Overconfidence Vs Overconfidence Vs Overconfidence

The start is going to be too abrupt for the blog. But I really had no idea where to begin as I had only random thoughts to write about.
Whenever I tell my husband, this work is to be done and he replies too promptly “yes it will be done”, all I say is “you sounded too overconfident”. To which without a miss he would reply “not overconfident BUT CONFIDENT”. Most of the times, my sentence wouldn’t have been complete also that he says it will be done.

My blog is not about being confident and overconfident. Throughout in our student and professional days we come across these terms and people say don’t sound to overconfident whether it may be an interview, a presentation or daily life.

I am going to write and draw a comparison between overconfident vs overconfident vs the 3rd kind of overconfident people. I have been coming across too many people these days and I am surprised by different kinds of confident attitude of people.

The first set of overconfident people are those who are very sure what they want in life and have clearly defined paths as to how they are going to achieve it. They have all the equipment’s or say support system in terms of their families, finances and their education in place. They know by hook or crook, they will get the work done. And these people are so confident that everything is going to work in their favor always , which often does , they become over confident.

The 2nd set of people who know they have nothing to lose even if they try something new and different. For them, no support system is required as the support system is a liability for them. They break away and are completely free. These are the people who are driven by passion and they will do what they like to do. They also do what they don’t like to get the resources through these means to do what they like. These set of people have been the most empathetic set of people, and live life free. They live life as if there is no tomorrow. When we see such people in the crowd, they are different. They are noticeable by the charm and happy go lucky nature. They are overconfident but for good.

Finally the 3rd set of overconfident people. They don’t have any support system in place. No proper education or family support in place. They have no idea what they want to do in life, no passion. They will get up and say “ oh no , just another day” and believe me you take the opportunity in a platter and keep it right in front of them, they will want to wait and see what better they can get and say “I can’t do this, I am used to doing some particular thing or this not how I have been doing things”. They will have all reasons to procrastinate and believe me they are completely overconfident about their lives too. Their frustration gets converted to overconfidence and they learn to give a S*** to good as well as the bad things in life. Well they crib too and the moment someone want to help them, they start sounding overconfident. They want to sit, relax and get everything what they don’t deserve as well!!!!

So Mr. /Ms. Reader- what type of confident person are you? Ahem i asked confident , not overconfident!

And now I am scared that next time when I tell my husband ‘ you sound overconfident’, he shouldn’t come back asking ‘ which type of overconfident people are you referring me to?’ rather than his usual reply! But yes I am too overconfident that he may not have the time to read what’s written :-)

Note: There is no relevance to any person in reality.

Namma Bengaluru Traffic

It has been quite a long time that I blogged. But from the time of my last blog, till this one I met with a ‘good’ accident in my life. Question that strikes “how can an accident be ‘Good’ ”?On a lighter note I got married which according to me, till my last blog was a human made disaster which we all commit naturally and make it a natural disaster.lol. Well ‘FOR NOW’ it feels this ‘Change is for Good’.


The topic of this blog is how to fight the Bangalore’s traffic. The point is after being in Bangalore for close to three years, I realize this issue now as I started to experience the traffic only now. Till February this year, I had no commitments and I always chose to stay close to office, making use of all gym and cafeteria facility. Now the hard reality of traffic has struck because of my CHANGE FOR GOOD.I spend almost 3 to 3.5 hours of my day in traffic driving around 60 KMs to my work location. Most of the Bangaloreans do. As I spoke to people around, I heard most of them travelling for minimum 2 hours a day in traffic.In these two or three hours,a person can do whatever he wants to wishes to do.


One thing which makes me wonder is why do every individual need to go to the work location every day? Is the presence of each and every employee in an organization mandatory? I do understand there are some roles, which are highly critical and require the presence, but definitely not all as the number of people on the roads.
We have got connected to the remote locations of the world by technology, so why not within Bangalore. All that one needs is connectivity though a datacard or wifi and a continuous supply of power for laptops. All the newly constructed houses have that facility. And I am sure namma wifi strategy for Bangalore would help each one of us connected even more as compared to any other times. For now we can still manage with 3G Datacards.


