Jun 10 2008
Musings on the way to Bangalore International Airport
It is around 730 am in the morning and I am headed towards Bangalore International Airport to catch a flight to Nagpur. The experience thus far has been reasonable enough - the Airlift shared cab was waiting for me on time on Old Madras Road, my Tata Indicom wireless connection (despite some serious troubles in activating it) seems to be giving enough signal strength to blog live and Outer Ring road seems a lot less maddening at this time of the day.
Where is the Bangalore ecosystem headed - its a question I ask myself everyday. On the one hand (now don’t start off with Roosevelt’s assertion about wanting to meet only one handed economists) it has the trappings of a network hub with the necessary knowledge infrastructure, talented and creative people, a pace of life which is still slower than Mumbai and Delhi by a healthy factor (some might argue that geographically the main Bangalore region is not more than a few Mumbai or Delhi suburbs), and a fairly aggressive consumer spending base not just through IT professionals but also otherwise. On the other hand having experienced the absolutely anarchic traffic situation, the 11:30 pm curfews, the mundaneness of the MG Road area, the soulless and relentless construction and the blase attitude of may of this city’s residents, I tend to also wonder if Bangalore is a blip, a brief burst on the horizon which fades away into the sunset with a one liner in history textbooks.
Anyways, I need some coffee soon in my system …
I agree with you on Bangalore - I believe it’s an enigma at best.But delightful nevertheless…what I relish most in this city is the food and its sheer variety.
Talking of ecosystems, do we have any better ones in India? I can vouch for Mumbai - despite being such a premier metro, it’s merely floating and surviving - nature’s fury, political havoc, pathetic inhabitants - all adding color to the piling garbage
somehow it tugs along - and the vested interests unabashedly advertise it as the “spirit of Mumbai”
Airlift, unfortunately, is a most unreliable service. You can thank your stars it worked for you. I booked a cab and was supposed to
be picked up at 3.14 a.m. for a 5.45 a.m. flight. Cab never came. I had
to find some other transport after waiting till 3.45 a.m. (in the company of a plethora of street dogs… made me very nervous indeed). They had told
me that the cab and driver details would be SMSed to me an hour before
the pickup time. The SMS came at 12.45 p.m.! I am still trying to
figure out how to get the money back. They have not even acknowledged
my email for refund after four days.
Hi Krishna
I agree - their ‘cell’ cab never turned up at my house and I had to take an auto early morning to get to the actual cab. I also had a terrible experience with Easy Cabs (which i need to blog about!) - my phone was left behind in the cab and despite their supposed GPS they’ve neither been able to trace the phone nor call me back about what the final status was. Primordial and pathetic user experience! These entrepreneurs give India a BAD name….
Amit