BANGALORE
It is a muggy Monday afternoon, the kind we’ve been having of late, and over lunch, we’ve been discussing a party that’s been scheduled mid week in a hotel, situated in the suburbs.
It is a muggy Monday afternoon, the kind we’ve been having of late, and over lunch, we’ve been discussing a party that’s been scheduled mid week in a hotel, situated in the suburbs. My friends and I have just ordered some chilled ‘lemon soda’, laced with sweet syrup, that no Bangalore restaurant ever gets wrong, and as we wait, we think of every excuse in the book not to attend the party. First, it’s the weather.
“So unpredictable these days,” says my friend Anisha who usually needs a crane to drag her out of her cozy home on any day of the week. “What would happen if it rained and rained and we couldn’t get back into the city?” Second excuse: “Why is the party being planned mid-week? We could say it’s not possible to head out on a school night.” This excuse, suggested by Ayesha, mother of two toddlers who have not seen a school gate yet, makes no sense at all.
But as we discuss the matter further, we realise that the main reason we don’t want to go anywhere comes down to one thing: the distance. For a city that’s relatively small compared to bigger metros, it is surprising how daunting distances are here. If a fashion event is planned in a hotel mid town, everyone will be vying for an invitation. Plan the same show in a hotel in suburbia and you might have to beg people to attend. It’s the same for an out of town party. Often guests worry hours on end about how to get there and get back safely and if it’s really worth all the effort.
Though we spend a better part of the luncheon, discussing this strange “distance” dilemma, we don’t come to any reasonable reasons as to why this might be so. “It’s just a Bangalore thing,” says Ayesha finally. “In other cities, people travel by trains, buses and taxis, all in one day to get somewhere. But here, so many people don’t think beyond a 15 kilometer radius. They just don’t want to travel beyond this distance for anything that they consider trivial.”
But for a city that loves ‘short-distance’, there is a conscious effort now to change. Beautiful townships are springing up along the suburbs, plush apartment blocks line the outskirts of the city, and fine mansions dot the landscapes in the horizon. How are they scaling the distance divide? They are helped by enterprising folk who set up malls, eateries and boutique stores in the same 15km radius.
As I go home that evening and check the social networking sites on my computer, I find most of my Bangalore friends are online, bridging distance via cyberspace. And as I chat with a friend about another friend in Dubai who has just got a promotion and is earning mega bucks, she tells me, “We should not judge people by their peak of excellence, but by the distance they have travelled from the point where they started.”
Now, that’s another thought that should go far.
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