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As I got down from the K.R. Puram railway station, I could feel the change that Bangalore had undergone in the past one and half years. The railway platform was a newly laid one and thanks to the people of Bangalore and south western railway, it was still dirty and unclean. As I came out of the station and started heading towards the city, I could see new platforms on both sides of the road with rain water draining facility. I don’t know if they really work coz, it was real hot when I went there and it seemed there will be no rains for few days. In some areas, especially the Airport road, these new platforms had given rise to petty shops. When I peeped into one of this shop, I saw Mr. Bean smiling at me from one of the CD covers. They had a wide range of filmi CDs, ranging from the latest English blockbuster to the Indian language movies, mainly Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and of course Kannada. The auto trip was short and I decided to explore the city later.
The same evening I planned to walk around the city, as that will help me more in looking around. The first thing that caught my eye, when I reached the airport road was a red color bus, with some advertisement of a blue chip company. It was a low floored, air conditioned bus with the driver wearing dress similar to a chauffer. There was one more guy, dressed in the same way and standing near the door. The front, side and the back side of the bus had a digital display with the number 335 and some kannada text scrolling around next to it. The text then changed to English. It was the BMTC run new Volvo city buses. On enquiring, I found out that they charge something around 30 to 50 rupees based on which place you are going. I was not lucky enough to travel in the bus.
As I reached the Manipal Hospital Junction, a sign board said “Go only when it is Green”. It was a usual sign board you find it in many cities across India. That was not the one which had caught my attention. There was something else written under it. It read as follows “You are in a Wi-Fi zone”. I vaguely remembered coming across this term for the first time some four and half years ago. It was a sort of revolutionary technology at that time and it had not been implemented commercially. It was more on the research papers only. But now it had moved from developed country and it was trying to make in roads into developing once too.
Opposite to the Manipal Hospital stands a grand pink building, The Leela Palace, the five star hotel under the Leela Ventures group, with an architecture that more resembles a palace in Rajasthan. This hotel boasts of highest ARR (Average Room Rent) in India, with rents starting from Rs.7000/- and of course it is dollars for other country peoples. I had seen the hotel daily, when I stayed in Bangalore and something was different now. It took sometime for me to realize that, they have constructed a new section of the hotel, with their trademark large round pillars and domes at the top which decorated the old section of the hotel. When I left Bangalore, there was totally no sign of any work going on there. But now a whole new big section stood there. When I came down to Chennai, I went to their website just to find out that they had added 105 large sized premium rooms. They had mentioned that the hotel is ten minutes away from the airport. But the people of Bangalore know that’s only possible if there are no vehicles plying on the road. Some other articles about Leela Palace said that, the rooms are occupied throughout the year and booking had to made months in advance to really feel the Leela ambience.
Has India really changed? Can I answer this question positively by seeing these things? It has to be a yes, though I have to agree it is still the beginning and we have a really long way to go. I realized this on walking some more distance down the road. The beggar whom I used to see daily sitting in the platform stretch from britania industries to Nilgiris supermarket in the airport road was still there. The only difference was that he had a better platform to sit. Then another familiar face was the paani puri vendor just between the murugeshpalya stop and kempfort. Domino Pizza and the Hyderabadi Biriyani occupied the new building that had been constructed in the once vacant land behind him. I still remember seeing him once packing his little shop very hastily. That was to escape the police menace. The police used to come there to collect some money, as it was not legal to put shops in the platform.
India is really changing. But the effect should touch much more people than what it does now. Putting in the lines of Robert Frost, India has got a long way to go before it sleeps (incidentally, Nehru liked this line of Frost and has been seen quoting this often.).
The same evening I planned to walk around the city, as that will help me more in looking around. The first thing that caught my eye, when I reached the airport road was a red color bus, with some advertisement of a blue chip company. It was a low floored, air conditioned bus with the driver wearing dress similar to a chauffer. There was one more guy, dressed in the same way and standing near the door. The front, side and the back side of the bus had a digital display with the number 335 and some kannada text scrolling around next to it. The text then changed to English. It was the BMTC run new Volvo city buses. On enquiring, I found out that they charge something around 30 to 50 rupees based on which place you are going. I was not lucky enough to travel in the bus.
As I reached the Manipal Hospital Junction, a sign board said “Go only when it is Green”. It was a usual sign board you find it in many cities across India. That was not the one which had caught my attention. There was something else written under it. It read as follows “You are in a Wi-Fi zone”. I vaguely remembered coming across this term for the first time some four and half years ago. It was a sort of revolutionary technology at that time and it had not been implemented commercially. It was more on the research papers only. But now it had moved from developed country and it was trying to make in roads into developing once too.
Opposite to the Manipal Hospital stands a grand pink building, The Leela Palace, the five star hotel under the Leela Ventures group, with an architecture that more resembles a palace in Rajasthan. This hotel boasts of highest ARR (Average Room Rent) in India, with rents starting from Rs.7000/- and of course it is dollars for other country peoples. I had seen the hotel daily, when I stayed in Bangalore and something was different now. It took sometime for me to realize that, they have constructed a new section of the hotel, with their trademark large round pillars and domes at the top which decorated the old section of the hotel. When I left Bangalore, there was totally no sign of any work going on there. But now a whole new big section stood there. When I came down to Chennai, I went to their website just to find out that they had added 105 large sized premium rooms. They had mentioned that the hotel is ten minutes away from the airport. But the people of Bangalore know that’s only possible if there are no vehicles plying on the road. Some other articles about Leela Palace said that, the rooms are occupied throughout the year and booking had to made months in advance to really feel the Leela ambience.
Has India really changed? Can I answer this question positively by seeing these things? It has to be a yes, though I have to agree it is still the beginning and we have a really long way to go. I realized this on walking some more distance down the road. The beggar whom I used to see daily sitting in the platform stretch from britania industries to Nilgiris supermarket in the airport road was still there. The only difference was that he had a better platform to sit. Then another familiar face was the paani puri vendor just between the murugeshpalya stop and kempfort. Domino Pizza and the Hyderabadi Biriyani occupied the new building that had been constructed in the once vacant land behind him. I still remember seeing him once packing his little shop very hastily. That was to escape the police menace. The police used to come there to collect some money, as it was not legal to put shops in the platform.
India is really changing. But the effect should touch much more people than what it does now. Putting in the lines of Robert Frost, India has got a long way to go before it sleeps (incidentally, Nehru liked this line of Frost and has been seen quoting this often.).
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