Life Style

Some thing has dawned on me in this trip to America. Every time I visit this place, or in fact when ever I am in KL, I tend to compare it with India and always think when it will be that India could become like these places,, I mean the houses, lay outs, roads, life style etc etc. Finally it dawned on me that given any number of years it is impossible for India to be an America or for that matter America to be India.
Now that I have seen quite a few places in US where anu/srini happen to live I find a common thread to each city and the lay out etc are very similar. You have a very very busy 'downtown' in each city which is nothing but the 'city centre' (which is called 'pusat bandaraya' in KL) where lot of offices are located. These areas are not normally very fit for living in the common sense, as they are crowded and expensive and it is some times considered as not a very safe place to live also. I don't know if 'Manhattan' down town in New York comes in this category, for safe living, as I have heard that to live there is considered a luxury.
Well coming back to the general cities, the cities just have grown in vast expanse around the down town which can be called the suburbs. Each suburb is so big and has wide roads which can be reached either by local roads are by highways. That is each exit of a high way takes to a suburb and you should know which exit to take. Again it should be mentioned here that USA has a very poor public transport system. They have the usual set of stores to buy your groceries and other necessities and being an Indian you get to know the location of Indian store also which has the same set of indian grociers and also rotting vegetables from which you pick up the good ones. (I wonder why they can not throw the rotten ones every night before they close the shop).
I have the experience of living in aparment complexes. Each apartment complex is maintained by a company so everything is in order and you can just go and complain if anything does not work and you have lot of space to park your car and also lot of pathways to go for walks.
In the apartment a net is provided for all the windows and doors of the house so you are protected from insects. (This time in India I could see lot of mosquitoes every where and even while waiting for the train to come in the station and in fact inside the train also. We are discussing how to curtail the mosquito menance in the coimbatore house.) These are just nets which any body can dismantle which are fixed on the outside of the glass doors and windows. But no body bothers to remove them or take them away. But this can never be done in India as it is most unsafe ,for somebody will remove and take away the net and also the glass door is not safe at all. Similarly here the roads are not cleaned every day (in fact I have seen them being cleaned in India and also in KL) but I don't see any plastic or papers littered on the road. It has become a culture with people not to litter. Roads are broad and paved (tarred) till the end of the footpath and neat footpath is laid on many roads and so there is no question of dust and mud. where as in India we pave the roads only in the middle and it is another story that vehicles come over the foot paths if at all there are any foot paths in the narrow streets.
Similarly I can fillup another page writing about the condominiums in Malaysia where about 200 to 300 aparments are in a single complex managed comparitively well and it is a different type of a life style.
If such things have to be done in India first of all the hafazard development which has already taken place without any planning should be destroyed which is just impossible. Houses are built anywhere and everywhere and then roads are built in and around the houses. I only hope at least some more roads are built in India so that cars and vehicles can move.
So I have decided to sit back and enjoy the expanse of America, the condos of KL and also the relative independence I get walking to and fro from my banks and autoriksha stands and other places.