Some of my thoughts which would help in fighting the traffic problem of Bangalore is provided below. Some are at the individual level, some at the Company level and few at the government level.

•Company & Government should define the roles where the mandatory presence is required and other should be asked to do a work from home(WFH)

•Company should make sure an individual whose presence is required is provided the housing within 2-5 kms of office location. I don’t think all members of a family would be working in ‘mandatorily presence’ role. One gets the accommodation, rest of them do a WFH.

•IT companies should make use of cabs as mandatory; the attendance to be recorded in cabs along with office premise, to ensure that 1 person does not occupy 1 car space on the road. For those who can’t use the cabs, they should give valid medical certificates and reasons for the same

•Government should give better training to traffic police in Bangalore, half of the issues are where there are traffic police and manual signals

•Government should provide HRA tax exemption only when the house is within 5 kms range of their office location. See number of people changing their house within few months.

•Government should construct foot over bridges. There are so many places where traffic issues arise only because the traffic is stopped for people to cross the road. We are not America yet that the traffic is stopped for public to walk and cross. It is required but not at the cost of commuters sitting and honking in the vehicles. To take some examples, crossing opposite esteem mall, Manyata tech park ring road crossing.

•Companies should have some incentive linked to number of KMs run by your car registered in the company on a monthly or quarterly basis. All the cars have system to measure the KMs. Lesser the KMs, more would be incentive as a CSR initiative. We are definitely going to save on energy by that.

•At an individual level, we can try and use metro and do carpooling. Not sure at the feasibility of that at this point of time in Bangalore, but it would help at the basic levels though.

•Government should build underground tunnel roads or long and high bridges for long distance travelers, but that’s not an immediate solution as well.



Let’s think and bring out of box solutions. Expanding the roads or Making traffic signals automated is not the right thing that would help to solve this as it’s not because of roads or signals but the core problem is number of vehicles on the roads are too high. That has to be brought down.



So what would be the cons?
Side effect of work from home may be argued upon that people may not be able to socialize. But we can bring solution to that by having one day of the week working where all employees have to come mandatory. Saves the gossip time and the would use the same for professional interactions.


The radio channels may suffer as number of people listening may go down. I keep listening to radio and they say ‘call me or WhatsApp me if you are stuck in traffic’. At times it helps as we realize that it not just us, buy many like us who are in the same boat suffering from the traffic problem, but I am sure Radio channels are innovative enough to get more listeners.


Let’s do something to bring a ‘Change for Good’ for Namma Bengaluru, as every CHANGE is for GOOD!

A trek to remember!

As I was flipping the pages of my book at night, I got a call from Bhaiya asking “we are all going for a trek to mudumalai forest, one seat left in the car, you want to join?
The 14th August long weekend had just begun and I was all alone in peace reading at my home. I asked when you are all leaving. He said tomorrow early morning at 4.00 am and I agreed to join him and his friends. As ever Bangalore is a place of friends of friends.

I went and parked my car at Bhaiya’s friend home, where all others were waiting. I greeted them all and there it began- the life of roller coaster fun, peace and excitement.

As we entered the forest, we switched off the AC and put the window down and I felt as if I was not in India!
We reached our greenwoods nature camp and were welcomed with a hot tea and bright sky with the forest stretching in front of us. We sat for few hours out there, enjoying the scene, for all we get to see in our daily lives and in our offices are the wall papers of such beautiful places in the laptop.


No hurry, no one running around and it was like life had come to halt. I was watching a still life painting right in front of my eyes. I closed my eyes absorbing the moment as the wind hits my face.

After few hours of silence and serenity, we decided on the trek to forest the next morning and got to sleep soon hearing the insects and birds mild chirping outside our tents at night. Well we also heard a roar! Not sure if it was a tiger or a friend’s snore in the adjacent tent.

