Good morning Bangalore!
The last week of the ‘nataka’ in ‘Karnataka’ was the final straw in the degradation of politicking in namma ooru. Our erstwhile elected representatives almost behaved like damsels in distress fleeing from the evil khap panchayat! Photos emerged from clinics and hospitals with gory looking implements attached to their (flabby) chests, while their lackeys were surreptitiously raiding nearby restaurants for a good dose of butter chicken for their ‘basses’’! How much more can they dis-respect their voters or the office they swore to uphold? Can they justify this behaviour while a state bleeds? I know of friends who have packed up their businesses and gone back claiming it was too difficult to deal with such corruption and lethargy.
As much as I love my city and defend it, I have to admit that the infrastructure stinks. In a city whose population at the last count was 12.3 million, it is incredulous how we survive with such poor facilities. A city whose potholes are wider than most roads, where the sewage system still sings an ode to the British empire, where the ground water is depleted and rivers and lakes have sewage flowing into them and where the trees and roads both take a beating, we still survive! In spite of being the Information and Technology capital, we still have power outages and deny the basic infrastructure to citizens. It’s ironical that we can send a mission to the moon but still can’t fix the craters on our roads which regularly take lives.
Before I end up sounding like a ‘Debbie Downer’, let me reiterate that I will stand up and fight to death rather than let my beloved city die because of the callousness of a few. Stand up and fight folks, raise your voices and demand answers from the powers that be. It’s about time we get off our respective intellectual armchairs and have a plan of action. Let’s show them we aren’t going to ‘swalpa adjust madi’ anymore. We need concerned people from all walks of life to come together and make a working plan for Bangalore. We must take back the power we have entrusted to the unscrupulous and give it back to the people who are invested in our city.
I stand disgruntled because in the last week I have experienced how our city is falling apart at its seams. I was invited by two friends to attend the launch of their ventures at Outer Ring Road and Whitefield, respectively. The journey there and back took two hours each way and the less said about the state of the roads, the better. While, at times, I see red at the deterioration of this city, I also revel at the great things happening here.
I attended Gourmand Aslam Gafoor’s soiree, which was launching India’s first indigenously made, un-peated single malt, Nirvana! Breaking snobbish barriers the whiskey was paired with a hearty North-West Frontier meal and the pairing was perfect. The ambiance, the ideas and the genteel people of Bangalore always lift my spirits.
Similarly, I couldn’t have felt more on top of the world as I did when good friend Biren Ghose, country head of Technicolor, invited us to celebrate his birthday and enjoy the premiere show of The Lion King. It was a VFX masterpiece. And to think that the Bangalore team made a very ‘significant’ (it’s all very hush-hush) contribution to the movie is thrilling. Needless to say, we had a roaring good time! Now, if only we could rid Bangalore of the Hyenas like Simba did, it would be perfect!
Till the next time. Ciao!