Cross Connections

 B A N G A L O R E, once upon a time, was known for its beautiful, mystique green cover and a heavenly weather.But, is it the same now? Naah.. A trillion thanks to the dearest urbanization, which monstrously manifested itself to rapidly dissolve the plush green canopy to make way for the cancerous concrete structures to stand up, both vertically and horizontally. A big round of applause for the city's traffic as well, for it is becoming a worst possible nightmare ever ruining the peace that once upon a time flourished. Cities, are you choking yourselves to becoming 'unlivable'? Answer us!

I'm so hesitant to walk around the area where I was brought up. I miss those days where I, as a kid, used to cycle around the 'green' roads and enjoy my rides. And now, I wouldn't feel to do the same. And, this is the case not just with me. This is historical.

The funny thing to look at is some people moaning and grumbling to clean their own surroundings where trees shed some leaves and twigs on the ground, and hence planning to chopping off the trees owing to their laziness.Well, is urbanization a necessary evil, or have we made it necessary?

My house stands in a street where there used to be a lot of trees before. Slowly, the trees were one by one chopped off to fall prey to the malignant thoughts of people which meandered around the real estate market. 

Three stout coconut trees stood beside a house immediate next to mine. It was a delight watching these coconut trees becoming silhouettes as the sun set in. But, the poor owner wanted to accommodate a few 'wandering' families and hence planned for a further construction of the house. The tall, majestic, giving coconut trees fell for the agenda of making more and more bucks. 

 But while they stood, they dropped coconuts, and apart from the owner, even we, the neighbors made use of them when they fell in our place. Also, there was a landline telephone pole beside one of the trees, and all our landlines ran through it. Every summer, the trees shed a few dried fronds, and some poor telephone lines fell apart. This happened on a regular basis, and we literally were fed up with the lines getting cut. We used to call the line man to fix them, but his gradual irregularity led us to fix'em ourselves. At that time, the internet accessories like Skype, Yahoo,Google Video chatting weren't so popular, so we'd to rely on our landline phones to make and receive overseas calls. This went on for quite sometime.

Once, about 3-4 fronds fell making heavy noise and we wondered if the pole itself fell on the ground. But, only about 4-5 lines were cut, and one of the lines was ours. At that time, there was a power cut as well. Standing still, I was just gaping around. My neighbor, whose telephone line had also cut, came running with a torch, and few repair accessories. Keeping a knife, a blade, an insulation tape roll, we went searching for the cut lines focusing the torch light as we crawled on. We somehow found 2 lines running towards the right of the pole and figuring out that was ours', we patched them up with all the adventures behind the patching process and made sure the telephones behaved well.

I do not know whether it is a coincidence, but both of us were expecting an overseas call at the same time. Again, for the coincidental records, my cousin's name and my neighbor's daughters name happens to be the same!  No sooner we fixed the lines, cursed the trees, discussed about this and got back to our places, than the phones started ringing. My grandmother rushed to hear her grand-daughter's voice, who was calling us after a long time. She picked the receiver and the voice at the other end spoke -

"Dad, I've posted the documents to you. Acknowledge me once you receive them. How's Mom doing? Did you plan the Holenarsipur trip yet?" It seemed the voice spoke continuously and my grandmother was giving a puzzled look at me. But, after a long pause, the voice seemed like shouting "hello...hello...hello..." from the other end. My grandmother spoke and tried to know who it was. Finally, after a few cross questioning, my grandmother found out it was neighbor's daughter speaking.We then realized and burst out laughing at the chaos that had happened. I went running to my neighbor's house and told about the issue. Rushing back to the lines again, we sorted out the mismatched lines and fixed them again, tested by calling each other's phone and ensured things were okay. 