We all got up early and were ready. As we were wearing our shoes, our guide who was an old man entered the gate of our tent resort and asked “Are you all ready?” We all nodded and it was around 6.15am that we all set out for the trek.


It was all till this moment the life was different. And post the trek had begun, I realized life was no different from our daily corporate life.

We all followed the guide talking amongst ourselves. One of the friends in the trek asked the old man “have you ever seen a tiger?” and he was cool with it and said “yes couple of times” as if he was talking about having seen a dog in the forest. For next 15-20 min we continued to walk climbing a hill which had the path and there comes in the first challenge, a river to cross.

I shouted aloud “Don’t tell me, we are supposed to cross the river”. Every one turned back to me and said “ Shsshhhh…” no more talking or shouting as we are entering the forest. The old man asked us to put the phone on silent. I smiled thinking we do put our phones on silent before every meeting in the office as well. I have mentioned about success and failure transfers in my blogs earlier in which we convert our past failures and success into the future success and failures. In my last trip to mekadatu, I had to cross the river and as I was trying to hold my friend from slipping, I had impressively slipped and fell in the river with ice cold water. Well that was a moment of laugh for my friends and hot topic of discussion in FB for few months post that. But I was thinking of that failure transfer (slipping and falling in the river), wondering that might happen again.Lesson learnt: We do success and failure transfer in real life too and not just in corporate life.


We reached near the river and I let few of my friends go ahead, wondering I might try and do their success transfer to mine thinking ‘if they can cross the river, so can I’. I watched them all cross and finally bhaiya was right behind me “Go, start walking on the rocks, you can do it”. I said “ohk, I will”. I started. I looked down and flow of the water was way faster than I had thought it to be. Some where there were rocks and somewhere rods connecting the rocks. We had to walk on them. As I stepped on the rods, Bhaiya said “don’t look down, see they all reached, walk faster and try reaching them”.

I looked up and walked faster. I again shouted at my friends who had almost reached the other side “mujhe swimming nahi aati, do any of you know? If I happen to fall in river, do save me”. One of them who was walking behind me shouted back “ mujhe bhi nahi aati”. I felt like kicking him for those words at the wrong time. The noise of the river water was so much that we had to shout to talk. Another friend from other side shouted who called me ‘ghost eyes’ shouted “I know to swim ghost eyes, relax and cross it”. Ohk that was somewhat assuring and I walked a bit faster doing some circus type balancing acts. Lesson learnt: Knowing the targets to reach in life is as important as the corporate world and having a backup makes us achieve things easily.


Post this challenge we entered the real forest. Some of the guys ran and joined our guide, the old man. Rest of us were following them in bunches walking together. Well that did reflect our attitudes. Those who were eager to know things moved ahead to the guide. I, who prefer to be safe, walked in between where there were few of them before and few after me. There were few walking at the end were the ones who were not scared of what might happen at the back, but ensured people in front of them were safe. If I get deeper into the analysis, I believe the roles or the places where we work actually made us do that or may be vice versa.

In some of the places we were covered with thick trees that there wasnt place for two people to walk side by side also. In between the guide would stop. He would try to hear and was trying to analyze if there is a probability of seeing some wild animal. He was the visionary and we were all clueless about what he was trying to see or hear. Lesson learnt: In real life also, most of us are clueless about the path we are taking, though we might know the purpose. We may need a guide or a mentor to take us through the journey of life with the help of his experience and knowledge.


Then there was a roar that we really heard. We all stopped for a minute in silence. The Guide turned whispered “keep walking”. I wanted to shout ‘enough of the roller coaster trek, I want to go back’ and that lead me to think, if someone asked me to walk back, I doubt if I would be able to trace my path. Lesson learnt: In real life also, we can’t use the same path to go back in which we had started and there would be chances, when all we can do is to control the emotions and just follow the leader. Something that we do every day in our corporate life as well.

And finally we reached the middle of the forest, where it was open. Ohk , I can see in few meters around me and there wasn’t any wild animal.The guide announced, you all can take a break for 10 minutes and then we would walk back. It was worth the effort to walk to see this scene. For few minutes it felt like heaven does exist on earth.

