Bangalore, Bengaluru, the IT capital of India, India's Silicon Valley, the Garden City...

Here is very brief look at life in a strangely complicated but simple place. The best way I can describe Bangalore (and India) is extreme and alive. (I will be telling you mostly just about Bangalore, which can be very different from other parts of India but it is the city I know best.) There is extreme wealth and extreme poverty here. It can be extremely beautiful but can be extremely filthy. It is extremely crowded and noisy and it is always moving. And just when you think you're starting to get to know the place, you learn something new, see something different, or realize you really don't know the place at all.

What I've tried to do here is just give you a glimpse of my immediate surroundings. I took a walk around our neighborhood and tried to get some clips that you might find interesting and show you a little of what it is like. All of these videos were taking on a typical Friday afternoon.

As I said before, Bangalore is noisy. I wasn't sure if you could really hear me speaking so in the first clips I tried to tell you a little bit about where I was but towards the end, I just let the sounds of the traffic take over. Our internet connection is also pretty slow so between that, and the fact that the power goes out frequently, I had some trouble uploading some of the videos. I had to cut them all down to less than a minute which is why there are so many but they are so short.

This first clip is just outside our apartment complex.



The next two are just outside our place. I took a left outside the gate and started walking.




This next clip is at the intersection of the main road by our apartment. Hopefully you get the idea that the driving rule in India is that there is no rule. You go when you see and opening and if you don't see one, you make it by inching up hoping nothing hits you. There are some street lights but they are rare. Most intersections are like this.



The tall white building in the background with the Corinthian columns (you remember those, don't you?) is an apartment complex. Next to that is a fairly new mall. It just celebrated it's 4th birthday. It's called the Forum Mall and has a large multiplex cinema and some Western stores like Nike, Benetton and Reebok.





In the next clip, you'll see why even the simple act of walking down the street is not so simple in Bangalore.



There are all types of vendors on the streets. My favorite are the sugar cane vendors, which of course, I did not see on this day. They take the long sugar cane sticks and stick them through this wheel that crushes the stick leaving only the juice to make a sticky sweet drink with. It's almost the beginning of summer (April) so the fruits they are selling now are grapes, oranges and lemons mostly.


Here I caught some live action on a construction site. When we arrived, they were just beginning to dig in this lot to start construction of this building. The digging alone took months as they did not use bulldozers of any kind but rather, lots and lots and lots of people (men and women) to dig (with shovels and buckets). As you can see here, they've made some good progress since September but still have a ways to go. You'll also see that I was spotted with the camera but even still, the pace they are working at and the number of people around, is very typical (so is the lack of footware).




This is the type of scaffolding they use. Sticks and twine. The men on the top seem to be on a bit of a lunch break.


Bangalore is changing rapidly. It was originally considered a city for retirees with beautiful, wide, tree lined streets and lots of clean, fresh air. But since the IT boom and the birth of outsourcing, it has become impossibly crowded with heavy traffic and lots of pollution. It is no longer the idyllic retirement paradise but rather quickly becoming a cosmopolitan business city with more office parks than green parks and more smoggy air than clean air. But because it was never meant to be a city of this size, it is severely lacking in infrastructure. Now they are forced to build the infrastructure around the growth that's already taken place. The most immediate example is the roads. They need to widen the roads to help ease the congestion of traffic but in order to do so, they are cutting down enormous, beautiful, old trees at an alarming rate. I'm sure it sounds like just another price to pay for progress but when you see so many and new ones come down everyday, it really makes an impression. This was about the fourth tree in a one block stretch that is being cut down. The others were about the same size.

The Bangalore Streets

There is a garbage problem in Bangalore. There is too much of it, everywhere (and no recycling!!). That is a man in the distance, picking through it. For what? Your guess is as good as mine.



Here is a garbage truck but it's hard to say whether they were dumping garbage from the streets into the truck or from the truck into the street. I watched the men for about another five minutes trying to figure out exactly what they were doing but I still walked away unsure.




In this clip, hopefully, you can hear the voice from the mosque. I don't know what they are saying but hearing this on a Friday afternoon is pretty typical. As you will see, across the street from the mosque is a Hindu temple. There is a good mix of Hindus, Muslims and even some Christians here in Bangalore. They all peacefully co-exist.



Here is another larger and more ornate temple, just a block or so away.




But my personal favorite is this temple again, just a few feet down the same road. Temples are everywhere. Extra credit for whoever can name the god...


This is another colorful temple in the middle of a busier section of town.



This next clip is coming back toward our apartment complex. These shacks are on the same road as our high-rise. There is a pig farm down the side street (that is empty in this clip). We hear them in the mornings and around 5 pm - squealing and screeching. I've seen them a couple of times all herded into the streets but unfortunately (or fortunately) didn't see them when I was taping.



On the same street, I attracted the attention of this man who was eager to show off his daughter. I didn't want to linger too long because sometimes people like to insist they should get a payment or "donation" for offering themselves or their children to appear on film. Before he could ask, I moved on. Maybe he thought I was some filmmaker who would make her rich.


One thing I thought for sure I would see, as they really are everywhere, is a cow in the street. But here is a picture of one on the street outside our apartment.




And if you're interested this is what the inside of the auto rickshaws look like. They were putting a new roof on it this day. They are tightening it up front.



This gentleman (the statue not the man polishing it), should look familiar. This was just before his birthday, a national holiday here, in October.


Gandhi sits at the end of MG Road (named in his honor). MG Road, which consists mostly of shops and restaurants, is one of the main "tourist" areas in Bangalore and is always packed. (Although, I should mention that Bangalore isn't really a tourist town. In terms of "sites" that would attract first time visitors to India, there aren't really any.) The picture on the left is MG Road and the one on the right is across the street.



Hope your year is going well! Questions/comments are welcomed!