Cost-benefit, transportation.

Wednesday 5 August 2009
Why hello there. I suppose I’ve been rather inconsistent with this blog (or simply have been putting up any entries). To tell you the truth I feel like I’m getting a crash-course in time management. I work from 9.30-6 everyday and most stores/ art galleries/ cultural events close their doors at 7.30 and are a 40 minute, 200 rupee round-trip auto-rickshaw drive away or 45minute- 1hour, 20 rupee bus ride away. While I am a big fan of public transportation, several factors are hindering me from taking advantage of it. For starters Bangalore is a HUGE city. A lot of people complained that Vizag was too small, but let me to you after four months there I felt like I could navigate it but at the same time still had places to explore. To make matters even easier, there was only one main bus station in Vizag that almost every bus went to and was relatively near to my house. Here in Bangalore there are an infinite number of buses and more often than not I find myself taking one bus to get to the bus that will take me back to Indra Nagar, the larger neighborhood that I live in—forget me finding a bus back to New Tipsandra, although I do see buses driving down the main road. The next inconvenience is the time. I suppose if I knew which bus to take then I wouldn’t have to take a half-an-hour detour every time I used public transportation, but then I still would have to wait for the correct bus number to arrive at the bus stop and who knows how long that would take! While I’m surely up for the adventure because I get out of work so late I really don’t have time to spare on the way there. As a result I usually find myself on the bus on the way back later at night which poses a problem if I get lost—the auto rickshaw drivers increase fares significantly after dark. I’m finding this issue of transportation to be a real challenge. I tend to grow accustom to cities by walking to and from places and allowing myself to wander off the designated course and in doing so find my bearings, eventually. And that is the key, I need time. I will probally get lost the first three of four times, but then that fifth time I will find my way. Case in point, I walked home from work one day and decided to cross from one main road to the next on a small side street instead of the road I had originally been shown. I then found myself winding through the neighborhood and at some point crossed over the street that I should have turned on to. I must have been too far down on the street to know that that was where I wanted to go. As a result I kept walking and kept walking. About an hour and a half later I approached a busy street and to my surprise found a T.G.I. Friday’s and decided at that point that I should probably grab an auto rickshaw home. Hungry and tired, I was disappointed with myself but was also quite simply lost. A week or so later while I was on an early morning run I once again found myself unfamiliar with my surroundings but soon recognized that I had been on the same street the night I had gotten lost. After running a little further, I stopped and asked some one where 80ft road was (the main street I use to locate my house) and was directed to return from where I came. I asked a bunch of teenage girls at a bus stop who I knew would speak English as to not cause a scene. Yes, I asked someone the night I got lost but didn’t clarify her directions as you should always do with Indians (because the head wobble can truly mean anything). I was happy to have found my way, if only a week late but I can’t help but wonder if all the hassle was really worth the self-gratification that I got.
There are two guest houses that the I to I volunteers reside in and a Chinese man named Jackie lives next to the other house (known as Katary’s, the surname of the owners, mine is Shirley’s, the first name of the lady of the house—although she does have a husband?). The Indian IT company where Jackie work mandates that all new employees of his level must work in Bangalore for a year before returning to the company’s branches around the world (in Jackie’s case China). Jackie used to take an auto rickshaw to work every day but got fed up with not only the price, but the mere haggling for the price (although I found many auto rickshaw’s in Vizag willing to set a fixed price if I rode with them to school every day—yes, I did miss the school bus quite often.) So Jackie bought a bike and he figured that after three months it will pay for itself, not to mention the fact that’s he getting regular exercise. Therefore the benefit of his bike outweighed the cost. But does my situation turn out as favorably? Does the benefit of my wandering (a sense of direction, perhaps?) outweigh the cost of my wandering (both literally in terms of rupees spent on transportation, specifically the more expensive auto rickshaws, and time lost)? If I will only be superficially comfortable with Bangalore’s layout after x rupees and three weeks, should I even bother if I’m here for a month?