A tantalizing word in the English dictionary today...and it has definitely formed trend-setting impressions on our well-informed minds.
An IT-mecca not so strong anymore...Bangalore is still home to a large chunk from the 5 lakh odd jobless software junta that the rat-racing IT/ITES companies banked upon in India, in the recent past.
Talk fashion and the page 3 arena..what does one associate with Bangalore here? A slightly dampened fashion steed and a completely drenched night life!
And the once-famous air conditioned climate that Bangalore boasted of, is just a fad now...thanks to the insensitive pollution, deforestation and of course, our short sighted
netaas.
This should take care of the most vivid impressions we have about Bangalore.
This gives me a chance to demystify Bangalore a little deeper for you...because Bangalore is about
more.
More potential...more culture....more living-friendly....more spirituality....more entrepreneurial...and more "yes" to life today.
June 9th, 2009....i am roughly into my 6th year of being a Bangalorean.
Being a Bangalorean comes so easy to most people who have looked at Bangalore with an open mind, and noticed the exuberance and welcoming feel Bangalore radiates.
I am riding in one of the auto-rickshaws driven by just another
unpredictable driver.
Unpredictable because no two auto drivers of Bangalore share the same psyche......every alternate auto driver does. :-) just when you have discovered this auto driver who is taking you on a ride...you will discover the next who is an eager do-gooder to you....that settles two important lessons i implement:
- To what extent can a stranger push your buttons? (to a person who hasn't experienced the experiential wonders of an Art of Living workshop, this learning may take long time to become second skin)
- Form no concepts about how people or situations should be (includes the concept about auto drivers) and you will live sunnier days and die a happier man.
so back to the southern part of Bangalore where I sat in the auto rickshaw with my stranger driver riding whiiish and whooosh on this marvellous vehicle of three wheels that only INDIA prides in possessing. . .i pass this girl of 16 walking down the road, sporting the in-fashion jute bag beautifully crafted and designed to incorporate the environment-aware material with a traditional look. What struck me was the amalgamation of her attire and accessories. Dressed in a green striped top and Bossini jeans, and accessorised with the red kumkum on her forehead and a
gajra of
mallige flowers, she like many Bangaloreans had become children of two worlds: the culturally-grounded Kannadiga-Indian lifestyle one was born into, and the new-found western accenture one wanted to blend into. She was unconscious of the strangeness of this Indo-western outlook that was slowing seeding into her brain...and conequently translated into her attire. :-)
next observation: an old grandlady who stepped out of her courtyard onto the footpath....frail and creased to look at, but equally steady in her gait (given her healthy lifestyle devoid of fried junk and corporate stress). She was probably now used to the noise of crazy traffic right outside her house...the roads- she must be a witness to the transformation in her previously picturesque neighborhood...previously lined with trees full of squirrels and children playing innocent games, this neighborhood is now pounded with incessant noise of vehicles and the ever-ensuing smoke, idle smoker population(who just hadn't been sufficiently street-smart or book-smart in recetn past), and of course the teenage couples.........and also a few abandoned cows! She had probably adapted to this change conveniently, because they next moment she brandished a plastic bag full of her usual household garbage (vegetable remains...the same vegetables grown with fertilizers and pesticides today!) and most casually tossed it, onto the main road. Convenient enough!
The beautiful, life-breathing trees are today being increasingly replaced with international brands that flaunt their sportswear, clothing accessories or fast food within their empires of
glass buildings that are fantastic contributors to green house emission.
And what fast foods at that?
This...and
This!
Marketing jargon all over the place...roadsides, building fronts, everywhere...I wondered....where is our civilization headed? Is the world churning out more zombies...the zombies who are conditioned into becoming the so-called software cash cows with a oh!-not-again MBA....and the zombies who in a desperate attempt to break the conditioning, got unconsciously conditioned into the general rebel pattern of "aggressive, blind over-ambitious executive
saaar's" vs. "never-been-employed Bangalorean
macha's".
Dissecting the first kind of zombies is pretty predictable...they are these super-conditioned individuals who were pushed into the engineering colleges (all creativity and potential lost for the poor soul)-- the same engineering colleges that have become a thriving business outlets minting money out of the gullible parents who live in the hope of seeing their sons and daughters become a neatly labeled "engineer" package. These super-conditioned engineers, deprived of creative inspiration take the next plunge into being labeled as MBA grads. And herein emerges this perfect zombie who did a
"Masters in Business Administration" to "get placed"! B-schools take pride in churning out employable professionals...not entrepreneurs...now you know which direction to run the next time when a B-school plays the tune of a "placement" funda @ you.
We are truly living in a funny civilization.
Laugh at it or take it seriously, you have a choice.
..to choose what is part of your life and what is not...to take revolutionary decisions that will pick up momentum when the "unplugged" youth of today lurking and waiting to break this unhealthy direction of civilization, see your first step.
Something very revolutionary is happening right now...and perhaps I just caught you unawares, and am trying to tell you that the first step to solving a problem is to recognize that it is a problem....perhaps here, the answer lies right beneath your nose...where you least expected it. :-) ...
IT (I meant "
Inner Transformation" ) is happening.
"There exists a better world, a few breaths away."-
Khurshed Batliwala
p.s. (this post would be incomplete without this cute pic shot in the streets of Bangalore...cute pic but a stark reality in today's schools that over burden children)
(This pic is courtesy of Anant Bhandarkar- he is a 24-year young
YES!+ youth workshop trainer and shares the vision for a happier, inter-dependent global society that is being realised right now as you read this, in more than 150 countries through the One World Family vision of the Art of Living International Foundation)