Post clicking some pics, we started to walk. We asked the guide, “if we are going to follow the same path?” he said “no”. Oh some relief, as I didn’t want to face the tiger roars again. Lesson learnt for real life which applies in corporate life as well, path unknown is easier to go than to go in path where we know challenges exists.


The rest of the trek was smooth and the guide would show us the marks of animals on the ground and tell which animals had crossed this path and when that would have happened.

He told us about the trees and talk about different people who would come for trekking. In corporate world people brag about their degrees and universities. But how many of us do what we really like. He was far more knowledgeable than any of us, when we talked about animals and forests. The old man could have to gone to some city to work in some corporate company and would have earned more than what he was doing now. Lesson learnt: In real life also education and literacy are two different things. What we don’t do is to follow or do what we like.


I observed that no single leaf or the tree was same. All were in different shapes and patterns. Isn’t it same in the corporate world as well. No single individual is same and everyone has different capabilities which are so unique. We still expect the same results from everyone while working.


Finally i had the river to be crossed again.I managed the same way I did while going.I ensured that the friend who knew swimming helped me cross it.:p. All exhausted,we reached back to our tents where we were served with hot breakfast.As we ate,a friend announced – we trekked 14Kms, 166650 steps and burnt 750 calories. I looked at the food and said "I think we have compensated that by eating some 1000 calories in last 5 minutes" and everyone laughed. Lesson learnt: Who says goals of real life are not measurable.


While returing,I looked back at the forest looking forward for a trek again.

Cloud for Human Emotions and Brain Data

For last 15 days, all that I have been hearing is Cloud! Cloud! Cloud! Well not literally the 15 days, but for a long time which reminds me that, to get into the infrastructure team, my assignment was to create a flyer on cloud computing services 2 years back.

But for last 15 days I was eventually dreaming cloud in my dreams because of the deal I was working on or could be because of the cloudy weather of Bangalore, I don’t know. God, it rains every day without a miss. No let me not divert to rain, it’s about the cloud today.

There was a point when I was really tired while working. At the last minute of my submission timeline while flipping through multiple excel sheet, I started working on the wrong file thinking that was the final sheet. AH AH AH! Thanks to the version control practice of saving the document that I went back to the last one and once again had to make all the changes at the Nth hour.

Along with some personal thoughts running at the back of my mind, I realized the chai wallah bhaiya in my office was luckier than me as he was enjoying his holiday. Well that means, I don’t get a tea. Ahem! Ahem! With my never give up attitude, I went around office checking the coffee vending machines and found them to be switched off too. Coffee vending machines needs a break and gets their holiday too!:p! With desperate need of “tea” thoughts in my mind, I go back to work thinking I will handle the tea issue later.

That’s when the thought struck me "Can’t I have a cloud to store my emotions and data? Why can’t I transfer all my brain data and the emotions to cloud ,Can't I use only what is needed?"


Listing down the features and benefits of having a cloud for human emotions and brain data (now that sounds like a line from RFP document)

Productivity gain: - Imagine the level of productivity that brain would have? The speed with which brain would now process the data would be far better as we can bring down the related data on which we are working when we begin the work. Pay as we use our own data? Brain need not scan all the data but only the relevant ones. Sounds cool!

No storage limit: - Even now there is no constraint in human brain storage capacity, but then thinking of the human brain capacity gives me shiver. We talk about big data and organizations struggle to store the minimal data. Though transferring the human brain data to cloud would be a great memory booster, but on what ground are the kids going to write the exams in a country like India where all we learn is “Ratta maar” during the school and college days. We wouldn’t struggle to remember the mathematics formula or biology terminologies. Download, write the exams and put it back on cloud!

