Bangalore traffic (and I can’t seem to get enough of it) can be partially dealt with. Indeed. If you take more than an hour to get to your work place then one thing you can do to utilize all that commute time is listen to audio books on your phone or mp3 player. If you don’t take more than an hour to reach your workplace, you definitely don’t stay in Bangalore and can ignore the rest of this post. Unless, of course, you are a fan of my writings.

All you need to do is buy an audio book or download one from the hundreds of free AND legal versions available out there. While the audio versions of new books are relatively expensive, there are hundreds of classics which are in the public domain and are available for free download!

Legally free? Yes. Head over to OpenCulture and check out the catalogue there. The caveat is that only classics are available for free. But then, when were you going to sit down and start reading all the classics? Never. So it makes sense to be done with them while driving through all that mess of this city. If not anything, you definitely will come across as a well-read road-ragist.

I have finished two audio books in the recent past: Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. The Grand Design has been shared over at InGoodBooks.com.

I am now reading, er, listening to E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View. The only drawback I see (hear?) with audio books is that it is difficult to appreciate fine writing while listening to it. Sure, a book like Hawking’s can be listened to since the core there is the idea, the concept. In Forster’s book, for instance, the emphasis is more on the writing styles, the metaphors, the juxtaposition of prose over a poetic framework – all a tad difficult to infuse in your literary senses while you are avoiding potholes and other fellow motorists.

Nevertheless, an audiobook is worth giving your ear to. If not anything else, it will keep you well-insulated from those seemingly clever music radio stations and their mind-numbing RJs and the singularly inane music that they dish out in between screams of sponsor company names and equally mind-numbing advertisements. Enjoy, ladies and gentlemen.

The only pleasant phase of my long sluggish drive to office is a brief stretch of Cubbon Park. Ideally, vehicles shouldn’t be allowed through this park. On my part, I am guilty of using this stretch because it saves me time whenever I am running late. I know I shouldn’t be using this route. There is enough pollution already in this once-beautiful park.

For those of you not familiar with the topography of Bangalore, Cubbon Park is a green hub right in the middle of the city. A sprawling park spotted with numerous trees. In the mornings, there are enough vehicles passing through this park to impart a smoke-screen on the greenery. One such morning I enter Cubbon Park and line-up quietly behind a trail of cars. We are all waiting for the traffic signal at the far end to mercifully spit us all out from a lovely park into the concrete jungle lying adjacent to it.

Suddenly, a car slides right next to mine. I notice from the corner of my eye that someone is signalling towards me. I turn my head to the right and find the car’s driver asking me to roll down my windows. With the tinted mask gone from my sight, I notice the white gleaming car parked periliously close to my car. The driver is a young chap, with a beard – a goatee rather, and has sunglasses perched on his head rather than on his nose. He munches on an already half-eaten apple and blurts, “How is the car?”

“Sorry?” I try to understand what he just munched.

“The car. Car. How is the car?” he repeats, in a tone that tells you he has miles to go before he can have a nap.

I realize he is asking me about my car. For some reason I look at my dashboard, as though that is where the answer lies. I then look back at him and say, “Yeah, the car is good. No problems so far.” I nod my head a couple of times in affirmation to what I just said.

He munches on his apple a bit, says a “hmmm”. I look out of my window to figure out the make of his car. But he had parked the car so close to mine, it was impossible for me to know the car model.

“What car is yours?” I ask.

“Volkswagen. Polo.”

“Wow, that’s cool. How’s the car?” and I suddenly start believing that asking a stranger about his car is perfectly acceptable.

“No leg space” he says in a dejected tone. “I should have bought your car,” he continues in a regretful tone.

“But you’ve got a great brand. It’s an European car after all. My car is one of those cheap Korean brands, not much of a reputation there,” I try and cheer him up. I was feeling bad for the boy now since he seemed quite depressed of having bought a ‘wrong’ car. For me, though, his car was just as good as any other car. In fact even better owing to its German roots.

“What use is this brand when there is so little leg space,” he laments with a remorseful look on his face. Then he shakes his head, drops off the core of the apple somewhere between the front seats and raises the window through which we were conversing.

