Efforts in Sustainable Living

It’s time to start blogging again. What’s gotten me out of slumber is the need to spread the word on the work being done in Bangalore by a very aware and awakened Citizens movement.

Over the last year and half, I’ve  been privileged to work with a team of people with a passion for Sustainable Living and Giving. While there are a number of people I’ve worked with and varied causes, the theme and the passion is the same – how can we give back to the city and the generations that will live on it, what we’ve taken.

The study by the IISC folks seems to have hit home: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/543880/bengaluru-unliveable-dead-city-5.html

While doomsday predictions have their place, what it fails to capture is the effort by citizens on the ground who are trying to shake the government up. I will stick my observations to the area around me and the causes being worked upon – what I see is what I will write on. And that change is visible and actionable.

Metro – Reached one!

Much of the talk in town is now Ra-One. I’d rather talk about Reach One! My last post being about old Bangalore and how metro is digging at the heart of what Bangalore was. But I’d have to admit, that having taken the joy ride on the metro, the heart transplant it into a train was probably worth it!

Bangaloreans have been waiting for a long time for something to help relieve the stress of commuting. One ride on the metro will convince you that this is not a dream that will go unfulfilled. Contrary to that, the clamor for more and faster completion of other reaches is getting louder.

The stations are built well, though I’d have preferred a more modern looking stations from the outside, the inside is quite upto the mark. There are escalators and elevators, though at some point on the MG road terminal we did have to climb up the stairs. The terminals look quite contemporary and world class. The one thing I found odd was to switch over from one direction to the other was not a simple task. There are no concepts of a round trip token, something BMRCL will have to look at closely, could save tons of time standing in line.

The metro feeders are quite a different ball game at the moment. Most of them run empty and are a huge loss apparently. Bear in mind that the Volvo buses that run packed today were in a similar plight, so maybe with time, these will catch on as well.

All in all, namma metro can live up to its name and become Bangalore’s pride if the rest of the Reaches, reach on time.

India Coffee house – last cup

Call it psychic or just plain coincidence. In the last blog, I was ranting about old Bangalore losing its value and of nostalgia, the significance of the location being  as important as the place itself.

Yet another bit of old Bangalore bites the dust – or as The Hindu article calls it, has had its last cuppa. India Coffee House, the only place on MG Road that served you no nonsense coffee has breathed its last. At least in its current location.

http://www.hindu.com/2009/04/06/stories/2009040660630300.htm

It has had its time in the sun, but the metro was just plain too much to handle. This was one place where there were no frills – just coffee, snacks and a good place to sit and have a look at MG Road. My next cuppa at MG Road will have to be at one of the new age joints – where the coffee and the price seem to be imported.

Old Bangalore, New Bangalore?

If you’re one of the new settlers in Bangalore, you’re sure to have encountered a lamenting old timer complain about how Bangalore has changed for the worse. Worse still, if you’re idea of Old Bangalore is MG Road/Mayo Hall or Commercial street. There, you’ve ticked off a true Bangalorean. Watch him/her go off – “you don’t know what old Bangalore is…”

We’ve had this debate many times over with friends/office colleagues. For true old timers, Bangalore is what comes after MG Road – Malleswaram, Rajaji Nagar, Vijaya Nagar, Basavangudi, Chamrajpet and the works. That for them is the essence of the yesteryears.

Since the time I came to this city in 1999, it has changed so much. In fact, there is so much change, that once my wife remarked, when will they stop constructing new stuff here?! What ticked me off on this topic was this. After a long time, I finally mustered enough courage to go visit some of the nostalgic spots.

Started off on a bus ride from HAL and got dropped near Millers road at 7:00 pm. Then I walked to Commercial street, did some shopping and then walked to MG Road from there. I was truly hoping to hop into the HOHO service near Com Street, but that didn’t happen, never saw a single bus on this entire trip. Maybe Sunday was a wrong day to be looking for them.

MG Road is a mess now – long gone were the promenades where we used to hang out. That I was prepared for, but the monster cranes and dug up heart of the city I wasn’t. It’s very hard to visualise how this would look once Metro kicks off. Cauvery emporium wore a pale look after the recent fire. I then weaved through the mess and got to an old time haunt – Brindavan Hotel.

 

It’s amazing how this place holds up its own against the onslaught of Modernity. Nestled in a bylane, close to Brigade Road and the new Mall next to that, this hotel continues to serve customers in the only way it knows. There is no attempt to bring any change in its working and its customers are not complaining either. The dosas are just as crisp, lunch just as filling and the service just as quick as it used to be. There are no frills here and no waiting.

Post dinner, I made a visit to Corner House on Residency road. The surprise element was that it wasn’t located where it was earlier. Corner house had turned a corner. It’s now located on bylane parallel to Brindavan. The ice creams were just as good, but somehow the spirit seemed to have been lost.

Corner house itself has grown well beyond Residency road, there are branches all over town. But the place where it had all started wasn’t there any more. Is this taking the heart out of the ice cream?

