit.

Well, This thing called Aliva from Fritolay (read Pepsi people) was seen today in an ad when I was setting up TV on my laptop. The ad was an utterly old concept but it did catch my eye. And today when I was on biscuit hunting in a supermarket, I happened to see the biscuits. I remembered the ad and when I saw it was from Fritolay, I decided to give it a try.

It might sound like an ad but it's not. I'm getting no money to say that Aliva biscuits are good and you should eat them. But genuinely, I loved the Pindi Masala flavor that I had selected for my first trial. Guess I'm gonna have some Mint flavor next. The biscuit is OK and the masala is good which is going to make it demanded. My guess is like Kurkure, this biscuit may also become a travel accessory.

Right now the biscuit is priced at rupees 12/packet of 60g which is not very expensive. Fritolay probably has an idea about the future of the biscuit and has already written rupees 12 as a special price while original price is supposed to be Rs 14/packet.

Another interesting claim about the biscuit is that it has no artificial flavors or colors. Even the box below the ingredients says CONTAINS ADDED FLAVOUR (NATURAL AND NATURE IDENTICAL FLAVOURING SUBSTANCES).

Overall, the biscuit is tasty and if you're one with taste buds for spices, go for it.

नए नाम, नए रंग

यूँ तो मैं Bangalore हवाई अड्डे पर कई बार उतरा हूँ। वही पुराना HAL हवाई अड्डा। पर इस बार कहानी कुछ और ही थी। Bangalore हवाई अड्डा Bangalore की जगह Bengalooru हवाई अड्डा हो चुका था। शहर का नाम तो बदल ही गया था, साथ ही हवाई अड्डा भी बदला था।

अगर आप इस शहर की थोडी बहुत ख़बर रखते हैं तो आपको पक्का ही यह पता होगा कि यहाँ नया हवाई अड्डा बनने को लेकर कितने विवाद हुए हैं। जिनमें हवाई अड्डे कि शहर से दूरी प्रमुख कारण रहा है। परन्तु इस बार जब मैंने हवाई अड्डे को देखा तो पाया कि अड्डा शहर से दूर बनाना काफ़ी हद तक एक सूझ बूझ भरा काम है। क्योंकि नया हवाई अड्डा जहाँ सुंदर और उच्च कोटि का बनाया गया है, उसे बनाने के लिए जितनी जगह की ज़रूरत थी उतनी जगह शहर में ढूंढ़ना एक मूर्खता ही होता। खासकर तब जब पूरा शहर ट्रैफिक की कठिन समस्या से गुज़र रहा है।

बंगलोर हवाई अड्डे का... माफ़ कीजिए, बेंगलुरु हवाई अड्डे का वर्णन यहाँ करना थोड़ा कठिन काम है। बस इतना ही कहा जा सकता है की जो हवाई अड्डे आपने यश चोपडा जी की फिल्मों में देखे होंगे उनके यह काफ़ी करीब है।

साथ ही साथ हवाई अड्डे ने शहर के विस्तार को एक नई दिशा दी है। मतलब, बेंगलुरु जो अभी सभी दिशाओं में बेतरतीब बढ़ रहा था, उसे बढ़ने के लिए एक दिशा विशेष मिल गई है जहाँ अभी बहुत सी सुविधाएँ आसानी से मिल सकेंगी।

आशा करता हूँ कि बेंगलुरु का नया नाम लोगों को पसंद आए या न आए, शहर का यह नया रूप सबको ज़रूर पसंद आएगा।

Top Dug Pic!

The picture that was Dug most number of times in past sometime, getting hundreds of Diggs every hour.

Here is the link.

Sorry for not putting the pic here. ;)

Just in case SRK's 6 packs impressed you

The only question after seeing Phelps here is: Will Aamir Khan be perfect this time while flaunting his 6 pack abs in Ghajini?

Steve Jobs' Stories - 1

This is a part of Steve Jobs' speech at Pixar Studios in June 2005. I read this one in 'The World is Flat.'

Connecting the dots

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combination's, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Shivratri @ Haridwar

On 30th July, I was in Haridwar for some work. Actually I had to go somewhere I could not bring a camera with me. That day was Shivratri and in Haridwar, people take kaanwar to the Ganga and take it back home.

That morning in Haridwar was something not to be missed. There were people all around on the roads, running with various types of Kaanwars, even moto-kaanwars. For those having no idea, kaanwar is a bow like structure that has to be taken to Haridwar from home and way back without letting it touch the ground. And there are tens of thousands of people taking kaanwars. Originally kaanwars were taken by people onfoot only but later there have been cycle kaanwars and now even motorcycles too. But still, the largest number is that of those travelling all the way on foot.

So, not having my camera with me, I could only take a few pics with my cellphone. Here they are.