Cities developing.. some Off Topic ramblings

Cities developing…some Off Topic ramblings

Had been to Bangalore on a private visit.

I was also not feeling too well as the wet weather in Chennai played havoc with my immune system and I took the first Train back home… I do that when things became unmanageable alone for me. Which is pretty rare, by the way..LOL..

That was last week.

Father’s annual ceremony was also to be conducted in Bangalore and a friendly ‘purohit’ would do just the thing for me for a price, cutting down on my physical participation by providing a substitute. If you think I am carrying on with this ‘Outsourcing’ thing too far, now you could be right! Mom consoled me, ‘dad, if alive would not have liked me to endure such strain when sick for his sake’. It is another matter that I could not have conducted his ceremony if he were alive…Be that as it may!!

Bangalore continues to be, ‘BengaLooru’ in all respects as I look at it from my new found status of an Outsider to my city of birth.

Big and small Potholes still embellish the roads of ‘namma rajadhani’ , all promises by new CM, and Old mayors forgotten. All deadlines and assurances remaining just on paper…

A Wet night, 10-30 Pm at City Railway station, you still see the Autorickshaw drivers have all but vanished and those who have stayed on are only trying to find dummies who can pay any exorbitant fare or else agree to come where the Driver wants to go

…Hmmm…

Roads are still chock a bloc with traffic; it is pretty exhausting to go anywhere at all now at a short notice. My poor wife continues to trudge on her Moped day in and day out…

Weather still remains the City’s long trusted friend… Cool and salubrious…..welcoming outsiders with open arms just for that sake…Then there is IT, of course…scores of BPO Jobs to be found and Pubs and malls to hang out for modern ‘Hep’ crowd…Sounds all right for ‘Young and upwardly mobile’. But where the essence of Good Old Bangalore has gone, I wonder…

Govt wants to bring in Metro. For once when they looked serious enough, we should have welcomed it without a murmur.. But No, at scores of places there are protests by Building owners.. That they want to be left alone…So when will this take off at all Or rather commission at all…No one seems to know or care…

Kannada films continue to struggle for existence in the capital of the ‘Only’ state where they are exhibited. There were some irreconcilable fights between Actors association and Producers’ Lobby too the other day while I was there… Just making things worse for themselves and the Industry…Last heard they are on strike of some sort now…

A ray of hope was that kannada Hero turned MP , Ambareesh becomes a Union minister of state and feels ecstatic and his fans go overboard. He says he will become ‘India da gandu’ from ‘mandya da gandu’…Easier said than done. People will be watchful; he should not forget…Fans can only get you so far…and then it is only work all the way..

By then it was time to head back to Chennai.

Brindavan express was only half full on a week day afternoon. Some noisy film Industry crowd with me on the AC coach were going for a shooting session .The Movie stars the hero Upendra and some scenes are being shot in Chennai with the Workers’ Strike affecting Gandhinagar and Sandalwood facilities in Bangalore, they said…

It was just as well that immediately on arrival, I had to attend a well managed workshop on Team leadership at GRT Hotel in T. Nagar..

That is a different story ( Click here) …

Then someone dear calls me and asks me ‘How come Chennai is in the news now for surging ahead in attracting new FDI and big brands setting shops here’ especially the Electronics and IT kind…

For once Chennai is in the news for right reasons this time, I thought…Otherwise the City gets its share of flak from the media on ‘Khushboo issue’ or ‘Dress code for women’ and such inane and chauvinistic topics more often..

The same someone also told me that there is now a lobby working in Delhi led by aggressive go-getter Dayanidhi Maran hailing from TN spreading falsehood on Hyderabad and Bangalore and getting even with these two cities unfairly to attract new Businesses to open in Chennai instead.. May be he is right or he would like to believe so, but that is not the point…

This is nothing new; Hyderabad did it to Bangalore in the days of SM Krishna and Chandrababu Naidu and the duo was normally behaving more like local chieftains of their Cities out on a warpath with each other than sane and mature CMs of two neighboring states…What goes round , comes around, isn’t it…

Besides, Chennai has its share of IT and Corporate crowd too. It is believed that about 50 000 people are staffed in the IT/ BPO sector and the numbers are going up all the time. TCS headquarters has always been here, so has Infosys and Wipro offices albeit smaller than the Bangalore counterparts…

Now it is the turn of Nokia, Samsungs, Saint Gobain, Hyundai and Fords…In IT, they say TN has now gone from No 3 to No 2 position in software exports…many versions to this of course, pro and anti…Anyway…

In all, one can safely say, Technology and Progress are irreversible phenomena in today’s world and all Cities will eventually get benefited. It is just a matter of time.

Signing off on this note…C’ya..

PS. I attended some superlative Bhajan sessions at Sundaram sathya sai mandir last week too.Read all about it here…

Nagesh

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