No bye, no thank you, nothing. The conversation ends just as abruptly as it had started. A vendor comes by selling mobile chargers for cars. The signal had turned green, the dormant cars had switched on their engines and everyone’s right feet was on the accelerator raring to get to wherever they had to go.

The Volkswagen Polo slides away hurriedly ahead of me, and one of the most dejected guys I have ever seen is steering that car. I roll up my windows, drive past the glitzy UB City mall. The security staff there is getting ready, some of them cycling in with their lunch boxes in tow. No half-eaten apples in there, I suppose. No dejection on having a life without too many choices, perhaps. What gives? What makes one person depressed about a thing such as a car? And what makes one person strive to get to work in a cycle?

As these thoughts swirl around my head and fade away into the radio’s constant noise, I pat my car’s dashboard and congratulate myself for having bought this car. I don’t know much about cars, but if someone who owns a Volkswagen wanted my car, I have perhaps done it right.

One of the evident side-effects of the Metro construction in Bangalore has been the incessant cutting of trees across all major areas of the city.

If you now take a look at Seshadri Road, Nanda Road and roads around Malleswaram, you will see how a once-lush-green canopy has given way to a bare concrete view. Is there really a need to take away a portion of Cubbon Park? Was there a necessity to chop trees in Lalbagh (which even today stands as one of Bangalore’s integral identity)? The planning and development of the Metro has taken quite a few people by surprise. There has not been enough information shared in the public domain by the concerned authorities. The benefits of the Metro were never really listed out in comparison to other cheaper modes of transport (bus services being one of them).

What has happened so far is that the Metro juggernaut has rolled on, sucking in millions of rupees on its way and destroying the very fabric of Bangalore that had made it a preferred destination for many in the recent past. Democracy, in its definition, somewhere does include the phrase public participation. And voting is just one part of this public participation. The other and more significant part is to ensure that our public servants are questioned on their policies and to have a say in everything that affects us.

Today there was yet another protest against the haphazard construction and destruction taking place in Bangalore in the garb of urban transport management. We gathered at the BMRCL office (on K H Road) and protested with placards and slogans. Leaflets in Kannada and English were distributed to passers by, highlighting the glaring lapses in the Metro execution.

The group Hasiru Usiru has filed various RTIs (Right to Information) and the information obtained is quite far away from what the initial plans of the Metro were. For instance, the Phase 1 initial cost was Rs. 5800 crores and the present Phase 1 cost estimate is Rs. 11500 crores! Add to that the fact that the Phase 1 project is only 25% done and you get a scale of things to come. While the initial plan stated that around 400 trees would be cut, the actual number of trees are more than 1200 – a number that is only going to increase.

While I do not possess the acumen to judge whether the Metro will be beneficial in the long run or not, what I do know is that a lot of this destruction could be saved or at least handled in a better manner. If you are interested in meeting the group and taking part in the protest, please attend the next meeting at Tagore Circle on 4th November at 5:00 pm.

You can find resources and information regarding the Metro at the Hasiru Usiru website.

It is 7:45 am and I have just jumped out of bed, staring in horror at the clock which wasn’t supposed to be so ahead in time.

I squint my eyes and double check the chrome minute hand before my brain finally registers and confirms the time. It is indeed 7:45. Suddenly, my cellphone starts beeping. It takes me a moment, just a fleeting moment, to understand that this is not an alarm tone and instead it is someone wanting to communicate.

“Hello,” I say in my modified non-sleepy voice so the other person doesn’t really think I wake up this late.

“Dude, can you make it to the Egg Factory for breakfast?” says the Devil.

A pause before I can comprehend. He continues “We shall have an omelette dude”

The Devil calling this early in the morning? I couldn’t believe that he, of all the people in this world, had woken up this early. There is usually one thing that you could always win your bet on – The Devil not waking up early in the morning. That myth has now been shattered.

“Sure man, I will try to be there by 8:30 or so,” I reply, still maintaining my non-sleepy voice.

“Dude, I am already on my way,” he announces with, what seemed to me, a flourish of victory at having woken up earlier than anyone else in this city.

