Tag Archives: covid-19

Are Bangalore Days Over?

In February this year, I sent out a mail to my team in office which was somewhat on these lines:

We are all allowed to work from home once in a while but it is getting out of hands. I suggest that we get disciplined and work from home, at max, for 2 days in a Month and not more than once a week. That too, only if it is really necessary.

me, trying to act bossy

Heh, where are the days gone when you could actually feel embarrassed in public?

Most of the people whom I call as Friends or Colleagues or Relatives who used to live (in rented houses) in Bangalore have now left the city and have returned to their home towns. They all plan to stay there and work remotely till the pandemic gets over and their employers allow work from home. Some say that this would be allowed at least till December 2020. Some say it would go on till July 2021. Some even say that Bangalore Days are over as now the Internet is good enough all over the country that it is not really important to stay and work in the same city. The traffic and the hustle bustle in the city is not the same anymore. Office spaces on everyday are as vacant as the office spaces on Weekends. Most Restaurants have shut down. Food Delivery guys, who used to drive as fast as the F1 Cars, now just stroll their way to deliver food to a lone introvert stranger who is oblivious to the pandemic or may be understands that food is not the primary source of infection. The number of cases are breaking records every day and the overall morale of the place is duller than mood on pre-covid Monday mornings.

James Altucher, a famous blogger and entrepreneur, wrote something similar about New York City. He gave detailed stats of rent coming down, people actually moving permanently to other cities, and remote working is going to be the norm.

There won’t be business opportunities for years. Businesses move on. People move on. It will be cheaper for businesses to function more remotely and bandwidth is only getting faster. 

Wait for events and conferences and even meetings and maybe even office spaces to start happening in virtual realities once everyone is spread out from midtown Manhattan to all over the country. 

NYC IS DEAD FOREVER. HERE’S WHY

His views have some weight and it is not all wrong. However, he got a strong rebuttal from someone who is a New Yorker and takes pride in it. In fact, he is someone who usually won’t really speak out on each and every public related issue. But, this NYC Dead thingy hit him hard.

World Famous Comedian Jerry Seinfeld wrote,

Energy, attitude and personality cannot be “remoted” through even the best fiber optic lines. That’s the whole reason many of us moved to New York in the first place.

You ever wonder why Silicon Valley even exists? I have always wondered, why do these people all live and work in that location? They have all this insane technology; why don’t they all just spread out wherever they want to be and connect with their devices? Because it doesn’t work, that’s why.

Real, live, inspiring human energy exists when we coagulate together in crazy places like New York City. Feeling sorry for yourself because you can’t go to the theater for a while is not the essential element of character that made New York the brilliant diamond of activity it will one day be again.

Jerry Seinfeld: So You Think New York Is ‘Dead’
(It’s not.)

I had myself left the city on 14th July and went to my home town. I thought may be I would also stay there for a long time. Return to the city where my friends and colleagues aren’t there is not really fruitful, in fact, dangerous if you know what I mean.

But I returned back on August 16th, 2020 for several reasons, including my wife working in Bangalore at a place where work from home isn’t really allowed. Here is my opinion on whether the Silicon Valley of India is now a thing of the past:

No, Bangalore days are not over. Working from Home is not same as Working in Office. In fact, working from home, even from your hometown is not the same as working from your home in Bangalore. The feel is not there. Like Jerry Seinfeld said, some places stand out because of the Energy. I am not in a die-hard fan of Bangalore the city as such because it can certainly do better in a lot of aspects but I absolutely love working here. I really miss working in office, meeting people, discussing ideas, talking about weather and traffic even when there is always a love-hate relationship, having tea road-side, and in generally sitting at my desk in office. I have no qualms in saying that whoever, I know, has moved out of Bangalore has always complained about how the Bangalore work culture is perhaps the best there is and other cities are not the same. Since I have not really worked elsewhere in last decade (except small stints in Hyderabad and Jaipur), I don’t know that. But there is certainly something which makes a place worth living. Of course, without people, the soul is not there. Even if some politicians and their stooges do drama by Hindi-Hate-Mongering every few months, but there are still many sane people around care about better things and solve problems and not create them. There might be 1000 wrong things here but which place doesn’t? I have spent 10 years here and it has shaped my personality, I think, in a positive way. It has made me more accepting, more open and more optimistic. I want to stay an optimist, even if I am missing out on spending a long time with my family unlike many other folks. I’ve just stated about Bangalore but every city in the world is special for its own reason and you might have some reasons about it yourself.

I feel that once this is over, and this will be over soon, it would take just a week or so for normalcy to return. And not just Bangalore, every city around the world will rise up again. There might still be some people who will have FOGO (Fear of Going Out, h/t: Mark Manson) and might not return to office. May be, masks wearing will stay for another year. But I am sure, most people who really want to work and are ambitious, will return to the cities, and the offices will be swarming with people again. Humans are stubborn. These viruses and all might scare us for sometime. But, we will return to work and crib about how bad the traffic is and why can’t the government do something about it. We will return to work and go to the cafeteria and eat the tasteless food. Your favorite restaurants will be back serving your favorite overpriced meal. We will still use Zoom and all, but we will also meet people in person. The dullness in the air will transform back to the energetic vibe which makes us believe that tomorrow is going to be better.

Optimistically Pessimist

That’s the right approach to live life in these times IMHO.

Lockdown is going to get over guys! Congratulations. It was tough, right? We had to stay indoors. We could only go outside to buy veggies and milk. We had to talk to people from School/relatives with whom we had stopped the conversations, and rightly so, a decade ago. We all came online on Zoom and took screenshots. People became cooks and fought over Youtube and Tiktok. It was something!

