+ Rant on Civic Behaviour - 2

Traffic in Bangalore is nightmarish. When will it improve?

Improve?? One instance.... At one of the busy junctions where four roads meet – what the hell, I am talking about the junction of M G Road and Kasturba Road - there is the ubiquitous signal. Pedestrians get the green signal for all of 15 seconds every three minutes. And the moment the pedestrian signal turns green, the vehicles start moving, not waiting for their turn. There might be a few conscientious souls prepared to wait out the 15 seconds. But then, at this point, the police constable, otherwise just an eyewitness, turns activist and urges, even forces, the vehicles to move! I have seen him get agitated, and almost physical, when someone refuses to go through a red light.

Bangalore makes a dozen mega traffic management plans every year, but with such souls directing traffic is it any wonder that nothing improves on the city’s roads?

+ Rant on Civic Behaviour - 1

That was a long hiatus. Anyway, this is the start of a serial rant on civic behaviour. Here goes....

Two days ago, I was driving back home at around 9.30 pm, and got caught in a stupid half-hour-long traffic jam at the usual bottleneck (more about that later in this serial). As I parked in the basement, I wasn’t particularly in the best frame of mind. I reached the lift, and immediately heard the whine of the lift warning announcement: “Please close the door. Kripaya darwaaza bandh keejiye”. Yeah, sure!

I was on the basement, and the lift was stuck on the first floor because some uncaring ass hadn’t bothered to close the lift door properly. I could hear the irritating music and complaint through the lift shaft two floors down, and I know that all the eight flats along the corridor on that floor could hear it too. And the fellow who left the door open would have heard it right through his trudge to his front door. And nothing was done about it. The basement had a guy ironing clothes. He would have heard it too – didn’t do anything about it. The watchman was out at the front of the building, and he had to go up and close the damn door.

This had happened at least once earlier too. We could hear this monotonous alert on the third floor, and my wife finally had to go out and close the lift – stuck on the second floor!!

This kind of nonsense goes on all around, and really pisses me off. And this is not the only thing that happens in our building. The basement has a large bin where residents are supposed to dump their garbage bags. It is routine to find bags lying on top of the lid, and next to the bin too. I would bet the refuse makes them queasy. I would also bet that they scrub their toilets clean everyday.

+ New Orleans - A Letter to NY Times

* I've been kind of putting my life on hold for the last couple of months. Shouldn't, when it isn't worth it.... 

New Orleans is not the beginning. It’s just the latest. It’s only that till now there has been a foreign agent to focus on, simply because the average American is so content to be totally co-opted by the government. There was no reason why he had to rack his brains for the real reason – the government was raping the world, but ultimately it was taking care of him. Bush has been a paradigm shift. He has been as globally short-sighted as the rest of the American presidents, more rampant around the world, and been stunningly flamboyant about the sufferings of people. Dubya with the imaginary Texan hat on his head has talked about the “axis of evil”, threatened to “nuke ’em”, ruined a nation, but to the average American it hasn’t mattered because it hasn’t affected him. And for those who think with their dicks, it makes for great television, too. New Orleans is different. It has shown, now that there is no Osama or Saddam, that Bush doesn’t know shit, he doesn’t care, and that he has a shockingly bad sense of humour... maybe also that Fahrenheit 9/11 wasn't half as much anti-Republican as realistic. Eight years of Bush will have done incalculable damage to the world, but now at least the average American will realize that it is going to do incalculable damage to America itself. Bush despises the poor (they are an irritating burden who come in the way of his having a whale of a life), couldn’t care less about the blacks, and finds it a great strain to think beyond his oil buddies. Surely, all those rig losses will make their owners instantly rich after their insurance claims. Yes, eight years of Bush will have been a great strain - at least. I don’t think America - or the world - can afford the next four years with an idiot as president.