Paas, Saas, Iaas and now Eaas: - That’s Emotion As A Service. I use only the emotions that I would need. I know I am going to a party; I download all emotions related to party control. Super security and situation control of emotions that would be. I guess husbands and guys would then find a way to hack the cloud and delete the cry or nag emotion from their wife or GFs cloud. Lol. I want to be excited I can, I want to be sad, I am only sad. No chance of mixed emotions.


Public cloud/ private cloud or hybrid cloud: - well to transfer the human emotions and data, we would definitely need private cloud, but yes something that we want to share, we can leverage public cloud for that. That would save cost and no more would we need google to search data. It would all be available in the public cloud, search whatever you want.

Pricing benefits: - we may wonder why do I need to pay to save my own data? Better to pay now to transfer the data and emotions to cloud rather than facing medical issues in future and spending on the medical bills.

Who is going to manage these cloud:- Like the IT based companies, we would then have more cloud selling companies which would business to customer (B2C)selling rather than business to business(B2B). We will sell cloud accounts like how we sell savings accounts in banks now. And these organizations in turn would manage the cloud; handle the back up and security issues.


Everything comes with a challenge, so would be this solution

Challenge number 1: Handling the downtime would be an issue
Imagine a situation when a friend is in a severe need of you and is crying badly, and your sad and counselling related emotions are on a cloud and your vendor is doing some change management activities. You are unable to use your cloud. Your friend cries and you keep laughing at that!!! So that’s why you should choose the best organization and read all policies before buying your cloud.

Challenge number 2: Need a Service Desk to handle the calls
Imagine a second situation. You read all mathematical formulas related things before the CAT exam and was on cloud. The day before your exam, the network crashes. Not just for your but many. All try to download at the same time. You call the helpdesk to scream and they say we are fixing the network and CAT gets over by that time…..you would say brain was better.

Challenge number 3: Cloud burst
A physical device to store data can crash. Imagine the cloud burst in the technology terms. I wonder if that’s possible, but not impossible either .But do my brain have the choice to crash? Whatever it is , it has to work whether it is to express the emotions or to think of some real time work.



Now that you have read the blog, please use your brain to understand that this would never happen. Please smile (express your emotions which you do not have in cloud) and get back to your work!

Do you have the real “Sense of Humor”?

Came across an article in LinkedIn and really liked the following lines:-

Then there is a person who never gives you a straight answer – everything is a joke. The jokes are really a shield from getting to know the person. It can be funny once or twice, but not all the time.

A few winters ago, I was talking to an executive who was off to a vacation in the Caribbean. I asked, “Where are you staying?” I thought I would hear about some really nice, cool place that I could learn about – even if I could not afford it.

Instead, her answer was tongue-in-cheek, “Oh we are staying at a cheap Holiday Inn.” While I have often stayed at Holiday Inns (some cheap, some not), I was supposed to find the answer cute or funny. I did not.
The reason I did not find it funny is that I really never could get a straight answer from that person. Talking to her became a stupid, exhausting game. Conclusion: "Spending less time with her was a gift to myself."


I had come across people who had or rather who thought they had good sense of humor. Others appreciated that and loved to be around such people, but I was never comfortable to be around people with high sense of humor or the ones who thought they had one. After reading the above article I realized I wasn’t the only one not to find others stupid answers to a direct question as cute or funny.


Next time, if you wish to highlight your “sense of humor” as a great attribute of yours, please give a second thought.
Some of the things I believe people who think they with high sense of humor suffer with are listed below. No human being is right, so I have the right to be wrong, and if the blog offends those with the high sense of humor, then they don’t have good sense of humor and that they only think they have one. Else this could have been a topic of humor as well!

