Gettin’ Bizzy In Bangalore…

Posted by Jim Stroud

February 9, 2006

Still looking into India. Maybe I will do this for the rest of the week? Interesting article…

Within a few hours in Bangalore, you can go from wending your way down a dirt road outside a 17th-Century mosque lined with trinket-sellers, barefoot urchins, and men herding sheep in the street, to drinking beer in the walled-off gardens of the old British Bangalore Club, where Winston Churchill used sup. It’s not that other cities don’t abut rich and poor, extravagant and destitute. But here they’re in high relief. And quite literally, nearly crashing into each other.

For entry one in a week-long blog I’ll keep of a reporting trip to India: 24 hours on duty and off. I arrived at my hotel at nearly 3 a.m. Sunday after negotiating the chaos of the baggage claim at Bangalore InternationalÃ¢â‚¬â€?a misnomer, really, since the crumbling former industrial airport owned by military plane maker Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. has been pressed into service as an international port of call to accommodate the city’s booming technology business. It takes 20 hours to get here from San Francisco, and I’ve been assured that’s the short way. It also means that day’s night and night day, which led to breakfast at 3 p.m. They do make a strong pot of coffee here though.

I knew I was on tap to meet some executives from IT outsourcing company Microland in the evening, but I wanted to see Bangalore for myself first. So I hired a taxi driver for two hours for the equivalent of $15Ã¢â‚¬â€?for that price the driver will take you around the city, and wait for you while you walk around and see the sights. But getting around can be an adventure. The poor are on foot, the noveau riche drive new cars, and in between surge city buses, auto rickshawsÃ¢â‚¬â€?smoke-spewing, three-wheeled motorized cabs, taxis, trucks, and ubiquitous motor scooters. The roadsÃ¢â‚¬â€?the paved onesÃ¢â‚¬â€?have lines on the blacktop, but that’s a formality. Generally, the whole lot lurches forward in an urgent mass. Suresh Iyer, a VP at Microland, compares it to a school of fish. They just know where to go.

Source: Dodging Traffic And Talking Business In Bangalore

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