Every morning I leave at 8.15 and take my grand daughter to school in Koramangala. Distance-wise it can’t be more than 5 kilometers from where I live. Ideally, that should take about 10-15 minutes and perhaps another 10 minutes during peak hours.

But goodness, gracious, it takes anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour and invariably, we are late to school by about 5-10 minutes. Those who commute on Begur Road will agree that the traffic has got denser than what it was, say, three months ago.

And why?

Well, if apartments after apartments get added up in a locality that’s lacking in infrastructure, what can one expect? The narrow roads have remained narrow ever since I can remember, the potholes have increase in size to resemble a war-hit zone, pavements have as much traffic as there is on the roads and driving sense has departed. It’s a free for all.

Is this what they call ‘Town Planning?’ If this is what the larger picture of Greater Bangalore is supposed to look like, then, may I offer my best wishes to the brave hearts of the future.

It’s a well-know fact that the city lacks administration and that road management is the least of their priorities. They seem to have other better things to do and what those are, perhaps even God is still trying to figure out.

If this is an example of going Global, then I believe someone has lost the plot somewhere.

I know people who have set up email accounts and haven’t accessed them for months, maybe even years. At times I wonder why they went through the trouble in the first place. Maybe it’s that status thing; I don’t know.

“You don’t have an email? Which world are you living in?”

“I have two but haven’t had time to check in the last year or so.”

I can imagine what would happen if she were to open her inbox. She’d be 6ft under the earth in her grave just reading all this emails packed in like sardines in a tin can.

This kind of talks makes me believe that one of them is missing the postman. Maybe she had something going with that chap while her husband was away at work.

Once in a while when I go to the Post Office to send a document by Speed-Post (the government’s answer to courier services) and I buy a few stamped envelopes because of one person I know who lives in Delhi.

Many emails sent to him went unanswered. So one day I sent him a handwritten letter through snail-mail and got a snail-mail reply in 3 days time.

At first, many years ago, I was averse to this email shit. When Sabeer Bhatia sold ‘hotmail’ to Bill Gates, it was big news. My initial email account was with my service provider and later I added on Yahoo, which I don’t use now, because I now have gmail. After all the hoo-haa about hotmail, I never got to open one, though I know quite a few females who did just for kicks of whatever.

I find it quite ironical that with all these mediums of communication available people still don’t communicate.

Missing the Postman, are we?

Someone said that ‘only 98′ people perished in the Calcutta Hospital fire. Only 98. Sounds like the scoreboard of a cricket match; just 2 more runs for the century and the clapping begins.

Makes you sick, doesn’t it, when people make such remarks? Patients come to hospitals hoping they’ll return healed or cured; the don’t walk in with intentions of suffocating to death or get burnt beyond recognition.

That hospital – whatever it’s damn name is – is owned by rich people and the major stake is with a family that run a company manufacturing beauty products. They are filthy rich already and earnings from the hospital – I’m told generated decent profits last year – would have added to the pile. So, money and not the love of humanity was the intent.

Because, had that been so, how come it was so grossly mismanaged?

What should become of such people? Aside from that bull we hear all the time about ‘Law will take it’s own course’ – most times it’s off-course – why do we dilly-dally on slapping them with stringent punishment? How come the fire inspectors, the hospital inspectors, and a host of other inspectors get away Scott-free?

Why, instead of dedicating his yet again fast at Delhi, did not Anna Hazare fast on the streets of Calcutta?

That wouldn’t have been out of sync with his image. I mean, if one has political intentions stored in his mind, best is to rub shoulders with politicians and not the wails of grieving families.

In the Gandhi mould? My Foot!