•Need an audience to laugh - let there not be right set of people to laugh, all their sense of humor would be lost
•Need a targeted topic or a person to project themselves as a person with sense of humor– Making fun of a person because they are bald, dark or short are definitely not good sense of humor. There are some things which an individual cannot change about themselves.
•They are not patient listeners and attention seekers- Be around a person who thinks to have a good sense of humor, you can never complete what you wanted to say. They tend to crack some joke in between on what you said and would have grabbed all the attention towards themselves. You would keep wishing you got the space to complete what you wanted to say.
•Extremely bad sense of timings – You would have had a bad fight with your boss, mother or your spouse. Never dare to discuss the problem with such people as that would have already become a topic of laugh and floating in the air amongst people. These people, who think they have good sense of humor, do not understand the situation and time and always on lookout for topic to crack some silly joke to entertain the audience around. What may be important to you is only a topic of humor to them.
•Like to watch some crappy shows - I tried watching some of these laughter shows (wouldn’t name them here) couple of times and I never found them to be funny. The host claims and flaunts to be a person of Good sense of humor at the cost of insulting the live audience sitting there. Whoaa!! People get paid to insult people and we happily watch in the name of “Good sense of humor?”


Please call yourself a person with good sense of humor if you don’t have your own audience to laugh, it is not targeted at a person who is helpless about something and you have allowed the person to complete what he or she wanted to say before cracking the silly line, which you think would be a joke!

We do say laughter is the best medicine, but I do wonder do we always need good sense of humor to laugh. Today these “assumed to be happy creatures” are making fun of others in the name of sense of humor, is there a guarantee that you wouldn’t the topic of their humor tomorrow? If you are ready to face, be the audience. Else please treat only the people with real sense of humor as entertainers and don’t be all ears for rubbish jokers.

Note: The blog does not intent to offend feelings and sentiments of anyone other than the people who assume they have good sense of humor!:p

Unlearn what you learnt!

I am back to my liberator (writing) from some frustrations, well not exactly frustration but some dilemmas that I have been facing off late! Back to my B-school days, ohk I am not from tier1 B-school, but I still learnt the same business which an IIM guy would learn. Well an IIM might feel this to be an insult, but I don’t care because that’s not my business and that’s not what I learnt in my tier-3 or probably tier-4 B-school.

Got diverted as ever! On that note, one more diversion, my sister hates me using “!!!!” which is there in most of my messages and blogs these days as she says it’s a symbol of frustration and I shouted back that it’s just a disconnect between two sentence instead of a full stop. That’s all! Well I started to write about something, I don’t know what that something was supposed to be, but this is where landed to!

Some of the learning’s which I learnt in my life, are now turning into some big disasters, no not as big as I think because small and big is situational! At this point of time, they are big, well may not be tomorrow or the moment you are reading this!

•I learnt : Change is preceded by chaos
Wrong-It is also followed by one. Change is not only preceded by chaos, but followed by a change is also a chaos. I join a new job; I have no clue what I am supposed to do. And worst of it all, every few months I have a change of boss (Luckily I have had all good bosses, and that the change was for good always) but then yes I have to change the work style and understand their ideology and work such that I make them happy! By the time I do, boss changes!!!! Yes one thing I learnt the most of my experience in the corporate world is “the key to success is to make your boss happy!” I just hope, none of my blogs are read by my bosses as I assume they wouldn’t have time: p!

•I learnt -Every day of our lives is learning processes!
No waz! We are supposed to behave we already know everything. A Tier 1 B-school guy already knows everything and I learn things every day. Well that’s what differentiates me and him or her for that matter.

•I learnt –Sun doesn’t shine the same all days!
Wrong! It has to shine with the same intensity everyday! And it has to be EVERYDAY. A single day miss and you lost the game. Slightly you lose of the level of your performance; some other smart guy takes over.

•I learnt -What we learn is never applicable!
Theory and practical are two different things! Who says? Presentation skill is all what we require which we DO learn while doing an MBA. That’s what my Marketing prof made me do! And all my statistics prof taught me was the excel sheets which definitely is coming in handy to make some good looking graphs to impress the customers. Well I wonder wouldn’t they have some MBAs like us to do the same analysis? I guess they would hire people with the same skills at a higher cost! There, now I talk like a business analyst. May be they would hire a Tier-1 B school guy at a higher rate to do the same!lol!

