Bangalore City Station -
Stationed to Stasis

chillibreeze writer — Meghna Chatterjee

Need an editable PowerPoint map of India

Bangalore’s demography is characterized by the young upwardly mobile professional, the neo-rich who generally travel by air whether for business or pleasure. Stories of their harassment due to the inconveniently located new airport have occupied most newspaper columns in the recent past. It’s surprising and sad, that nothing has been said about the equally number of challenges the Bangalore railway station presents to the city’s less privileged travelers.

The Voyage
The Bangalore City station is an important junction serving the Southern, South Western and the Konkan railways. Located conveniently in the middle of the city, it still defies easy access as most approach roads are so intensely crowded and narrow that one needs to add at least a couple of hours to the total journey time. If you are on the wrong side of the town, traveling to Yeshwanthpura station itself feels like a long journey.

True to the identity of an IT-centric city, the stations are equipped with platform ticket vending machines. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of these and they score poor in user friendliness. Majority of the rail travelers are technologically challenged. You will always find the queue held up at these machines because someone pressed the wrong button, or pressed the right buttons but the wrong number of times or even dropped the wrong coin denominations. Lining up at the counter is very tedious since long distance travelers and platform ticket buyers jostle in the same serpentine line.

The Station
The city station is an architectural patchwork of British days that refuses to blend in with the rest of the new infrastructure. Piecemeal planning of the station has left the platforms connected by a combination of overhead bridges and underground pathways that is quite complicated to figure out in case you want to accomplish as ‘difficult’ a task as crossing over from platform 4 to platform 5.

On several occasions the monitors hanging from strategic places in and around the platforms do not display the exact arrival time of the train you are waiting for. The announcements either get drowned in the high decibel zone or the heavy vernacular accent of the announcer.

Best bet to locate the train you are waiting for would be to stand on the overhead foot bridge and peer hard at the trains entering the stations or ask the coolies. Sadly, coolies in railway stations are becoming as rare as the tigers in a jungle. Fortunately, the new generation luggage gives us the freedom to drag our belongings across the station terrain that is quite varied like the Indian geography.

While you visualize this, don’t forget to add at least a thousand people bustling in and around, squatting, loitering, shouting, selling and doing many more unmentionable activities.

The Passenger
In spite of the chaos, the station sees a zillion people arrive and leave every day, safely and successfully. The dexterity of the Indian middle class poor traveler has survived the worst of the administrative failures.

The Administration
Bangalore may be predominantly an IT hub and have lots of international and domestic air traffic but the common man in the city still travels by the great Indian railways and will continue to do so. The railway stations in Bangalore deserve to get more attention from the government and they must come up to the standards the city has set for itself in other spheres of business and development.

 

Editor's note: Most articles submitted to Chillibreeze go through a selection process. Only 30 percent of submitted articles are accepted for publication on the Chillibreeze.com featured article list. All accepted articles are edited and proofread for glaring errors of punctuation and grammar. Sentence structure is changed in certain cases and sometimes, entire sections are rewritten. If you notice any errors that have slipped through the cracks, do let us know! (Email us at info at chillibreeze dot com).

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in May, 2010. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

 

More on Chillibreeze.com

Related links

Top Ten Techie Favorite Areas in Bangalore
The Angana Country Inn is a Refreshing Escape from Bangalore
Bangalore on a Shoestring Budget
Expat Childbirth: A Grandmother Tells Her Version of Bonnie's Birth, in Bangalore, India

Other popular articles on Chillibreeze

Weight Loss Tips for a Healthier You
Surviving Indian Summers
Therapeutic Humor: Why Some Doctors Are Taking Humor Seriously
An Unguided Trip to Mt. Titlis from Zurich
Outsourcing: Treading a Careful Path

Out of 5 “chilies”, our editorial team gave this article...

---

—About our writer: Meghna works as a Brand & Content Specialist with a multinational IT company in Bangalore. She has seven years of experience in content development. She occasionally blogs on various subjects that include travel writing and her experiences in life. Of the three Rs that they taught Meghna at school, reading and writing continue to fascinate her. She welcomes opportunities that give her a new canvas to work on her creative skills and excel at it.

 

 

 

>> Read more articles written by Chillibreeze writers:

1. Articles related to Content and Outsourcing
2. NRI and Expat Articles
3. Potpourri
4. Travel Writing
5. Book Reviews and Interviews

More resources for Writers on Chillibreeze.com Chillibreeze offers Indian writers the opportunity to work on customer projects. We are also India’s biggest writer network and a one-stop shop for Indian writers and editors. The writers’ section on Chillibreeze offers freelance writers and editors a variety of tools to advance their careers. Resources for writers include: Assessment of your writing, editing and proofreading skills Writing courses Expert Feedback on your article An opportunity to promote yourself on our website Top websites for Indian writers Tips and resources for Indian freelancers Book Publishing services And more……………….. Explore our writers’ section using the links on our left-hand side menu.