“Oh ok,” I say and hang up. A mad rush follows and I manage to get out of home by about 8:30. I wanted that omelette, of course.

I look back in the rear view mirror as I exit one of the traffic signals leading from the front, with the entire herd of metal and fuel closing in on me. I feel the traffic build around me and slowly ensnaring me in its ever expanding embrace. After dodging a few small cars and many not-so-small cars, I finally reach Brigade Road, that former heaven of a 20 year old me.

I pick up my cellphone and call up the Devil. No response. What ever happened to my omelette, I wonder, as I move towards the end of Brigade Road.

The parking lots are empty and suddenly I get the urge to park my car in one of those empty lots. Now, you may not appreciate this urge of mine. But trust me, parking on Brigade road is a joy which you can only understand when you go on this road on busy Saturday evenings and fail to find a single parking spot for over an hour. So yeah, I slide my car between two slanted white lines and halt a few inches before the yellow and black striped pavement. A security man in uniform appears out of nowhere with a bag of five rupee coins. He asks my car number, punches in a few keys in the parking meter, which does its gargling sound and sputters out a white ticket. I place the ticket back in my car, cross the road and walk up to the coffee shop in the basement.

When I order my coffee, the Devil calls up and asks “Where are you man?”

Before I can answer he informs me that he was done with breakfast and was already back in his office. I didn’t want to do without my omelette for the day of course. But heck, this coffee shop did not serve omelettes.

“Anything egg based?”, I inquired trying not to look too inquizitive.

“Egg puff sir,” replied the lady at the counter, who was wearing a white coat similar to those worn by junior doctors in pathology labs.

I throw out the pathology bit from my mind and order one of those egg puffs with my coffee. Omelettes can wait, but I can at least aim to get a part of the deal with an egg puff.

My coffee arrives and so does the egg puff, which for the un-initiated is a half-boiled egg covered with some spicy gravy and finally wrapped with flaky stuff that is usually found in, well, puffs.

I finish these two and as I get up a young man approaches and starts cleaning the table making me seem like a baby who didn’t know how to eat a flaky egg puff. I rush back out on to Brigade road. The traffic has increased but the parking lots are still empty. A thought of coming here on a Saturday morning and parking my car for the entire day strikes me. An evil thought I decide, also slightly influenced by the amount of parking money involved in that plan.

I drive my car back into mainstream traffic and 20 minutes later swerve into the road leading to my office. Right ahead of me, a car had managed to brush a TVS-50 (which, for the uninitiated, is a tiny scooterette with 50 cc of power. The uninitiated take up a lot of my time explaining) and a card board box had fallen upside down on the road. When the TVS rider walks up and turns the card board box around, a few things from the box fall on the road. To my extreme surprise at concepts of probability and coincidences, those things are nothing but egg puffs.

“What is with this stuff and me today morning?” I think to myself and then I notice that the rider was picking each one of those puffs from the road and putting them back in the box.

Someone was going to have an egg puff today that had touched an asphalted road. A road which many cars had passed over. Cars which had driven over slush and mud and sundry other things. Someone who had an evil thought of blocking parking lots in the city might end up eating that egg puff. Who knows?

I pass by the flaky crumbs which were strewn on the road and enter office, with thoughts of karma and omelettes mixed in a heady combination readying me for the day.

A not-so-routine office break when I had to step out to meet someone. I get out of my office and wait on a side of the main road, looking at the traffic hurl by with frequent honking and engine sounds; the dust and pollution giving the entire place a pleasant looking gray haze.

A group of four small kids appear from the other side of the road. One of them is on a dilapidated small bicycle, struggling to ride on it while the other three are tugging the rider’s shirt and bursting frequently into laughter. The kid on the cycle looks a little older, but not more than 9 or 10 years old. Wearing a vest considerably torn and by-now-khaki-coloured shorts, he manages to trudge his bicycle along with the others. They are all in rags, seeming to give more of a uniform look of their not so good economic status. But that was just in my eyes. They, amidst themselves, were the happiest lot of kids I have seen in recent times.

