Dirt Strips on Our Roads

If you have recently been to one of European or North American countries and land back in Bangalore, the difference in the nature of the traffic is too stark to miss. There, it glides; here, it crawls. There are so many reasons for this. Here are some I can think of:

• There are simply too many vehicles and people in India
• Bad roads, i.e. potholes, uneven road width etc.
• Bad driving
• Lack of useful footpaths causing pedestrians to spill into the thoroughfare
• Hawker carts, taxis and vehicles parked within the edge of the road
• Commercial establishments built too close to the road
• Bad town planning which causes bottlenecks, e.g. ill-planned distribution of human establishments creating hotspots
• Bad traffic management

Many of the above are very difficult problems. We can't do much about our population. Most of the above need major replanning of cities, educating large multitudes of people about traffic sense, setting up surveillance and punitive structures and so on. This is very costly, and if at all possible in India's case, would take years to happen.

Road Dust

This post is not about all the above hard problems. It's about a problem which seems to me a much easier one to solve. It's the dust that accumulates on the edges of our roads. See this:

The light brown strip running along the road is earth settled on the road. Its width is over a metre. I wouldn't be surprised if this accounts for approximately 1/6th of the total road width. This part of the road is unmotorable and un-bicyclable. In short, this part doesn't get used at all, not even by pedestrians. In presence of such traffic woes, this is a colossal wastage of precious road width. They further choke the already woeful traffic, causing delays and accidents. If you are on a two-wheeler or a bicycle, this part has less grip than the rest of the road, making it dangerous. For bicyclists, its unusable because its uneven and rough, making it harder to pedal on them. When it rains, this part becomes slippery making it further dangerous to venture on them. And this is a very common sight on Indian urban roads.

And to the best of my understanding, this problem is nowhere close to as hard as all the above listed problems. With one cleaning operation done, I presume, even in a very dusty environment, it would stay clean for weeks if not months. The benefits are immediate and immense. It would free up that much width of the road, making it faster and safer to ply on. There are these dust sweeping trucks available which municipalities and Gram Panchayats can procure. They can share or rent these if they can't afford to own one. They can contract the task out to private parties. My guess is this won't be all that expensive. They already do this routinely in some of richer areas already.

I am telling something every road user knows well. Often, we don't say such things because we think it's too obvious, or that the authorities don't have the will to do anything about it. This time, I thought, let me just put this out for exchange of thoughts, and possible notice of pertinent authorities. Maybe, it's obvious. But it doesn't hurt anyone saying it anyway.

I request authorities to take notice and take a step. Doing something about it is easy and inexpensive, I think. One more thought (relevant to World Environment Day today). Please remove the dust off these roads and mark that part as cycling tracks. 🚴🚴🚴Automobile drivers are anyway not using this part in many places.

On World Bicycle Day

I wish to join in to try and spread the message of clean commute using bicycles. On a broader canvas, I would request you all to give a serious thought to minimalistic living, to question the edification of consumerism as the driver of economy and prosperity.
Sharing two pictures.
 

The cartoon depicts how cynics would see vanity even in your simplicity. To many, showing off wealth, physical beauty and such is acceptable, but being proud of your simplicity is not. I have experienced something similar, and found that experience an immensely humbling one. On the one hand, it gave me the realisation that I shouldn't have too much expectation about the influence that exemplary behaviour can have in spreading a positive message. How far a good message can spread depends far more on how receptive people are to them. Good, positive thoughts and messages have to struggle against people's ego and judgements about you to spread. On the other, I have realised that good behaviour isn't vindicated only when its message is spread. It's a vindication by and of itself. So, it's correct to do the right thing. If it doesn't scale, it's most likely due to the negativity of the naysayers, not necessarily due to any inherent limitation of what you do.
 

