First impressions of Bangalore

I spent the past two weeks in the Silicon Valley of India - Bangalore. I had visited the city about 10 years ago with my parents before it became the Mecca of Indian IT Industry.

My experiences were quite different from my expectations. I had expected a newly morphed metro which would be extremely crowded, lacking roads/flyovers and bustling with night life. I found OK roads and flyovers in some parts of the city, bad roads in some others, lots of traffic & pollution but a small town at heart albeit a very romantic one. Night life is virtually non-existent with even pubs closing down by 11:30PM.

While one would expect old Bangalore to have narrow roads but the city planners have not granted wider avenues even to newer areas. I wonder whether their visiting Mumbai (which is facing the problems of similar myopic development in suburbs) would help. But, old Bangalore is also dotted by parks and lots of trees and hence is quite a romantic setting. The cantonment which covers almost 60% of old Bangalore also offers the city a colorful mix of military and civil life. However, Bangalore is more polluted than Mumbai and Delhi (source: my colleague from NCR) - I could sense widespread use of Kerosene by Auto-rickshaws and of course the lack of credible public transport is clearly visible.

The city lacks places to hang out - malls like Garuda and Bangalore ©entral are over-crowded, so are the numerous Cafe Coffee days [there are 5 of them within the 100 meter circle of B'lore©]. One of the reasons why pubs are numerous is the lack of hangout places for young. Further, the artificially imposed restrictions on night-life are killing - especially when you have loads of friends to visit and your office hours extend till 10 PM!!!

But Bangalore is clearly the city of start-ups and IT companies. You would be walking along the Lavelle road or Cunningham Road with bungalows on both sides and suddenly a glass building belonging to Google, Accenture or a lesser known start-up would morph out of nowhere. There are IT companies in literally every gali and nukkad [nook and corner]. In certain parts of the city, the number of Infosys buses plying would be more than the number of city buses at 9 AM. Entrepreneurshipip is clearly in the air of the city where thousands of IT professionals dream about starting up every now and then (I have some of my own friends who belong to this category). The city needs needs needs better infrastructure for these dreams to come true and politics should not be allowed to come in the way of these numerous dreams. Shri Hardanhalli Devegauda permitting, this city is still to see the birth of many more start-ups that could change the face of the earth!