“IT has ruined Bangalore;” “Look at the congestion and the traffic;” “Culture has taken a toss” (and my favorite); “Youngsters earn too much and have no culture anymore” etc etc. These seem to be the quotable quotes from various discussion groups splashed across the newspapers from day to day. The big question: “Is IT bad for Bangalore?” Before I get into the details, let me just get one thing of my chest: if you (whosoever is reading this) actually thinks that IT is bad for the city what in God’s name can you do about it? IT has been here for a long time and is here to stay, period. Accept it.

Now addressing the question at hand: is IT really bad for Bangalore? Well, obvious things aside one must acknowledge the fact that love it or hate it, IT put Bangalore on the World map. Sure it was the Garden City, the city with great climate and great people etc all this did make Bangalore a well known place but that was in India, tops. And ironically those are the main reasons why IT ended up in Bangalore in the first place. But like someone truly said “Any publicity is good publicity” and so slowly with the advent of IT and the outsourcing biz terms like “Bangalored” (someone whose lost his/her job to outsourcing) came up and one by one it became the IT capital of the country and got a spot on the world map. Now you can’t say that’s a bad thing.

But all good things to come at a price. The problem that Bangalore had is plain and simple- it grew too fast for its own good. Companies poured in, job opportunities increased and boom population explosion. Then came the problems that everyone complains about: Traffic: reason is the city grew up so fast and was so obsessed with getting more famous that there wasn’t any time to improve the roads and other infrastructure. Can you blame the government at the time for it? Sure if you are a very cynical man, because sure there might have been stuff the govt could’ve done but things happened too fast and we all know things can go wrong when that happens. The then in charge Krishna govt did do its bit and his regime is still considered a good one by most in the city.

Then the next most common problem that everyone complains about: the congestion and the inflow of “non-Karnataka” people: reason: now like every Hollywood celebrity knows you can’t get famous and not attract the paparazzi, not that I’m comparing the “non-Karnataka” people to paparazzi but basically I’m trying to say that you cant get famous and not attract attention to yourself. Be it person or place that gets famous others are going to want to find out what the big deal is all about. Best example, all the people going to America to study or get a job why is it? Simple really it got famous and that’s where the money is (was) and we want a piece of the pie. Are those saying that “non-Karnataka” people are bad saying that their kids shouldn’t go to America or any other country or state to earn more money? Think about that.

Then of course my favorite the “youngsters are earning too much and losing their culture” excuse. Consider this scenario: I’m an employer I come to a parent and say “I’m not going to pay your son or daughter too much money, I’ll just pay him enough to keep him/her going, or else they’ll lose their culture!!” now if you rightfully say that a parent would agree to that then all is not well with you up there. A parent is always going to want their kids to earn well to do well in their lives and similarly youngsters are going to want to earn a lot of money too, for many reasons. Now if they do something “bad” with their money or “lose their culture” because of the money they have to spend its not really IT’s fault is it? Its up to how the kids were bought up that’ll affect how they use their money, period.

I almost forgot another crowd favorite “crime in the city has gone up”. IT’s fault? Why not? Now you must know we don’t live in a perfect world, Eve did bite the apple and evil and misery does exist in the world today. And a city coming on the world map does attract the wrong kind of attention too. What can you do about it? Beef up security, better safety measures, better police patrolling etc etc. and unless I’m mistaken these things come under the police dept and the government and city council NOT surprise surprise IT.

All things aside IT has helped Bangalore, IT has also brought some problems with it. Now the problem that actually happened was that Bangalore was the first city in India that all this drama happened to at such a large scale. Due to which like it or hate it, it became a sort of guinea pig, (no insult intended) all I’m trying to say is it became the test subject from which other cities looking to be a part of the IT boom learnt from. And it learnt a lot too: what to do, what not to do, how to prepare etc. case and point Hyderabad: improved the infrastructure and roads before the IT boom hit it, provided the infrastructure necessary. How did it learn all this? By watching Bangalore and what happened there.

So before you go answering another newspaper questionnaire or survey asking if “IT is bad for Bangalore?” and before you compare it with Hyderabad etc and before you get all set to point the finger, look around you and to yourself you might see many targets hiding in the bushes so as not to get the finger pointed at them.

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Everyone has at sometime been so angry that they just wanna break something. When something you've been looking forward to doesn't work out, something else follows up and thats when the chain starts, one thing goes wrong then the next and boom you're so pissed you just wanna punch someone's lights out.

One thing that has always managed to calm me down was pure metal, i mean i hear that distortion guitar on full blast and someone like Hetfield shout out from behind it, ah now that brings bliss sheer bliss. But thats the strange thing isn't it, logically speaking something more calm more soft should generally soothe you back to normal. sure smooth calm music does that too, but not the same way that metal does. Metal gives u a satisfaction like you've actually let all of that pent up anger out. where as smooth music just plains pushes all that anger under the carpet.

I wonder why metal does that though? i mean think about it, you're angry and angry, enraged music calms u down. My theory? well i think its purely because when you're surrounded by that kind of music you're surrounded by that amount of anger so at that instance the amount of anger in you and the amount of anger around you is equal almost. So in your own little world you're normal now, as opposed to the "normal world" where you would be one angry guy. but in your angry world of metal your normal and i think its that thought that calms u down eventually and the anger just flows out of ya and boom you can get back to the real world.

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