Zen and the art of Traffic jams in Blore..

i cant take credit of this write up....
but this is def def true taht i share the same feelings abt traffic jams...


Over these last few years of living in Bangalore, I have slowly grown to
like the jams, which this city provides in abundance.


These jams do build your patience and character. Is it a coincidence
that India's most patient cricketers, Dravid and Kumble, hail from this
city of jams? (Dravid is even nicknamed "Jammy"). Does it tell you
something? Sri Sri Ravishankar...does he get his daily dose of
spiritual inspiration while in a jam?? And will I also get a halo after
a few more years of this "character building"?? There are, I am sure,
thousands of future Anands stuck in the Adugodis and Anand Rao circles,
who are plotting their moves against future Kramniks... those poor
little Kramniks stand no chance. And if you see a professor-like guy
prancing around the Palace road jam, you can deduce that a postulate in
Physics has just been proved.


A few days back, I had a thought - If we can have reviews of movies,
which occupy only a few hours of our life in a month, why not reviews of
traffic jams, which takes up significant hours of our day?? So here is
my review of some of Bangalore's famous and not-so-famous jams(in no
particular order).


But before that, a general comment - As they say, the taste of food in
a restaurant is dependent on the ambience ; similarly, the way I see
jams, cozy inside the office shuttle or public transport, is different
from the way the owner of the swank new SUV sees it. (btw, if you are
the owner of the swank new SUV, don't run me down).


1. The Hosur Road Jam - Unarguably, the mother of all jams. We
wiproites are proud of being (once) associated with a great company. We
are equally proud of contributing in no small extent to this jam. This
jam gives a great glimpse of the Other India - colorful music-blaring
interstate buses, garment factory workers, highway trucks, smoke spewing
lorries and such. Provides ample food for thought for socialist minds.
(Rating: ***1/2)


2. The jams around K'mangala/Forum mall - Definitely the best jams in
town.
PYTs (Pretty young things), fancy cars, and fancy restaurants; this has
it all. But you can't afford any of those. Never mind!! Your sadistic
brain can take pleasure in the fact that the guy in the fancy car next
to you is cruising around for a parking space, feasting his eyes on the
PYTs , while his family is having dinner in one of the fancy
restaurants. (Rating:
****1/2)


3. The MG Road/Brigade Road jam - To be experienced in the evenings before a long
weekend. Every auto/taxi in town seems to be stuck while going towards
the City railway station - your hair stands on end, you start sweating,
the heart beats faster, and you get the rush that a Michael Schumachaer
gets on his last lap. And just as the auto moves, a movie show ends and
a few hundred more vehicles pour out... Which was the train that hooted
just now??
(Rating: ***1/2)


4. The Jayanagar jam - The puzzle-lovers jam; Jayanagar is maze of
bylanes, one-way streets, no right-turns, no left-turns, traffic signals
and whatnot. It is an establised fact that Point A to point B, in
Jayanagar, can be reached in 6436 distinct ways. But whichever way you
take, you are left with a hollow feeling that another route had a better
and bigger jam?
(Rating: **1/2)


5. The jams around Marathahalli/Whitefield - The IT professional's dream
jam; As she sits in the office shuttle looking at other office buses,
she can make her career plans. A typical evening in this jam goes thus:


Voice from Company A bus : "Any J2EE developers in your bus?". Three
guys from Company B bus respond "Yeah" and get down. By the time, the
bus crosses the Marathahalli bridge, the first guy is hired as a J2EE
developer. The second guy, who didn't know what J2EE meant, is hired as
a project manager and the third guy is rejected as he realised late that
he has already worked for Company A last year.


(Rating: ****)


6. The Airport Road jam - Similar in taste and character like the
Koramangala jam but has socialist twist. This jam treats the rich
businessman, who will later travel business class on Jet, the same as a
poor programmer, who had unusually come to office early in the morning,
3 months back, to buy one of those cheap airline tickets. (Rating ***)


7. The BTM 7th Main x 7 Cross jam - Close to my home, so close to my
heart.
But alas, the spoilsports at BDA finished the flyover at the Jayadeva
circle and brought an end to this jam. But for a couple of years, this
jam used to give me pure joy as vehicles of all types created a tangle
in the small bylanes of BTM layout. The BDA is now planning a new
flyover at the Udupi Garden junction; so there is still hope (Rating
***1/2).


We jam lovers - currently this club consists of only me - have
petitioned the government to protect and preserve traffic jams as a
cultural asset of Bangalore. Just so that traffic jams are not
endangered in the future, we have these suggestions:


1. Build more flyovers - Flyovers do not reduce jams. They just transfer
it to the next junction. And in the 2 years that it takes to build them,
you are assured of some joyous jams. I am drooling...


2. No public buses - If everybody goes by buses, where will our culture
go?


3. Make Tata's 1-Lakh car cheaper by making it tax free - Imagine every
two wheeler replaced by a car...The prospects are mouth-watering.