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Look At My Love of Electronic City


Silk Board cross-section bus-stop arrives. It tells you to take a short nap now. The twenty kilometers up-till Infosys office will take more than 60 minutes. It is a hot day. So take out your handkerchiefs. You might want to cry when you lose your patience.

Electronic city was built as a satellite town at the southern periphery of Bangalore. The British city of retired sarkari babus discovered new wiry roots. The first world found cheap labor in the third world sleepy town. The eager and industrious Indians found an opportunity. Today when you step into Bangalore it is clouded with towering glass building and the dusty road. Sending an ambitious message of ‘who’ you can become irrespective ‘whose’ you are. Big engineering colleges, Thai and Chinese snack kiosks, along the unpaved walkways of the city make space for those who are not of merit yet, but show virtuosity to trudge and work hard favored by their luck. The Indian Silicon Valley ensconces the unworthy simply with a spirit of bad governance that gets lost visibly in the tedium of day-to-day ideas of growth.

Step down from your office, wear your pollution mask and hiking shoes, a footpath is difficult to find. Better, call a cab, the Uber has special rates for short distances and frequent travels. Twice a day, morning and evening Rs. 30/- per ride for an executive or a student. Pay later with a credit card. It promises to help you reach your destination.

Try to go from here to there, your side of the road to the other across the road. The absent underpasses and the obscure over bridge are the pinnacle of human un-imagination. The road divider sees two 1 feet grills on either side. Young women and the old, in sarees and salwar, pant-suit and hijab hop over, one limb each with tilted knees, sideways one at a time. Mothers help sons, sons help sisters, sisters help father and father helps grandmothers. It is a family retinue, a morning routine, an evening serenade.

The city remains dreamy slow with fiber connections underground. The city is not all that dreary. Other side of the road the metro pillars up from the depth of your desires to the height it tries to reach. The design is the future, the future may not be attuned to your design. Catch the cab and reach your home, now you are safe until next time you meet again.

 

 

 

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