Holiday Diary - Part - 1

Back after a loooooooooooooooooooooong break

Had a blast in Bangalore, Chennai and Calcutta in the break.

Bangalore was home sweet home, Calcutta was the IIM Cal fest and Chennai was in transit.

Holiday Diary

23 Dec

Train reached Chennai 7 hours late!!!!!

One thing B-school has taught me is to value every second of time and use it constructively. To helplessly watch the Indian Railways to make fun of all our seemingly priceless time is quite a humbling experience. I force myself to believe the time was spent usefully in some soul searching.

Chennai hadn’t changed much. traffic’s taken a turn for the worse.

The next 2 days were spent at the movies and the beach..just a day before the fateful Dec 26!

25

Touchdown in Blore!!! Home, after 6 months!!!! Feels like heaven..

Immediately met up with the Infy gang at Haze!

Nothing has changed in B’lore!!!! Sat Nite at Purple Haze is still a sacrosanct tradition. Bumped into one million friends…this is lovely

Optimum size Funda - The Size Vs Warmth Matrix

Let me now go on to explain the concept of how big a city should be, not only in terms of area, but also population and diversity. And also let me go on to explain why B’lore is the best city in the world.

When a city is too big, it loses its character and warmth. Like Delhi or Bombay, lessay. If a bunch of friends wanted to meet up in Delhi, there is never a single place you could decide. Each area is decentralized into various hangouts and the crowd will get split according to location. A central character and spirit can never be formed. You can never go to a particular place and hope to bump into someone you know. The chances of that happening are very rare unless it’s the neighborhood pub and you bump into your neighbors

Now lets take the case of a small town. Like Chandigarh. There are probably one or two
Pubs/coffee places where the junta will chill. But the population is hardly dynamic. You meet the same people, bump into the same crowd and soon get bored and claustrophobic

Enter Bangalore to the rescue.

What’s so unique about the city of my birth?

Well for one, the big city problems don’t arise because the hang out spots in Bangalore follow a unique pattern There are a hundred pubs, a zillion eating joints, a billion coffee places, but they are all concentrated in 2 or 3 areas. MG, Brigade’s and Koramangala.

So you are never too far away from friends, you always keep bumping into old pals and it’s the city’s own way of keeping everyone together. Feeling lonely on weekend. Put on those denims and hit Mg, Brigade’s and you are bound to bump into old friends, colleagues, classmates…the works.

But the small towns feel does not permeate either because the crowd is so dynamic thanks to the huge floating student and IT crowd. Also, blessed with a brand equity as India’s Hippest city, there is no inferiority complex or trying to catch up with bigger towns Bombay and Delhi. B’lore sets its own rules, creates its own fashion, bellows its own lingo and captures India’s new free spirit in a wonderfully cosmopolitan nature symbolic of the new confidence the IT industry has bestowed upon India

And hence my optimum size funda stands explained.