If I were to explain to a non – Banglorean that I spend a significant, precious part of my life (the hours of my day do constitute my life) commuting, and for most part of that commuting time, I am doing nothing but standing dead still, he would think I’m off my rocker!!! Better still he might give me a word or two about how I can walk and get my a** moving instead of wasting my time idling. But you have to take my word or check it out for yourself, there is not an inch of space where you can set your foot down and actually move. Unless our species is overnight given the gift of flight, there is no way you can move ahead on Hosur Road without being on wheels. Sure I’ve seen some creatures, trying to find direction and make sense in this maddest stretch of the planet, ON FOOT (how??? Do they ever make it one piece to their destination? Or are they those daredevil contestants of crazy dare road shows getting a high by attempting the impossible?) And all I think is, shit. That’s one brave, really brave guy.

For a year now, I’ve burned my blood, gone nuts, tried everything to see if I can escape with minimum damage. I’ve observed patterns, like at one time, I thought the traffic is at its minimum from 3 to 5 (showing an increasing trend of course) and then it hits the peak at 6, stays that way till a good 8 and then begins to decrease. I planned my commuting that way too. But that’s the beauty of the damn thing! The only rule about the traffic here is that there are no rules (good one! Another one of my calvinesque statements J ).

Like always, I boarded the bus armed (yes armed.. it’s a war out there man! ) with a bag of wafers, some cookies and bottled water. Only, only – I had nothing to keep me occupied. One of the worst mistakes you can make is to board the bus without a book, radio, newspaper or just about anything that keeps you from looking at your watch and wanting to tear your hair (Statuary warning: These ensure partial success only, no 100% remedial solution has been found and if some ingenious mind actually comes up with a solution to this, he can be assured it will be an overnight runaway success). I climbed in and from the minute the bus hit hours road it began to crawl. I downed whatever I had in 45 minutes flat and had nothing to do. Status: I was still on Hosur road. One of my biggest doubts over the year has been, how do they do that? How is it possible by any stretch of imagination to create a mess like this? Does the guy at who’s had a start in the race think, ok now that I’m first, its time to give us losers some fun! I’ll stand here, with my big bus/truck and won’t let them get off. Nothing else can explain how nothing moves! 15 minutes later I was thoroughly frustrated. I started looking around, the guy on the seat in front was reading a newspaper with headlines that read something like this “Mush makes a creepy attack”. Wow! Mush! Childhood buddy to Vineet and Indu Jain I’m sure. TOI beats its previous record every day. Another headline read “Kissinger dated shady woman”. New age journalism – its going downhill at a pace which will make it hit the abyss before you know it. To this day I haven’t been able to understand Bangalore’s obsession to this two bit shoddiest piece of crap yellow journalism. Every morning I climb the bus to see every seat occupied with someone carrying this Page 3 newspaper. How do they read it? One year down, this place still amazes me. Hats off to Bangalore. Or should I say – Stand still! It’s Bangalore!

I’ll wind up with my favorite Calvin quote in this context:

“Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us”.
Bill Waterson, Calvin & Hobbes