Anuja Chauhan By Express News Service BENGALURU: Traffic in this city is absolutely crippling. It’s the main reason why we’ve chosen to live far out of the city, where the roads are relatively less congested. Weather is Bengaluru’s USP, it’s the reason we moved here, but I’m worried that the thinning tree cover, the soaring residential and office towers, and the crazy amount of air-conditioning people are going in for, may ruin that very fast. Garbage is a big issue too. We’re certainly more civilized than the NCR, where nobody segregates their garbage, but we still have a long way to go. I never used to see beggars in the ‘Uru when we’d just moved, but now there seems to be more and more of them in the inner city. This is always a worrying sign. On a personal level, we can all help by doing our little bit - segregating, choosing cross-ventilation over air-conditioning, planting greenery, carpooling and using public transport. I find that the buses in this city are clean, timely, cheap and efficient. The only downside is that they stop a lot and move at a pretty slow clip. This is a city that actually needs to regress - to go back to the way it used to be! With parks full of flowering trees, old-world melas and flea-markets, book shops, cafes, a place of culture and gentle humour. I associate Bangalore with tolerant, chilled-out people of gentle temperament - the tempo here used to be slow - which was brilliant - but nowadays it seems to be picking up the bad habits of Delhi and Bombay and becoming harsher, faster and more callous. I’d say that Bangalore needs to realise that it’s USP is its weather. It’s because of the weather being so lovely that the city is green, the architecture tasteful, the street shopping so lively, and most people always in a good mood. There are lesser angry people in this city - but if we carry on crowding the roads, dirtying the drains and lakes and chopping down the trees, we’re going to lose our unique selling point. Solution: Change can be brought about if everybody does their own little bit. And also being vocal, and having a strong point of view on all civic issues. From the state of drains, the salaries of pourakarmikas, the protection of trees and the segregating of waste. We need to aggressively protect our city. The time for being passive is long past. I’d like India to focus on the real issues, and not get distracted by cheap, sensationalistic, polarising non-issues which are being used by the politicians to control us. We need to focus on the aspirations and concerns that what we all have in common, rather than zooming in on our differences - of religion, caste and place of origin. I’d like India to be a clean, healthy, united, tolerant and equitably prosperous society. Anuja Chauhan author, screenwriter, advertiser

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