I got to Bangalore, India's fifth largest city and capital of the state of Karnataka. The large train station was busy and hectic. After eating a dosa for breakfast, I stepped out into the bustling town. Bangalore grew under the Telugu and Tipu sultans in the 1700’s. Later, it was a typical British colonial city. In the 1900’s, the federal government posted major telecommunications and defense industries here, thereby becoming the science and technology centre of India. Now it’s home to many multinational corporations; and it’s the country's leading software exporter, called 'India's Silicon Valley', with over half of India’s exports coming from Bangalore. Nowadays, IT operations can be found all over the city, providing outsourcing and R&D services to Indian firms, as well as trans-nationally. It is synonymous worldwide with globalization, outstanding, call centers, and IT. Because of these jobs it is an affluent town, with many good shopping centers, bars, lounges, and upscale restaurants. It is regarded as one of India's most progressive cities. However, poverty still exists in Bangalore, though harder to find at first. Some say that the BPOs here are just enlarging the wealth gap. I checked my bag in the hectic, but well-organized & well-signed bus stand's cloak room, I then took a rickshaw through the cold morning fog to Badami House to get a city tour. Bangalore is called the 'Garden City' and with good reason, because huge trees envelop wide avenues, and there immense green spaces at every turn. It's really pretty, and a nice change from the rest of dusty, smelly, gridlocked India's cities. Bangalore boasted little trash, nice new buildings everywhere, and coconut and mango trees living the roads. It looked more like a Malaysia, Sing a pore or tropical San Francisco. It has perfect weather because it's located on the cooling Deccan Plateau. It was sunny and comfortable the whole day. The people in the city looked really modern and affluent. The men all carried briefcases and wore polo shirts, while the women wore salwar-kameez with nice accessories. Here, the girls all have curly hair tied in a low ponytail. The traffic was pretty congested, and there was construction being done for a much-needed Metro Rail project. In the meantime, I saw many city buses with bubbly Kannada writing, transporting commuters, and new shuttle-buses with ‘Infosys’ or ‘Honey well’ on the front, picking up call center employees their day at work in Bangalore's IT industries. There was a huge racetrack, and of course, a golf course for Bangalore's wealthy businessmen or to take out foreign wealthy businessmen. The first stop was the immense hilltop Iskcon temple, built by the Hare Krishnas, and was beautifully-decorated with white marble and thousands of images and stories of Krishna. There were huge orderly paths lined with temple vendors (no wonder the Hare Krishna's are so rich) leading to the central shrine, where forehead-painted and rat-tailed young Brahmins danced, chanted, and prostrated in front of the statues. The next two stops were more South Indian temples with typical intricate spires. Of course, we had to make a stop for some emporium shopping, which I spent asleep in the bus. After that, we drove across town to a zoo, where you go in a car & see animals in huge pens, like at Northwest Trek. It was cool; I got to see tigers and lions extremely close-up, within feet; it was closer than I could get to a stray housecat here. Then the safari truck broke down in the tiger pen, which was like a Jurassic-park-sequel. After that, we had lunch in a place where I ordered two thalis, but the waiter didn't understand I could eat that much food, and only brought one. Since he only spoke Kannada, my Hindi and English communication efforts were utterly useless. Largely, as long as you know Hindi, the national language, and English, the international and administrative language, you can communicate all over India. But apparently, sometimes not. We next zipped through southeast Bangalore, in an area called Whitefield (fitting name), which was where I saw exactly what I expected to see in Bangalore. Glass and steel office buildings, built 10 stories high stood lining the streets, many with smokestacks on top for power generation. They had nice long driveways in front, with fountains and guarded gates. Names were everywhere; Infosys, Wipro, Microsoft, Nokia, Honeywell, HSBC, and Intel. But separating each huge complex were squatter camps, filled with blue, yellow & black tarp tents, housing those not benefiting from the IT boom. They are the construction workers building these high-rise office buildings and luxurious condominium complexes. Here, as well as everywhere in India, the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty is thrown in your face. Everywhere that wasn't a squatter settlement or an office building or luxurious housing complex was a construction site for one of the latter two. The rate of development in this city is phenomenal. Nearby, across from the airport, was the HAL, or Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, the museum for the Indian aerospace industry. Looking at these space shuttles and rickety airplanes, all I could think was: I don't think I would exactly feel “safe” in an Indian-made aircraft. Considering the Hindi word for ‘person of South Asian origin’ also means ‘of quality or cheap’, my Indian earphones broke within a week of their purchase, the Indian car broke down just today, I think I will stick with my American or European-made planes, which aren't just buses with wings. We drove through a really posh area called Shanthala Nagar, with tons of lounges, bars, five-star hotels that I will never be able to afford, IT office parks, malls, boutiques, and fast-food joints. The traffic was gridlocked. We went to the Shiva Temple, which was a madhouse of devotees visiting sacred caves and getting a view of a 45-foot tall Ganesh and the largest Shiva statue on earth. After that we drove to Cubbon Park, Bangalore's equivalent to New York's Central Park. There we saw a light show, accompanied by music and fountains pulsing to the beat. They played a Kannada song, a Hindi song from Dhoom 2, a Daler Mehndi hit, and a nationalistic Indian song, and the water shot up and made pretty designs; it was like watching the visualizations on iTunes. After that, I got dropped off in the middle of town, hopping with tons of people, noise lights, and traffic. I checked my e-mail just so I could say I went online in Bangalore, India's leader in IT and one of the most wired places on earth. Then I had a great South Indian thali (I plan on having a South Indian thali for every meal until Delhi) and caught a three hour bus to Mysore. I got into Mysore's bus stand at 12 and walked around, looking around for a hotel. All of them were either horrible (one had a mouse running through the halls) or really nice and expensive. Since I spent the past three connective nights on trains only, I felt authorized to splurge, so I spent $6 a night at the Hotel Ganesh Palace, a nice hotel from the outside, but with cockroaches all over the room. I purposely wanted tunnel vision so that I wouldn't see any rats.
No comments:
Post a Comment