Didn’t we all hear all the claims about how the life is going to be in this ongoing + not really ending anytime soon + post COVID-19 world? We were told that it will never be the same again. There will be only work from homes. Schools will be just on the laptop. Masks would be the things and it will become haute couture level fashionable to have extreme and funky masks. Social Distancing would be a norm for a long long time and you will never have to tolerate those folks who hug all the time! Of course cinema halls would be a thing of the past and most restaurants would be only take-away ones.

But… I don’t get it!

Was this all a scam? Like seriously was this all a conspiracy? Like last 2 months were just some chapters out of a fictional story and now we are back to business? Even news channels are now back to usual terrorism in Kashmir news and usual debates about how my orange is more saffron than yours or how bollywood-walas are shouting Black Lives Matter but not shouting say why is the road outside my apartment dug up when monsoon is just starting and when are they going to fix it again?

From June 8th, Malls are reopening, temples will be buzzing, roads are already full of traffic and pollution. Fun! Also, you can start ordering all the foods you were avoiding as well. You haven’t become thinner by not eating the regular weekend pizzas anyway. May be golgappas around the street corner again? Bring it on.

What was all that drama for? Banging plates to lighting diyas? No, of course, I know that the economy has to restart but where are the masks? Why have we let our guards down? Or we just stayed home to avoid police sticks? Why the neck is the best place to put masks but not the nose and mouth? Why do we need Institutional Quarantine when cases are now skyrocketing with or without it? Why we have so many people back on the road when the cases in India are past China’s number already?

You must have seen the pics of Mumbai’s marine drive full of morning walkers with masks half-heartedly on. Or the pics of the airplanes rush when it has landed. Or beaches in US where there are more people than there usually were. Don’t you think the new normal isn’t the same old normal at all?

Bottom line is that we people are resilient and smarter than you think they are. You might or might not have seen the show ‘Space Force’ on Netflix because it is somewhat a mishmash of comedy and science fiction and tragedy and as someone rightly said a cross between ‘Veep’ and ‘The Office’, but there’s a quote in that which is somewhat on the lines of:

When people have forgotten the atrocities of World War, they forget what is like to be in a War. When people have had no polio cases for a long time, they forget the importance of Vaccines. When people become too arrogant, they forget things!

Not exactly verbatim but something similar by Gen. Naird

I am optimistic that the world will become normal again. I am pessimistic about the time. I thought it would take time to heal, but I miscalculated. I thought it would be months before we are back on the street in the usual way. But here we are already late for the office.

Notes from the Lockdown, Day 15

It might be day 10 or day 13, I am not sure. I haven’t gone out since March 5th or March 13th, save 2 days in between. So, it is all blurry. Kindly excuse.

Here are some notes/thoughts:

  1. It is tough when you have nothing to distract you. You need those honking sounds, the sounds of the ambiance, the gossips you don’t want to listen to, the unwanted noises of languages you don’t understand, and basically the things you don’t care about. You need them around to live.
  2. When a family calamity happens, and you have no elders around, life seems directionless, and nothing you can do which can make you think that you had it under control. No matter how old one becomes, there is always something to learn. Life will give you new experiences at each and every turn. This week, I had a big personally tragedy. Like the loss of a family member big. Bloody cancer. And everything we could do to mitigate it was constrained by covid-19 issues. Fortunately, we could do something which would have sufficed for time being and yet, a lot has to be done but we are in a lockdown. Unprecedented.
  3. When understanding others takes a back seat and ego becomes your top priority. Even if you try your best, when there is a danger hanging outside, practically just outside the safest place i.e. your home, you are bound to lose your mind in some time. Take care of your Mental health, they say, but how? You cannot meditate 24 hours a day. So the best is to keep quiet. But then go back to point 1.
  4. There are times when positive and practical advice sounds negative.
  5. Work is there. And everyone knows that it is tough to work like this. But your livelihood is at stake. But nobody has any clarity. That’s a challenging environment nobody mentions on their CVs.

Covidiot + Indiot = Covindiot

Many of you must have received this. A wordplay on Covid and Idiot.

Let me just add another word to your vocab:

Indiot noun

ind·i·ot

  1. A stupid person of Indian origin who does things only idiot Indians would do.
    ‘Don’t burst crackers in your hand, you indiot!‘
  2. A stupid Indian person who doesn’t follow rules, meant for their own safety.
    ‘Helmets are not meant for elbows! Don’t be an indiot you fool…’

Here’s one more word for you:

Covindiot noun

co·vind·i·ot

  1. A super idiotic Indian person who has no regard for his or her own safety in times of Covid-19
    ‘What kind of covindiot are you? Don’t you understand social distancing? What were you doing playing kabbaddi with strangers on the main road on the day of Janta Curfew?’

I am not going to share any scientific gyaan but just few tweets in order to make my point.

Mumbai actually

The full thread above basically.

While I was super pumped to stand in the balcony, clap for our doctors, health workers and essential services personnel. I felt a sense of togetherness genuinely after 2011 World Cup Victory. But all my sense of gratitude turned into anger against the Covindiots.

The problem with Indians is that only 1% of us are such fools. But 1% of 1.3 Billion is 13000000 or more.

We cannot even facepalm now because there’s a chance of infection.

2020 will be full of fireworks

Back in 2002, when I was still in school, 2020 seemed like a far fetched affair. There was some discussion originating from Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam’s mind about 2020 would be The Year. It felt like it would be a time when the World would have totally changed. Technology would have made leaps and bounds. India would have become a superpower (wink). Unfathomable, mostly!

And here we are. 2020 has already begun and within the powerplay, life has been nothing but a turmoil with a lot of work, sleepless nights, weekend events, (thoughts and personal plan about higher studies) and before we could take a sigh of relief, we have got the main event of the year (perhaps of this century), the Covid-19.

Continue reading “2020 will be full of fireworks”