City Animals and Bangalore Traffic

Have you observed how the animal kingdom adapts to our city life?

I remember reading a story about City Mouse, Country Mouse when I was very young. To the best of the memory, that story was about how the country mouse, initially in awe of city life, finally comes to realize that his country life is much better than the cut-throat pace of the city, where you can be run over by a vehicle before you know it.

Sometimes, when I am on my way home from office (fortunately, a walk-able distance in the crazy Bangalore traffic), I feel trapped like a country mouse. There are days when I wait for minutes before I find a narrow scope to cross the super-busy ITPL Main Road. The incoming traffic never stops, you just have to wait for the right gap between scores of vehicles of all forms and shapes and run for your life when the opportunity opens up. Just like you have to wait as you search for jobs, or when you want to buy that newly-launched mobile phone available exclusively on Flipkart or Amazon. Imagine my frustration when I hear from my friends settled in America how the traffic stops should a pedestrian be spotted on the pavement. In India, pedestrians belong to the least important category in human race, almost at par with the city animals.

Anyways, coming back to the topic, last couple of days, incidentally, I ended up crossing the road with a fellow four-legged pedestrian. I watched closely as the dog kept a watch on the incoming traffic, and at the first signal of thinning traffic, he sped up. And guess what, I ended up following the dog’s lead as I crossed the road!

It’s curious how the structures of human existence impact the animal kingdom. As the city dogs and cats become more adept at crossing roads, perhaps new nerve connections form in their brains, enabling them to get better at surviving this. Which makes me think, should there be a re-enactment of City Mouse, Country Mouse story in real life, would the story still stay intact? What do you guys think? Comment and let me know! 🙂

The perks of living in a big city

Last week I was in my hometown, enjoying a week off from work with my family. Reason: Diwali. I met a lot of people during that time, socialized a bit and generally had a good time.

I belong from a small town, and of course, there are perks of living in a place like that, but there are times you crib about some important facilities not being present, especially if you have gotten the chance to live in a big city for considerable amount of time. In this post, I wanted to talk about some of the things that I miss about Bangalore when I go to my hometown/visit smaller towns on trips:

1. Limited transportation choices – Ola/Uber are non-existent, and so are normal cabs. The auto-wallahs are too arrogant and would rather they have no passengers than allow you share the auto with other people – they want to charge you a fixed amount, and want you to reserve it for your purpose. Not great if you are travelling alone.
2. No Subway – I am not a big fan of fast food joints, but I don’t mind a bit of Subway, at least it lets me have some veggies. Replace it with the fast food joint of your choice.
3. Food home delivery apps – Extending point 2, home delivery of food is almost non-existent, so the delight of food-at-fingertip is a dream
4. Not enough places to take your friends from other cities when they are visiting you – This is a big one. In my hometown, there are few choices w.r.t. malls and parks, but not really much of options to do different things. Sometimes, you are just bored and don’t know how you could entertain yourself or your guests
5. Not enough cultural exposure/means to pursue cultural activities as a career – This may differ from city to city, but bigger cities usually have events catering to different types of audiences, which help with point 3 listed above, and also provides alternate career choices

These are some of my big reasons why I don’t enjoy being living in a small town a lot. Of course, there are some great perks of living in a small town, and I want to talk about that in a future post. Until then, do let me know what your big reasons are for simply loving living in a metro/big city.

Cheers,

Arpita