This is not a travel or a photography blog as I usually would write or have written(in spaces like tripoto or wix).
That was the disclaimer now lets get into the main subject. It’s a complaint. Not very similar to the ones by which you used to get pissed off when you were in the kindergartens. This is more about the wholesome mentality of people living here. By ‘here’ I mean at present Bengaluru(because I reside here) but I intend to refer to the whole country, India.
Bengaluru being the most technologically equipped city in India is targeted here, so my dear Kannadigas, please do not get offended. Please don’t take it wrong and start commenting ‘you come from OUTSIDE and earn here and still you have complains’. I use OUTSIDE in caps because it seems that in every STATE in my country(may be there are very few exceptions) the word OUTSIDER has become quite a good way to greet your fellow countrymen. So just to be clear this is not an OUTSIDER bitching about your dear city which is again a part of my dear country, it is a civilian of a developing country scripting his observation and this city, the IT hub of my country is just an example. A couple of paragraphs and still I could not reach the point but my blog homepage would clearly say that I am not a great writer, just a guy who wants to express and tell stories. So please bear with me.
Now the main subject: Bounce. Yes this is a Bengaluru based bike/scooter rental company, which has seamlessly reached out to people of the city to avail dockless bike rental service. Yes it was started or founded by a few Bengaluru based ex-corporate employees. An amazing initiative, which helped people with minimum skills to use internet technologies travel within the city at a very minimum cost. Based on your GPS location you can trace a bike, unlock it with an OTP and vrroom. When you reach your destination you can end the trip, park it and just leave. The payment gets automatically deducted from you eWallet/Paytm account. Even better, every scooter you rent has a helmet in it’s dicky for your safety and to save your 100 bucks(from the traffic police).
After reading the last paragraph, my dear readers, you must be wondering where was the complaint, I was mentioning in the preceding paragraphs. It seemed more of an advertisement for Bounce and I must have got some commission to write good things about it. Okay, you are a bit wrong here. My excerpt here is not about Bounce. Confused? It is about the people using it. The question is do we deserve such a lovely self sufficient initiative at such a low cost. Why am I asking this question? I have been using this service by Bounce since the last couple of weeks. The app is fantastic, the way it guides you is amazing and then you open the dicky and don’t find a helmet for you. Oh but the app says you would have it. Is it that Bounce is making false commitment or is the story something else? The other day, rather since the last few days, I saw at least five Bounce helmets riding on the blunt head of someone either riding or accompanying the rider on a private vehicle. Ahh! People are using the helmets and not putting it back. Wow, that’s an amazing idea. You save at least 500 bucks(the cost of the helmet) straight away at the expense of just a 10 rupees Bounce ride. That’s a huge prize and satisfaction I must say. Come on I can see some of my readers (if) reading it getting overwhelmed with my words of appreciation on his ingeniosity. For you, my friend please open the dictionary and search for the word ‘Sarcasm’.
Second bouncing story: The other night I took my wife out for some ice-cream at night(we often do that after late dinners) and I saw a couple of guys, Prerajulization and Farhanitrate left their Bounce scooter by the divider of a u-turn in the outer ring road, boarded on the private bike of Rancho and happily went away in a triple ride. The next afternoon I saw that pretty Bounce bike still abandoned in the middle of the outer ring road waiting for its Chatur. This is not the only case, similar bounce bike was stranded in a slip road on the flyover near Domlur. I know the company has enough bikes but what is this attitude.
Here the complaint starts. This is a really good initiative. Not only this there are many such in many fields in India but we misuse them and then at the end of five years complain that the government is dumb and useless. Hey come on, some private company with such good vision is made such fun of by your irresponsibility what the government is supposed to do. I think we need stronger rules and people who take care of these rules not so easily pleased by 100 bucks. Just take the example of Bounce, a rule can be set up where the traffic police should catch not only people not wearing a helmet but also the private vehicles having riders or passengers with Bounce helmet. You must be annoyed by now wondering such a few small incidents and I am writing paragraphs after paragraphs to make an issue out of a small thing. Then I would again go back to my first statement that I am not a good writer and this is the incapability of my writing skills. These are good initiatives folks if a city like Bengaluru cannot keep these facilities up and running the rest of India will never have even 10 per cent of such ideas implemented.
Let’s close it abrupt with some sad faces of Bounce in Bengaluru.
abhishekdey pixels 