I think that Bangalore will soon become a city of one-ways (effectively replacing the more celebrated title: City of Gardens). Which means, that to get to the neighbouring suburb of Jayanagar, I will have to travel to Yelahanka first. And then, in a few years, when the traffic gets really out of hand (if it can get any worse, that is) and there won’t be any roads left to make a one-way, they’ll change the direction of the one ways.

Anyway, on Saturday, enroute for my exams at Alliance (YAE: yet another exam!) I suddenly realised that the traffic was plying on both sides of the road. Of course, I hardly gave it a second thought, since this is a usual practice in Bangalore. People not only drive on the other side of the road (might be an ‘Amrican’ hangover), but they also get onto the pavements. In fact, if they had their way, they would probably drive straight through your living room to get to wherever they’re going in a blooming hurry.

After coming to Bangalore, about a dozen roads have become one way. So now, it’s become a real challenge traveling from point A to point X. And the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that it’s a secret strategy of the traffic people. Torture them till they stay at home, they must be thinking!

Now, if they’d build us a metro rail, we would happily abandon our vehicles. But of course, they have to ‘think’ and debate about it for a couple of years, just to decide whether to build it at all. And then of course, is this problem that seems to be peculiar to Bangalore: the contractors running away before the work is over! And because of the time span they’ve taken to do just 1/10th of the work (about a 100 years), the costs have shot up, 10 times. Solution: run away!

Coming back to the one-ways: So now, before going to location X, we need to check out all one ways between A and X, identify parking spots, which mind you might be at point D, from where you will have to walk to X. And then there’s point S in between, where there is no pedestrian crossing and heavy traffic to boot. So that means that you’re effectively stranded at point S, from where you can go neither here nor there.

Anyway, I hope you get my point: which is that in a year’s time I will probably have to travel via Mumbai, Goa and Mysore to get to my friend’s place. At the next crossroad.