•I got trained to work 10 hours a day during my Post Grad!
Wasn’t absolutely needed! My college made me work 10 hours in college saying get used to corporate world. They also taught us that there would be no work life balance and all crappy things which possibly could happen in corporate world. I first proved them wrong when I was in my first organization striking an awesome balance between work and life. Now I can prove them even more wrong! If they really had to teach us the real corporate world, they should have made us work 24/7! Another learning to be negated-No 10 hours concept, we need 28 hours!

•EQ-Emotional Quotient an important factor along with IQ to succeed.
I wonder why do I need an EQ? We do a work from home! Sitting in front of system, I don’t even have time to understand the emotions of the family. Either I have too much work or in bad mood because of consequences of work! And if at all I go to office, I don’t have any of my team member as they all are doing a “WFH” and I don’t even know the name of the lady and guy sitting next to me on my either side! Well I can write one whole blog on how work from home concept would be a flop in country like India with day long power cuts which are common and I often land up rushing to office in rain, but let’s not focus on that in this blog!

•I learnt –Learn to unlearn
Unlearning is more difficult than learning! Man who cares! I have seen some exact replica of presentations and ideas which were there in my old organization, now in new ones! A guy who is replicating all possible ideas and thoughts of old place is a champ! And those trying to come up with new ones are definitely the fools?

•I learnt –eating Etiquettes
We learnt eating etiquettes in the B-school! This topic has some mention in one of my blogs earlier too! But all that we eat now is S***! Let me be more decent with it, I mean unhealthy food and what is more important to think is how many of us have time to eat? Gone are the days when we would sit in front TV and mom would keep giving rotis or dosas! We would keep eating until she comes and shouts of how many more you would eat; you already have had 10 of them. Not that I would have literally had 10, but you never know, I was concentrating on TV! lol!

By the time I finish writing the blog, all I learn is I wasted my time writing and we learn as kids: TIME wasted is LIFE wasted! You have wasted few minutes of your life reading this! Unlearn what you learnt and get back to your work!!!!!

Things really do change overnight?

I saw people sitting on the roads with big boards and screaming at the mid of the night “ Bijli do , bijli do, dilli sarkar bijli do”….and I suddenly got up realizing it was a nightmare.

Well it wasn’t a nightmare but a flash back of reality which had happened some 20 years back in Delhi. During a peak summer season an area of Delhi didn’t have current continuously for few days including our house which was on Delhi-Meerut highway. And finally one night people sat on the roads blocking that highway and not letting the any vehicle pass by. I stood by at my balcony holding my parents and asked them “kal tak bijli aa jaegi na?” At times when things are not heard, we have to make things to be heard!

I google “KIA bus issue”, “BIA bus issue”, “Bangalore airport bus services issue” and nothing relevant was found.
Background: 2 weeks back, I board the airport bus KIA-8 on a Thursday to reach from my office in Manyata to Yelahanka and reached home safely. On Friday, I tried getting into the same bus at the same time and the conductor tells me it will not go to Yelahanka. I was confused, got down and waited for the next bus. And the incident repeated as the conductor said, it will go on the flyover and hence wouldn’t go Yelahanka or Kogilu cross, where I was supposed to get down. I still got into the bus and the driver explained that the routes have been changed from today and going forward all the Bangalore airport bus would go on newly constructed flyovers. I had to get down in midway somewhere and I took an auto to reach back home, which was late at night wondering things really change overnight in Bangalore.

Well two new flyovers have been constructed, one is almost an 8 km stretch and other one is about 12km, though I am really not sure about the second one. The availability of airport busses was the only reason why shifted to Yelahanka as I thought I would avoid the traffic and travel easily to reach office, although the airport bus fares are not too less.

Young population of Bangalore is sleeping: The day I reached Bangalore there was some “Bandh going on”. I still was on road because I had a necessity to search a house or a hostel. And that day I saw a guy with his SLR camera capturing the photos of vehicles running and shop which were open and I admired that the young population worked and held the responsibility in this place. And almost a year and half after this incident, I faced the airport bus issue and when I reached back home, all the neighbors told the same .There were so many young people taking that bus, when I asked what they are doing now? They said “they are switching 2 busses now”. Agreed that it was the most practical decision, but couldn’t they have worked towards achieving a better “win –win” for all. But no one did anything. Well you may ask “AAP ne(as in me) kya kiya?” .That would get answered in the later part of my blog.