Grocery. The second picture is something I am very proud of showing off. My neighbour Arun Awasthi took it for me when I returned after doing grocery one Sunday morning. And I feel, this picture shows what I consider bicycles really good for. Apart from all the other good things they are -- clean, cheap, healthy -- they are quick, light, manoeuvre-able machines and very useful!
At this point, I wish to tag several of my friends who have inspired me very much through their use of bicycles. They all are eminently successful people in their lives, capable of lavish exteriors like most, but had the courage and ingenuity to prefer simplicity and sustainability over vanity:

1. Pritesh Ananth Krishnan
2. Ananthakrishnan Gopal
3. Ganesh Shankar
4. Niranjan Roy
5. Sethu Madhavan
6. Ashish Verma
7. Satvik

#worldbicycleday #ResetWithCycling

Welcome to BMTC

After 11 years of evading it, I am getting to explore BMTC buses in all their glory. AC volvos with 55 rupees tickets for 25 kms. Arterial roads: Electronic City, Majestic, Malleswaram, Whitefield... Rattling blue ones joining far-flung rural nooks and crannies crawling on bumpy pot-holed roads with 10 rupees tickets for 30 kms. Attibele, Jigni, Hoskote, Kodi-Farm, Uttarahalli... Upscale, ear-plugged, perfumed, nose-upturned co-passengers. Talkative, noisy co-passengers, smelling of sweat and dust, eager to help. I salute BMTC for creating this burgeoning network of buses. It's an experience! They have continued to make it possible to travel long distances without spending half your salary on petrol.

I find the drivers and conductors extremely polite and helpful in general. I never knew that there are so many buses in Bangalore, and that there are so many people to travel in them. The enormity of this crowd is humbling! Everyone working so hard! Trying to get somewhere. Millions. And yet, everyone struggling to keep his head above the sea of insignificance which seems to keep rising all the time.

Once you figure out the routes, it seems to be a very economical and eco-friendly way of commuting. It takes a bit longer. Well, much longer in many cases. But city driving is stressful, a time wasted completely. Owning a car isn't a big deal anymore; but being chauffeur driven isn't affordable now, nor ever is going to be, for most of us. Not to mention the fatigue driving creates affecting the quality of the time after the drive. On the contrary, the time in a bus is a time to unplug yourself, work, think, rest, catch up with friends over phone, mail, chat...

I seem to have conquered my fear of buses after a long struggle. And I am profiting from it. I don't have anything to say to those who have given up on public transport like they have given up on voting, or on the whole concept of 'a greater good'. But if anyone has been hesitating to take his or her first step, waiting for a positive word to come from somewhere, here you have it from me. Try BMTC (or whichever is the local bus service of your city). It may turn out to be practical in your case too!

The Dark Night

Power condition in Bangalore has been pretty bad as it is. Sunday evening's storm has made things worse. For the last two days, we are facing long power outages at home during the night lasting for 2-3 hours. My little son Vigyan wasn't able to sleep due to the heat and mosquitoes. I stood there fanning him with a magazine for about an hour, non-stop. Seeing him in trauma is a far dearer price to pay for me than an hourlong torture of standing in dark, sweltering heat of the night, myself bathing in sweat, trying to comfort him with a medieval apparatus. Seeing him slide back into a peaceful sleep was more than a compensation.

But this post is not all about showing off what an affectionate father I was last night (though I can't claim that not to be in the fringe of the agenda). The main purpose is to raise an alarm from my personal side.

I think we have started scraping the edge of the precipice. There will soon be a sudden disappearance of earth from beneath our feet, and then will begin a sudden, fatal fall. The way weather has been off late, the uncontrolled shortage of power and water, basic necessities of civilised life, all these is somewhat too ugly, too regular, to be caprices of nature. I think we are in a decisive stage of our battle against our unplanned, uncontrolled growth as a species. And we are going to lose this battle!

And at every moment I see instances of how we have abused our surroundings. How we continue to do it, thinking that it's normal to do so. Thinking that worry about it is a sign of one's own morbidity.

At office, the instances are most rampant.

People travelling to office by car, all alone. Shame on all of you!

People who don't switch off their computers while leaving office. Shame on you!

People who waste tissue papers and water in the toilet. Shame on you!

People who waste food. Shame on you!

You, who are often good people otherwise, often you are my friend, my colleague -- you are the reason why last night was such a long dark night for me and my son.

A long dark night awaits. A very long, a very dark night. Then, we'll most probably not have the luxury to exchange pleasantries at cafe. There will no lunch and snacks to go together to, because there will be only so much as only either of us will be able to eat. Not you and me. It'll be you or me! In those dark times, we may have to avoid each other's eyes. For it's hard to look into the eyes of a person you are killing. We will soon be fighting each other. Killing each other. Just like beasts! Because there will soon be so little left to survive on, that we have to reduce ourselves to savage ways even to exist.

Meet you in the battleground. Meet you in the jungle. Meet you in the dark night.

I had written this post for the company internal blog. But found it relevant to be reproduced here.