Living in Bangalore - the past and present

I have been in Bangalore for the last 3 years. I was once here in 1999 and left in 2001. This is my 2nd time around,and it is like I have been in 2 different worlds
The bangalore of 2001 was mildly crowded, but the people were good. The people from bangalore were friendly and the general attitude was of good humoured indulgence. Only the people who were from outside bangalore showed any signs of intolerance towards people from other states. This I always felt was normal, as in any social order, resentment would occasionally crop up against an outsider if the outsider was doing better than the resident population.When u relaxed, you did it with a group of close friends in one of the new pubs with themes, which opened fairly frequently.You could drive around on saturdays and sundays without getting stuck in traffic.Marathahalli was a faraway place. Whitefield unknown,and...the outer ring road was not yet fully complete.

Then I went away and came back in 2005. In the interim I met many friends from Bangalore,who told me, how all the projects were making life difficult, and traffic was unbearable.

In 2005 when I came back, I landed in the middle of a traffic jam on the hosur road and the traffic conditions have only got worse, the longer I have been in bangalore.The call taxis which were such a blessing in 2001, have turned into an evil monster, with crazily driven tata sumos and qualis' running all sane drivers off the road. The drivers are foul mouthed creatures, who have no sense of traffic rules and for whom the bigger their vehicle, the better to ignore traffic rules. People grew rich overnight and big real estate brokers with no class, are everywhere. Rents have hit the roof and the dreams of middleclass professionals to buy a house, went up in smoke. Overnight,the average population turned from yuppies from small towns to rude uncouth people.

A terrible feeling of sadness and longing comes when I remember 2001. Where are all the nice people of those days? Like little fish in a river who go into the sea, have they been eaten up by the big fish of the sea ?