Media is sleeping: I wasn’t able to digest the fact how the system can make such big changes overnight and tried googling again and again. I went through newspapers to see if there is any update on the changed bus routes, but all I got was no news found, no result found. I never thought media would sleep to this level.Has media lost the courage or was this was a very small issue to have been noticed by the media? Well I don’t think so it was small, because at least 100(Random numbers, no background check I have done, it’s a random guess) commuters have been affected on daily basis by the change of this route of the airport bus services whose regular travel route would fall below those newly constructed flyovers!

Environmental control teams are sleeping: So what was the result of the change? People had to arrange for an alternative transport, either public or private. The result was we added some 50 more bikes and 30 more cars to the Bangalore traffic? (Random numbers again, no background check I have done, it’s a random guess). We have added to some few decibels of noise pollution, to some level the environmental pollution and common man is not to be blamed, because at the end of the day, we have to reach office on time however we reach. No one accepts the delay in the time due to changing of the busses that I have to do or I get struck in the traffic!

Legal system is sleeping: As a result I took out my scooty for my daily travel to office. The distance is not less, but I do not have an option. It was only one day that I was hit by a truck when I was standing at the signal. Luckily nothing happened and I turned back to see what was the vehicle that actually hit and I saw it was a truck and in mean time 5 people come defending the truck driver saying it’s your fault. Not breaking the signal was my fault, as I saw the lights going red and I had stopped. Apparently the truck driver would have expected me to break it and go hence he forgot to apply the brakes! Whatever!!!! The traffic police (not one, there 3 were watching it happen), and they continued to watch without doing anything. Luckily I removed the helmet and seeing that I was girl, most of the people who came to fight, left. I didn’t prolong it long either, as I had the constraint of not knowing the language and I wouldn’t have got anything by proving that the truck driver was wrong. Actually one more interesting thing to note is, Police or the traffic control team also works only in general shift (mostly between 9am to 6pm) in Bangalore. At night we can hardly find them at signals, except few places where they do the alcohol test, with their selfishness to get money from the drunken people.

Finally what I did? The maximum thing which I could do was, to pick up the mail and feedback ID’s from the website of BMTC and airport authority to bring it to their notice about the change and told them that people who live below those flyovers are facing the issues, and requested them if they could find a solution for the same. Well I was glad for a minute that I got a revert back from the concerned teams which lasted only for few seconds as I realized that I just got a justification and not resolution. Justification that few busses are still running, which I can make use of! My Mail had clearly stated that both those two busses go straight from the Hebbal junction which is not right for people working in Manyata /Marthahalli and areas beyond them! But I was asked to make use of the service which do not fall on my route and that THESE BUSSES ARE MENT ONLY FOR AIRPORT TRAVELLERS! We work and do all analysis for foreign customer; can’t we do a bit of analysis before coming to such decisions? Please use the ticket dump (the electronic tickets generated in these bussed should have some records) not just for the revenue calculation, but also to see the routes and places where they are being used. And if the justifications are valid, I am sure people would accept it!

Aam aadmi is the sufferer wherever he goes. I wish I could sit on one of those flyovers, blocking them for few hours to make this issue heard by the right people. But if I am the only one going to do that, some truck would hit on and no police would be there to notice also. My life is too precious to let it go for such a petty thing which remained unnoticed even by media. I wondered if this issue could be reverted back overnight as it got changed?


Note: No offence to anyone or anything. I like Bangalore for its own reasons which every bangalorean is proud of! But traffic issue has been a thing for which we all want resolution. And this bus route change hasn’t brought anything good or rather added to the traffic problem. Feels bad that such thing also happens in my city of angels!