It's flowering season for the gulmohar! Yippee!

( Read more... )

The double rainbow yesterday - from the terrace of the ugly green building. It was huge and very, very clear. We could see almost every colour from the window.

And then up on the terrace, we realised we could see the entire arc.



Check out the secondary rainbow on the right.

...is pretty.

There’s a diversion in town, in one of those intersections that are busy all through the day (which if you think about it probably holds true for most intersections in this city). It was implemented as of yesterday, so naturally it was announced only yesterday morning in the newspapers. It came as a bit of a surprise to anyone who hadn’t read the newspaper before leaving for work and I’m guessing there are quite a few people like that, moi included.

So yesterday morning, the world for miles around turned into one swarming mass of traffic, and everyone from my side of town had their own tale of glorious adventure to recite when they finally limped in to work.

Now assuming everyone had been good and read the newspaper in the morning, before coming in to work, what they’d have read would be this fine gem of writing:

Take diversion

Bangalore: Traffic has been altered on several roads under Ashoknagar traffic police limits in view of the construction work of the bridge at Victoria Road and Palm Grove junction. The altered routes are:
BMTC buses from Airport road and Domlur junction will have to take the right turn at ASC centre, on Richmond road take the left and proceed towards Hosmat hospital to D’Souza circle.
One-way traffic from D’Souza circle to Magrath road on Commissariat Road has been reversed. However, plying on the opposite direction is restricted.
Vehicles from Commissariat Road and Magrath Road should proceed on Hosmat Hospital Road. Traffic has been restricted from moving towards D’Souza circle at Commissariat and Magrath junction.
Two-way traffic has been altered into one-way from Hosmat Hospital to D’Souza circle.
Traffic has been restricted from Hosmat Hospital to Palm Grove junction. Residents can take right turn at Palm Grove Road towards Richmond Road.
All vehicles from Lower Agaram Road and Victoria Road junction have to take the left turn to move ahead on Palm Grove Road. From this junction towards the left, BBMP will undertake bridge work.

~~~

All of this without a map!!!.

You might want to read that again, even if you've lived in Bangalore all your life.

I’ve used these roads for ages, and even then I had to read through it thrice and I’m still clueless on what they’re trying to tell me. Clearly the traffic guys and / or the newspaper guys think everyone in this town carries along one of those GPS thingies. If Palm Grove Road is the one I think it is, I’m quite sure there’s no clearly visible road sign.

Anyway, I had my own little adventures in the ensuing three trips - each on a different route. In the morning yesterday, the BMTC’s pride and joy Volvo with its GPS and traffic updates took a fine joy ride of the city (cheerfully holding up traffic nearly everywhere with its bulk which is not really meant for the smaller roads!) before finally crawling back to join MG Road (the same MG Road you are advised to avoid because of the metro rail construction) at a crossroads that showed no sign of becoming croassable in the near future. In the evening, we did a nice tour of all the bylanes of Austin Town (which is where I think Palm Grove Road takes you) before returning to – you guessed it! - MG Road.

Today in the morning, saner minds finally took a shorter diversion, and life returns to normal or thereabouts.

Eidt: Not one of the three routes was as per the fine directions printed above!

In all the while I’ve been in Chennai through countless hopping visits on family holidays en route to elsewhere and through two jobs, the last two years that I spent there were probably the only time I ever, to some extent at least, liked being in the city.

And while I guess most of that was due to the old workplace, I think the only things that stopped me from actually proclaiming a liking for the place were - the weather (humid is a season!), the results of the last assembly election and that one huge negative of where I lived (and therefore, the awful commute it involved).

Getting from home to work or to the library or to anywhere where I could shop, watch movies, have a coffee, or even order a pizza (we were well outside city limits!) was a chore in itself, and actually involved 'planning'! The road I lived on was a stretch of national highway that was at best a country road masquerading as a 2 lane tar road, with potholes at regular intervals, frequented at all hours by trucks in all sizes and shapes at least one of which broke down at least once a day. Just reaching city limits could take the best part of an hour. I don’t need to describe what happened during the rains.

And then I moved to Bangalore.

And now the road outside my parents’ house is a 4 lane highway soon to become an 8 lane one, trucks are barred from 8 am to 9 pm and you can reach the city limits in 20 minutes. and this weekend, the weather there was slightly breezy, slightly cloudy and overall prety decent.

There is a lesson somewhere in all this, I’m sure. But I still don't want to return there.