Looking to avoid the traffic, the group prances about and runs across the road, dodging the bikes and trucks deftly. They get on to the side where I am still waiting. A little ahead of me is a coconut water seller, selling the coconuts on a hand cart. The kids, still in a blissful and seemingly anticipatory state, run towards the cart. The cycle is dragged along too. Once at the cart, the eldest one jumps off the cycle, letting it fall on the dusty road. He rummages through the used and cut coconut shells. After a bit of searching, he removes his hand from the pile of shells holding two neatly cut coconut halves. Although the water in them is long gone, consumed by some passerby, the thin layer of coconut is still clinging on to the inner walls of the shell. The boy takes this and gives it to one of the younger looking kids. He then goes back into the pile, and almost magically, produces another set of shells which have some eating matter left. I watch this process as he retrieves one by one used shells and gives it to the remaining kids. The coconut seller doesn’t seem to care and continues to serve his other customers.

The kids then sit down and start scraping the whitish brown coconut from the shells, scraps of it finding their way instantly into their respective hungry mouths. The laughter and bliss overflows all around and the cycle lying side-down at their feet watches passively. The meal is finished just as quickly it was started. The eldest one picks up the cycle, puts the younger one on it, and all of them start their prancing and dancing way of walking as they go back to wherever they had come from. All the while tugging each other’s torn clothes and breaking into a laughter which didn’t seem to care much about the world around.

One of those evenings when we are plying back from work to home. We are listening to the usual fare on the radio stations and grumbling in unison about the traffic.

I drive right into a mass of vehicles humming quietly at a signal, fumes chugging out uniformly from quivering exhaust pipes. The signal sternly stays at red, refusing the mass of vehicles an opportunity to exhale and live. As I stop at this signal, by instinct we roll up the windows to bring on an artificial tint on the outside world. More so to feel secure from the seemingly chaotic and noisy real world.

An old lady walks up to our car, after being rejected nonchalantly by the car ahead, and appears at our tinted window. Between increasing the volume of the audio player and switching channels, I feel satisfied that I had rolled up the windows well in time. She is selling an illuminated object which rotates on a thread running through it. A pressing need to know how these things work kicks in and I start saying that the illumination happens due to the power generated by the rotation of the thread. Mrs. Dhi Only One thinks otherwise and refuses to accept that there is a dynamo kind of a model at work here. We decide to find out for ourselves and hence I roll down the window on my side.

“How much?”

“20 rupees”, she says with a sudden glimmer of hope.

I am taken aback with the price, owing to my initial assumption that this thing wouldn’t be more than Rs. 10.

“How about selling it for ten rupees?”, I ask her back, thinking that she was probably trying to maximize her profit upon seeing my interest in the product.

“No sir, it is only for twenty rupees”, she says pleadingly.

I am usually bad at negotiation, especially when I have sympathy mixed right into my buying decision quickly. So, I agree to give her rupees 20.

Now, my wallet was somewhere in my laptop bag in the rear seat and Mrs. Dhi Only One had to rummage through her slightly over-sized bag. While we were trying to locate twenty rupees, the traffic signal lightened up a little and was grinning green to all passers-by. The vehicles behind us began honking and we had no time to search and give this lady her twenty rupees.

“Please take it sir”, she started jogging alongside our moving car.

We felt extremely guilty about having started off all this, having given a ray of hope and then having squashed it due to a signal turning green. We couldn’t stop anywhere in that hurrying traffic and so we couldn’t buy that little rotating illuminated toy. With pangs of guilt threatening to consume us for the rest of the journey, Mrs. Dhi Only One suggested to take this route the next day and to ensure that we buy the stuff from that very lady.

We have made more than a couple of drives through that route but have failed to find that lady. We owe her twenty rupees.

Another fine traffic-filled day and another traffic junction. A rag picker on the pavement looking towards the sea of vehicles. A hoarding exactly above the rag picker screams in red:

I am sure the rag picker didn’t see the hoarding. If he had, he would have risen above the ordinary. Assuming he knew how to read of course. Its a good assumption to make if you have risen above the ordinary.