Nowadays, the usage of the landline phones to make and receive local,outstation and overseas calls has come   to a gradual decrease with people relying more on their mobile phones and internet accessories for communication. I do not know how many times I, my family and some of my neighbors have cursed these trees, which gave us good shade, swayed across to make us feel the breeze and occasionally dropped some coconuts which we made use of, but, they just disappeared one fine day. I felt so sorry for those trees which fell bowing to the owner's thoughts about further construction of his house, also budging to some of our curses. At that point, I realized how a man's thoughts caring only about himself for his profit and not any other living being on this planet result in such a ghastly action. Like this, day by day, the rich green cover is simply vanishing from this earth to satisfy a man's greed, but the greed for more doesn't seem to end. Why aren't  we people satisfied with whatever we have? Why are we made to think more on a paradoxical way in which mass destruction happens in the name of development? 

Would this 'never seems like ending' process of urbanization lead to a complete loss of Biodiversity? I wish I wouldn't see that happen..

R.

11 July 2012.

SPLENDID TRAVEL

Trips, traveling or could call it as expeditions have always been fascinated me to visit many places in India. People, culture, food, heritage place, buildings and many more refreshes and adds-up excitement to travel. A periodic betterment in transportation via automobile connects cities making it easier expedition to any part of the country you like to see whether it’s few kilometers of it could be miles together.

In my childhood traveling in carts (Jatka gaadi in kannada) was the most joyful ride I ever had in villages. If I am not wrong, most of our school life has spent in enjoying auto rickshaw (three-wheeler) from school to home. As the time advanced and IT, BT software days are here (not to forget) a sophisticated life style moved us to modern day cars and buses. Modern day bus facilities have changed my view about buses in India. If you surf through many websites of metropolitan city for example, Bangalore’s local transport, we see beautiful pictures of red, blue, green, brown, blue, pink bus. Each color and bus size symbolize a name- Vayu Vajra for airport service bus, BIG10 – travel with Rs 10, pink bus for women special service, pushpak bus and metro station service. An A/c VOLVO offers day dreaming ride. My aversion towards bus travel has been taken away by these big, long colorful buses. The special seat reservation for women, handicapped, senior citizens allow people feel gratify in traveling.

A New Direction

As an additional, traveling experience in Colorado, US using local county bus service was amazing. Bus seem to be like a splendid bus with facilities such as park and ride, call ride- make a call and fix a ride, sky ride (for airport), stop at door facility, lost and found and preference for handicap/disable, online schedule on mobile, late night service and fabulous is Mall Ride - a shuttle bus to visit restaurants, shops, theater, galleries, tourist attractions, and businesses up and down the mall. Senior ride will provide pickup facility and a discount on tickets for senior citizens; they also have special mechanism where the door steps will be flattened to foot level for their easy walk into bus and foldable seats for disabled people. I have never seen before anywhere but in U.S, how travelers conveying a HELLO & THANKS to bus drivers. This is really a lesson to learn and thank even those people who helped us in small to small help. Amazing discipline.   

Being a nature lover I or anybody would like to keep your environment clean. This was one more positive of bus service at Colorado. There are waste bags kept, to discard food wrappers, drink containers and also to throw invalid tickets and other papers.

Bird watching

While I was waiting for bus at one of the stop, I saw 2-3 colorful birds; I was thinking which birds are these. My friend told me to do Bus birding!!! Bird watching was not much fascinating before at a bus stop until I saw a Bird watching guide board. Picturized and designed by Brian D. Collier, a new art-science-transportation project created for JUMP bus route in Boulder, Colarado, U. S. This educates bird watching community and beginners and encourages initiating riding the bus to their bird watching sites.  The bird watching guide includes local birds’ name that could be seen in the bus stops. A bird watching event will also be conducted in August and interested bird watchers can schedule their timings to ride a bus. Isn’t it amazing?

The proverb in Kannada “Desha suttu kosha oodu” translation in English says “travel places and read books” definitely true!!! Reading books at library is equal to learning by visiting 2-3 places. I learnt many things just by riding a bus. To have this facility in India too, the fellow travelers should also take active part in maintaining bus regulations and by no mishandling/misuse of bus facility and learning how to utilize this. How about even Indian government provide bird watching facility at bird sanctuaries to start with and Bird watching boards at all picnic spots. We should definitely think about it.