Interesting Things this Summer

Part I - Summer, Storms, Medals and Night Rides

When I started blogging (if you noticed, this is how my last blog started too :-) I swore that I will not bother my readers with my personal musings, but only write some of my 'quality' perspectives on aspects (mostly beautiful) of life. Like this predecessor, this blog also breaks one of my blog resolutions. After all, it is better to state facts out of which the blogzens, who more often than not fall in the higher end of the intellectual spectrum, can make their own interpretations, instead of forcing on them my own opinions not to mention branding them 'quality' rather immodestly.

Summer, it is never exactly summer in Bangalore. It is summer by Bangalorean standards, but from where I come, this is how it is in the coolest of seasons. Staying in Bangalore for twenty one months has made me a Bangalorean of sorts. There are so many things about Bangalore that I love in spite of it being a confused city. We will come to that in some other post. I would call the 38 deg centigrade a summer in spite of the rain that comes every other day (even as I am writing this) and the hailstorms that recently visited us.

Bangaloreans have various interpretations of the hailstorms. I thought interpreting natural phenomena is out of style in the information age. Pardoning the fact that humans will be humans, more so Indians will be Indians; people say that the hailstorm was called by the trees that want to protest the ill-treatment they have been receiving from the citizens. Nice na, that a storm, that too a hailstorm comes in when you call, even though it comes only to beat you up! In this hailstorm, trees got uprooted, falling on cars and bikes, thus injuring people in protest to cutting them down. Now some extremist groups have trained trees into martyrdom ! Though a nature lover and a champion of planting trees, I do not endorse these extreme acts by my immobile friends. Bangaloreans have to cut down some of the old trees that lie right on the middle of roads like MG road to widen them, thus reduce pollution. Of course they must also care enough to plant saplings again.

Moving on to things I did this summer. Here the summer begins right in the middle of April. Right after the right in the middle of April is my company's annual day, on which I got a medal. It is the first medal of my life. The medal was for winning a humble basket ball tournament that we won sometime in November! Nonetheless first medals in life are first medals in life. I won the second medal in my life by running the Bangalore Marathon's half. It was a full twenty one kilometer run, that deserves a complete post. This medal is a finger to all those people who laughed when I said I was running the half-marathon and a salute to all those people who cheered along the way. Let me tell you given the slightest chance, these two classes of people will exchange positions before you say 'oh'. I mean, the same people who say you can't do it, will clap when you attempt. After all, people are in general good.

I went on a night ride in Bangalore, two weeks back. This also deserves another post, but due to various constraints, let me put a compressed version here as a part of this series. It was after a fun filled get-together of some friends. I travelled sixty kilometers to cover a displacement of four kilometers! The course was (before I forget, let me note it down).

Kasturinagar - KRpuram - Marathalli - Agara - Madiwala (along outer ring road till now) - Forum - Dairy circle - Lal Bagh east gate - north gate - JC road - Hudson circle - Kasturba road - Queen's road - Raj Bhavan road - Golf Course - Sankey Road - Cauvery theatre - Mekhri circle - Jaya mahal - Cantonment - Queen's Road (not the part already visited) - Shivajinagar bus stand - Cubbon road - Brigade road - Residency road - Mayo hall - MG road - Trinity road - Airport road - Airport - BEML - Old Madras road - Ulsoor - CMH road - Home.

Total distance - 60 km

Total time - 70 min

Duration - 12:30 pm to 1:40 am

Maximum speed - 70 kmph

Total breaks - 20 sec

The route never intersected and covered the entire east and Bangalore right from the north to south. Now did I mention in my profile that random drives are my hobby ?

There are many advantages to random drives. The most noticeable of which is the one that Robert M. Pirsig had when he drove from Chicago to San Francisco. He wrote down his thoughts along the ride into the book 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Management' that went on to become a best seller making him a millionaire. Neither my random drives nor my blog are my steps in the footsteps of Mr. Pirsig. I would attribute my random drives, mostly night drives, to the feeling these drives give you, you can muse on random topics and get in touch with yourself. I guess that is what drove Mr. Pirsig on his drive from the great lake to the great ocean; and let me assure the ride was just what the doctor would have prescribed to him. My machine, as I call it with love, is a Bajaj Pulsar, an awesome machine. When you drive it, you get a feeling that you are still and the world is moving under you. There have been many an occasion on which I took circuitous routes just to feel the rev of the machine. Hats off Mr. Rajiv Bajaj. My drives are mostly night drives because that is the only time excepting the early mornings when Bangalore roads are a fun to drive on. Travelling along the roads from Bangalore to Mysore or Kodagu (Coorg) in the buses or Tempos also classify as random drives. This is when I miss a blogging mechanism the most.

To be continued...

Coming in the next blogs as a part of the 'Interesting things this summer' areIndic Fonts, Smilies, Marathons, Performances, Destinies, Dispersals etc.