where is the money going…

first came liberalisation then IT boom which saw young people of india earning lot better than previous generations. It was followed by real estate boom which saw the money being earned by present generation being diverted to builders. Early buyers had the advantage of reasonable prices but gradually for most of other people major part of salary started goes to paying home loan EMIs which levelled the advantage present generation had. Builders are the beneffiting most from this. It partly explains the valuation of companies like DLF whose owner came into the list of richest person in india list.

another area is retail which is seeing most of the action. Every one is entering in some way or another. The early entrant in this field Kishore Biyani writes in his book that he has purposefully created the chaos in his Big Baazar stores so that it resembles chaotic indian market and everyone feels comfortable from CEO to peon, and so his model is best for india. But proving it wrong are hypermarkets like SPAR which opened its first store in bannerghatta road. It is clean, organised , ACs are at its best, and huge in its category. Still it is so crowded and people are buying. It shows there is still space for many such places. It is just demand and supply skew which is biggest driving factor. And stores like foodworld are opening in new places like gottigere which few months before was ages away from city.

leopard and the city..

recently a leopard was spotted near busy bannerghatta road . Though bannerghatta is more famous for zoo still people wont expect a leopard to come near there homes which is alomst 8 kms from the forest area. One leopard and two cubs were seen around Mount St Joseph Institution , Holy Trinity Church and other nearby places. For me this is of special significance as these are just 100 mtrs away from the place I would be moving in soon and usually go for walks in morning which are most active times for leopards.  Straying of leopards in cities are more frequent than other animals. And I have no clue why most of the times it is only leopard, may be they are more agile , can climb over trees or buildings!

They are always in news – last time it was hosur which got the attention. Leopard being killed by people of Guwahati. 

I have been witnessing these stories since quite some time. Mumbai has a full fledged forest in between city periphery which is inhibited by leopards also. The forest is sorrounded by busy localities. My home and forest had only a road separating them. In earlier times leopard used to roam around on the road. We sometimes thought that the animal we are seeing was leopard but had no reason to believe. A leopard in the city !! It was when it was highlighted in media we came to know. There were some places which autorikhshaw refused to go in night citing the leopards, we thought it is just a excuse to not go . Some of the places in powai even saw a crocodile coming into its campus. There were stories of leopards death due to trucks overrunning them, childrens being ambushed in high rise apartment complexes. In one particular year it increased in numbers .Ultimately most of them were caught and relocated to far away forests . Let us hope it does not happen in bangalore.