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.

bangalore to yelagiri

this weekend we have been to yelagiri.to go to yalagiri follow hosur road to reach krishnagiri and then take left turn towards chennai. Go straight till almost Vinayamwadi where you can see the sign for yalagiri. Follow the signs and the next prominent left turn which is almost 15 kms goes to yelagiri hills. Though we missed this turn and went to jolarpettai raliway station to come back. overall the drive is very comfortable.

the place is very small, so small that on foot you can cover it in 20 min. there is nothing besides a lake. Market is also very small. No glitzy resorts. All resort looks from back days. we found a place to stay in one of the newer places which was clean and in main road of yelagiri, close to lake.

what the place has is good views, good climate – though a hill station yet less colder than bangalore, clean roads, fruit trees on the road – jackfruit, mango, jamun, guava. you can visit around nurseries and pick some plants. There was no decision to make , just go around the place and do everything there still you have lot of time left. could find only one restaurent where we spent long lunches and dinners.

watching play .. . . .

saturday - 16 june – got an invitation from a friend to watch a play at Gurunanak bhavan. One of friend’s friend was involved in organising the play and he arranged for tickets.  Not very enthusiastic about watching plays but since it was ages we watched any play so we decided to go ahead. It was being done by some groups who were not professional actors and the publicity was only by word of mouth.

impressions -

• the auditoriam was what it used to be in old days. Multiplexes has changed everyone expectations.
• the actors now carry cordless microphones. Earlier it was some mikes fixed at stage and actors has to come near it to speak. In professional plays the mics were hanged at multiple positions on stage so roughly it would cover most of the space. And actors can be at their place while speaking. Bit more comfortable.
• the dialog delievery is at normal pitch now. Earlier it was at high pitch so that mics can pick up the sound.

the same venue is hosting a quiz festival to mark KQA 24th anniversary this saturday.

indian ocean, junoon @ iim bangalore

Been to live concert by indian ocean and junoon at iim bangalore annual fest unmaad this saturday. Lucky ali and kailash kher were there on friday. Could not get time on friday so went for the next day show. The tickets were easily available at iim gate on saturday @ Rs 99 and 299. Everything from car parking to crowd management was being done by students.

Indian ocean does not seems to be very popular name outside students circle. But among student they has achieved a cult status. Might be due to very less exposure on television. I heard some of their songs two year back and also liked black friday numbers very much which were all done by them. The sounds are very different. The vocals is also very indian. For lyrics there is nothing which is flowing or has meaning like normal songs. I like them despite not finding the flow or some continuous meaning. They are mixture of dohas, shlokas, folk songs, interesting words. Overall they sound good, hummable and not like anything you have heard before. Currently only indian band whom I will buy to listen. I only hoped there was more vocal and words in their numbers.

Next came Junoon which was also good but nothing which differentiates them from others. They said they are in existence since 1988 .Some of their songs were good.

And the worst part was when the last joint number by Junoon and Indian ocean has to be cancelled as it was almost 11 pm which is the deadline for such performances in bangalore and the police was there to make sure that it is being followed. Sad and abrupt ending to good times we were having.

bangalore to tirupati

This weekend being long weekend we planned to go to tirupati. As usual we could not book any of the things since this was a last minute plan .We knew that there will be crowd at tirupati but remembering the experience of previous visits it was always like that. And we had 3 days so we decided to go ahead.

We started from bangalore at 5 am on friday morning by my maruti alto.The route for tirupati is Bangalore – kolar – chittoor – tirupati. We got on inner ring road, headed straight to airport road flyover , indira nagar and at the dead end took right for old madras road. After that it is almost straight . You just have to follow the signboards. One route is through chittoor town and another one takes diversion to left for a alternate route. And the alternate route was the worst patch of road as compared to rest of the road in the trip and we have to pay Rs 5 toll ! . The highway being in existence since long has lot of things for travellars unlike new bangalore chennai highway where we did not find any decent place to eat or rest. Only deterance was sudden speed breakers without any warning or coloring. And dummy speed breakers – there was zebra coloring but no speed breakers. But apart from this things and drive was fine. We stopped at woodys for breakfast which is after kolar. The roads in Andhra seemed to be better than in karnataka. Reached tirupati at 12 in noon.

We had lunch at andhra tourism hotel in srinivasa complex first floor. It was andhra style thali. Iterations of rice and dal, rice and sambhar , rice and rasam, rice and curd and then sweet dish. And the waiters did not allowed to mix and match the order. We managed to get rooms in hotel sindhu at the outskirts of tirupati which turned out the be a good value for money.

Next day after darshan we did some shopping near the temple. Down in tirupati we went to place called Shilparamam which was near the hotel. This is crafts village kind of place but there was nothing of that sort. The things being sold was nothing special and all of them you could find in your neighbourhood gift store. The entry is only 2 rs per person. car parking is 3 rs. It was a beautiful place but could have been more fun, looked like nrityagram in bangalore. There was a singing recital going on in the ampitheater with less than ten people as audience.

We wanted to stay in tirupati in night but could not get any place as all the hotels were booked for marriage. So we decided to go back to bangalore in night. We started at 8:30 pm.Decided to take dinner at woodys but it was closed in night which looked odd for a hotel on highway. Reached bangalore at 2 o clock in saturday night with enough time to rest on sunday.