So there in lies the question on my mind. Here were two old timers – one adapting to modernity and the other staying in its own time warp. Brindavan still appeals to me – for nostalgia’s sake. But how long can nostalgia make business sense? When am I going to frown upon its looks or lack of modern amenities like air conditioning and better furniture. Would the gen-X ever go here? I’m sure they have no qualms going to Corner House. Is it just me though?

Pedal to Fitness

For a while now I’ve been thinking about taking up cycling on a more regular basis. The global price hike on petrol and diesel seem to have setup most other people’s minds on the same road. Or maybe I’m beginning to read these articles now. Like they say, you only see what you want to see. While I was just thinking about cycling to work, my co-worker has already started.

Here are a couple of interesting links I came across, one through the article in rediff.

BumsOnTheSaddle – An apt name for a cycling site 🙂

This website is run by a couple of enthusiastic bikers, who are passionate about cycles. Not my type of cycles since I own the good old Hercules MTB, that was gifted by my wife. These guys are more serious, but they do have very interesting tips on how to do adjust cycles to the right height etc. The best part about this site for me is the fact that its possible to get real good quality imported cycles if you need to , right in the IT city.

The other article was on a slightly different note, it was about being able to rent a cycle at various points in the city. I think that would be real useful in a city like Bangalore. If you think about it, would you not like to rent one around commercial street, brigade road? Maybe park your car at Shivajinagar and then cycle to places around.

Bike Sharing Program Launched in Mexico City

I’d think I will take that kind of option anyday. Try cycling, its fun, clean and your bit of green.

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Barbecue!

One of the facets of Bangalore these days is the kind of cuisines that you can savour. While the “idli vada” and by two coffee would never go out of reckoning, for the enthusiast who doesn’t mind coming out of an upmarket restaurant with both his pockets and stomach empty, there are never ending options. From the Italian to Mexican, American to Pani puri counters round the corner there are choices galore.

One place we ended up in yesterday was this place called Barbecue Nation in Koramangala. As the name suggests, its a barbecue restaurant. Be warned that this is a biased view of a hardcore veggie. Don’t ask me why I ended up there…When you are a team player, you end up where everyone else wants to. “Plus it isn’t a bad place for veggies too” – I missed the wicked grin when my team mate was suggesting that. We were reserved a table on the first floor of the restaurant, which is the second floor of the building. It was the roof top, done up brilliantly. Except for the cooler fan which keeps spraying water and the smaller fans that keep blowing hot air from the barbecues into a few unfortunate faces round the table, the ambience was great.

Onto the food. They have a buffet for Rs. 275, and you can top it up with grills of your choice or take 450 Rupee option that has unlimited grills with the buffet. The veggie spread included potatoes, mushrooms, capsicum and pineapple/olives for the barbecue, plus the usual roti/nan/daal/paneer for the buffet. The veggie grills were nowhere close to what we expected. I mean I’d never heard of pineapple grills before and boy we missed the paneer tikka.  And where was the baby corn that we find grilled at every street corner? To our relief, they did serve corn and paneer on our plate, though not as grills. An innovative colleague took the paneer served on the plate and converted it to a paneer fry.

The salad spread was decent and the dessert wasn’t great. From the veggie side it was a thumbs down. When we turned around to see the other side, Maneka Gandhi would’ve cringed. Everyone’s face from the non-veg side told the same story – “We’re loving every minute of it, what are you guys looking at?!”

So I took time out and drew up what I could think of:

Dangerous team lunch

Power cuts in Bangalore

Here’s one I drew up based on the experience of a colleague. Power cuts were quite frequent in Bangalore this summer and have managed to linger on somehow.

Street side innovation

Much has been said about the innovation of the street side shops on Indian roads, the entrepreneurship and enterprise shown by the shop keepers. Here is one such that I came across – advertising for Microsoft Windows or using it on CMH Road, Indiranagar. You decide.

Street side innovation

Mon-late in Bangalore

The skies have opened up in Bangalore and so has my blog. I’ve finally mustered up enough time to get started on what has fascinated me for a long time – blogging and Bangalore.

I’ve been here in this city for a good 9 years almost and have been fascinated by its growth, the people and the weather. I’m going to put in my thoughts about this city, its people and its day to day life – from its sidewalks. Let me start off with what I love most about this city – the weather. Its a topic of endless discussions for Bangaloreans.

This city makes you stick to it, its almost never hot and never too cold. Almost thermo-perfect. Its blessed by rains from both the southwest and north east monsoons, which makes it very green, inspite of the best efforts by BBMP and BDA to strip it of trees.

But this year since the beginning of June, 2008, there’s hardly been any indication of rain. I almost thought that we were in for a bad monsoon. For a large number of residents in newer areas of Bangalore, who are dependant on the borewells, its fairly important to get good rainfall that will hopefully percolate in to recharge the supplies. Almost answering our prayers, the monsoon or rather mon-late has arrived.

It poured for a good part of the evening yesterday, everthing looks fresh today. Our apartment has been uncovered from the layers of dust. All’s looking good.

For some reason, the papers seemed to suggest that rains in June have been historically lesser than September/October. I started researching this on the internet and couldn’t get relevant hits in Google, till I finally searched Google directory. Here’s what I got:

http://www.worldclimate.com/cgi-bin/grid.pl?gr=N12E077