Sinner's City

Yesterday, On Radio Indigo, RJ Rohit Barker was asking what Bangalore should be called. Bangalore has never been short of epithets such as:
· Garden City (which quickly turned to Garbage City)
· Pub City (not because of beer baron Mallya but because there are more watering holes in the city than malls or amusement parks that the fave pastime is pub hopping)
· Silicon Valley (because Pune was late in acceding to the demands of our Father of IT, Narayan Murthy and the State Government, for once, acted fast and foolishly in granting him every favor so he could thrive along with his bludgeoning IT coolies while the common man cannot not even afford coriander leaves)
· City of Pot Holes and Potbellies (seriously, cannot make out which is more dominant) and so on.

If these were not enough, we are also contending for many more coveted titles such as:
· The Rudest City (right now Delhi holds the title but it’s just a matter of days before we win it)
· City of Stray Dogs (Menaka would honor us with this award. So what if a few babies are being eaten by dogs or if we run or get chased by street dogs and in the process burn a few calories, but we are sure to be certified a dog-friendly city)
· The Most Unsafe City (as it read in today’s newspaper because apparently our roads are supposed to be very unsafe. I really wonder now how can they be unsafe when a rider cannot go beyond 30 kms/hour as in a span of half a kilometer, he/she’ll not only encounter at least three traffic signals, but at least three pot holes, four road humps (speed breakers if you please but we localities call it road humps), a few road bumps (these were once road humps but after many complaints by drivers, the BMP in order to facilitate smooth travel tried to rid the city of those but as usual they did not do a good job, so instead of going over it, now you have to go under it, so their exercise was quite pointless as anyway you have to brake your vehicle unless you are a daredevil and fly over it). I would say the city is unsafe for pedestrians for they have to walk on the roads as some bikers treat the sidewalks as expressways, for they have to cross the road when the signal turns green as the drivers will rev up at amber and speed up when the light turns red.
· The Most Expensive City to Live (right from sugar to petrol to LPG to bus ticket to real estate, everything in the city is expensive. But we don’t worry about such trivia. We will only be too willing to tip the autowallah if he only consents to drop you off at your place at the sum he quoted or will we ask the Reliance Fresh guy at the counter why he’s rounding off the 20 paise to a rupee)
· The Most Apathetic City (we are generous people and we do not complain. We are perfect hosts always trying to make our guests feel comfortable. We are always making way for others. Just as we made way for so many non-Karnataka people to come and make Bangalore their base so they think that adding “maadi” at every English sentence is actually speaking the vernacular and griping about everything in the city but still not getting their fat butt out of this city to cutting down the several old trees to widen roads and to make more way for traffic and pollution. We don’t give a damn what is dying: Kannada or trees. Our reaction is always the same: apathy.

I know what to call my beloved city. Just as Las Vegas is called Sin City, Bangalore must be called Sinner’s City. I hate what my city has turned into: from a garden city to a concrete jungle. Wherever I turn, I see trees being felled, agricultural lands being turned into commercial lands, and lakes being filled with concrete for buildings to grow. Money has lost value as we pimp our souls to make a few bucks more; as a result, there is a growing disparity among the classes that burglary and murder are on the rise. The result is also the growing distrust among people from neighbors to cab drivers to housemaids. We are forever in the pursuit of pelf trying to keep up with the joneses but we do not even know who the Joneses are.

I hate what my city has turned me into.