Articles by Vaidya R

Dear Sir, Let me introduce myself. I am one of those estimated 48 Lakh commuters who use public transport to get to work. I travel, on average, 50 kms both ways in a day. It takes me 3 to 3.5 hours to do the same. I buy monthly passes every month and I have seen my spending go from Rs. 1350 per month just two years ago to Rs.1800 now. During this time, the cost of diesel has gone from Rs. 46.21 to Rs. 54.82. An 18% hike in fuel has meant a 33% hike in the pass rates. There…

The month of April 2012 saw temperatures soaring to record levels in Bangalore. So it was a welcome holiday on 1st May which also saw a heavy pre-monsoon burst in the evening going on well into the night. It was the first shower of the year. Unlike most showers, however, the disruption was much less since it was a holiday. Commuters who use the Outer Ring Road (ORR) between Sarjapur road and Marathahalli saw traffic piling up till the Bellandur flyover in the morning of 2nd May. This flyover had been inaugurated in February 2012, after a delay of more…

In 2011, I moved back to Bangalore from Seattle. I was conscious that I was not moving back to the city that I knew.For starters, I was moving to a part of the city that I needed getting used to. I had spent all my earlier Bangalore life around Chamarajpet and Srinagar, bang in the middle of the city. But now I had to negotiate Mallathahalli (which gets increasingly confused with the more famous Marathahalli), near Nagarabhavi. And it lay on the wrong side of Mysore Road and far off from anything and everything that mattered.Around 2005-2007 there was a…

It's around 4.30 pm. The 'first shift' of my job is done. The second shift will begin once I get home. It might be 6.15 pm when I see home, if am lucky. Most times these days it is 6.45 pm. The second shift will begin at around 7 when I login from home to finish any unfinished work and will go on till 8.30 in the night. When you have a commute like mine, getting work done by hook or crook is the only option. The commute begins in the morning at ITI layout, Mallathahalli, some 3 kms from…

The papers reported that all fireworks and crackers activities should cease between 10 pm and 6 am. KSPCB and the police were supposed to be doing rounds and enforcing the curfew. It's 11 pm in the night, and near Nagarbhavi, some random crackers keep going off at regular intervals. Dealing with continuous fireworks is one thing, but sudden bursts at random points in time is too much to deal with.The dogs, not accustomed to rackets other than their own, start howling everytime one goes off. Aged parents at home, struggling with flu-like symptoms thanks to the weather, exacerbated by the…