Life of a common man in Bangalore on a day of "Bharat Bandh"

27 April 2010~

Unlike most other parts of India,the IT capital of the nation refused to bow down to the nationally declared curfew today.Bangalore is the hub of multi-national company investments and a day's halt in the city would mean a global breakdown in the IT sectors.
As reports came in of considerable economic standstill from around the nation,I sat on the window seat of a BMTC public transport bus looking outside.I saw around half a dozen IT officials awaiting their regular route busses at the bus stops.I noticed a couple of students two seats ahead of me flipping through their notebooks for some last second exam preparations.Most Engineering colleges in Bangalore under the Visvesvaraya Technological University(VTU) were midway through conducting their internal examinations that end this Wednesday.A few loud horn blares grabbed my attention as the bus halted near the K.R.puram Tin Factory bus stop around 9:50am.I looked out of the window to see something which on any other day I would not spare a single thought to.TRAFFIC JAM.This is a common condition at peak hours in this bottleneck junction of the city.This road leads to the outer ring road on which from Marathalli to Belandur right upto Silk Board were located a number of IT parks housing big company offices such as Accenture,Magma,Cisco,Hewlett Packard(HP) and many others.
The 500A route bus chugged along as the conductor pushed himself around the usual daily crowd collecting tickets.I got off at my stop and noticed no remarkable change in the usual activities there either.I needed to refill currency on my Cell phone,so I walked into the mobile recharge store next to Hebbal bus stop.As I came out,I very much DID have to watchout for vehicles before crossing the road.The Esteem Mall was getting ready for usual business while I noticed the familiar looking guard sitting outside the bank ATM located inside its premises.The Columbia Asia Hospitals in the adjacent compound too from outside looked functioning as usual.As I walked the last bit of my journey till my friend's house,I saw pretty much most of the small shops getting on with their regular routine and dealing with their normal number of customers.I reached my friend's place at around 10:30am,one full hour after I had left my bus stop,which was by no means earlier than any other day owing to any lesser traffic expected on a day of bandh.
Bandh or no bandh,life must go on.Bangalore,probably due to this very attitude,has attracted so much of international business over the last decade.From the political point of view,I cannot give a statistical effect of today's bharat bandh on Bangalore.But as an ordinary citizen of this city,I can say that a national attempt at disrupting usual life has not particularly caused me any trouble in going about my planned schedule in this city today.
All shops shut,cannot buy daily items of need?Medical stores and Doctor clinics shutters down?ATM closed,cannot withdraw money from YOUR OWN accounts in case of an emergency?No Public transport?No private vehicles allowed on the streets either?Holiday declared at schools,colleges and workplaces?
If you are a kid growing up in Bangalore,you would probably never have the experience of gathering your friends on a weekday afternoon to play soccer in the middle of a usually buzzing main road junction on a "bandh"-day.Which,if you ponder upon keeping in mind the public and economic interest of the nation as a whole,is not such a bad thing.