traffic block saar

On Being Stuck In The Back Of A Rick (With a million others in the same position)

It's bad enough being stuck in traffic but what's worse is being stuck in traffic while everyone else faces the same situation. When late, I usually end up flagging a rick to get to college faster. The worst part of this is that the roads to college are jammed (usually just five minutes away to 9 o'clock) with lots of other people racing to class. This happens almost everyday and so it's a slow, slow rat race trying to get to class on time. What I'm thinking is this: instead of hundreds of students taking individual ricks, it would be so much better (and faster!) if we started sharing transport. And it's not even like having to ride with total strangers since we all are from the same college after all. At any rate, one of these days students from Christ college are going to wake up and realize how awful it is to have the auto driver turn back and say, "Traffic block only, saar!!"

- Ben

What it takes to be a Bangalorean

It doesn’t matter how old you are, what your gender is, whether you’re a student or just another IT guy, or even whether you’re hooked on speed or you’re the calm, placid type. Regardless of your roots (Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi or someone zimbly plugged out of God’s own country), the only diagnostic criteria specified to be termed as a Bangalorean is that you fulfil two of the following two criteria:

1. Resided in the city for atleast two hours
2. Shown pervasive patterns of disgruntlement about the (horrific) state of traffic on city roads

In that sense, we’re all true, even loyal Bangaloreans, and especially the 20 of us who’ve decided to venture out on this obscure (!) path. Each of us has undoubtedly muttered about and cursed our dug-up roads and our militant auto-drivers. And yes, fretted about whether it was even humanly possible to ever hit that 85% attendance mark, when all these other idiots were cluttering up the roads. United by that common mindset, we’ve come together under the cover of a college assignment, and have decided that its time to move on from couch-grumbling to doing our bit in bringing about that change we can believe in…

No, we’re not talking about revamping the BBMP or overthrowing the auto-drivers union, though admittedly, that would be a revolutionary cause. We’re starting small; we’ve resolved to Eco-Pool.

So what's the big idea, you ask? Well, just think of Car-pooling and extend the concept to autos, and two-wheelers in addition to cars. Carpooling is still quite an alien concept to most Bangaloreans; the understanding of which, for some of us, may just be confined to that of Bumstead running to his Car-Pool stop or the TV series of the same name. Do the math, though: Get a good number of Bangaloreans to travel with other Bangaloreans to the same stop, and you’ve got Bangalore’s road population halved… at least, in theory.

To put this into practice, we’re kick-starting Eco-Pool by attempting to reform our college-mates, but for all we know, it could catch on quicker than we think possible. So here’s what you can do: write in and flood the inbox of greenonwheels@gmail.com with your Bangalore road experiences. We’ll post it with your name, and who knows? Maybe eventually, your contributions coupled with the idea of Eco-pooling could pave the way for a greener and less-clogged-up Bangalore.