Why I am enamored with Mangalore?

Sitting in my office gazing through the window, overseeing the approaching road to the SDB 3 I always wonder what the process was for me, to choose Mangalore as location after training at Hyderabad. Whenever I have tried to find the answer I have failed to exact one, out of my own self. Seemingly because there was nothing logical in it but a reality that big cities suck (apologies for not using a more civilized word) big time.

Having stayed in big cities like New Delhi and Pune, and having observed others like Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai, there was little doubt in my mind that the quality of life in Mangalore or for that matter, the Tier II cities is much better. This contention is driven by absolute logic. No conjectures here! I have identified certain yardsticks to back up my argument.

First yardstick I would like to introduce is the pace of traffic. Minimum distance covered in one minute at 9 am sharp on MG Road (peak time and supposedly to be the most crowed road). And the result is 439 m/ min. Just kidding!! But seriously in Mangalore am yet to see a traffic jam. There are some crowded intersections in the city though but the traffic movement is absolutely smooth. You compare this with any of our big cities. If you have to commute from point A to point B you shall have to plan at a war footing. You may even have to perhaps keep some buffer time and even then, you may reach the destination late, completely frustrated and drained due to the heavy traffic and pollution to top it all. Every morning when I drive to office in my bike (just 5 kms from Nethra), I touch the parking lot in 10 minutes flat. I always wish if this journey would take a bit longer so that I could enjoy the cool breeze hitting my face, for a little longer… Perhaps to mitigate the abrupt ends to my drives I should plan to relocate to some place a little more further from our campus. But wait a second. What about the petrol cost? So let me not do this mistake until the fuel prices stabilize a bit more…

My second yardstick is diurnal temperature (a meteorological term that relates to the variation in temperature that occurs from the highs of the day to the cool of nights). For Mangalore, the average of the mean max. and min. is 13.2 degree Celsius (33.2⁰C-20.0⁰C). And for New Delhi this was 31.4 (39⁰C -7.6⁰C). More than double is the difference in diurnal temperature between these two cities. Sorry for bothering with the loads of data. But the fact is Mangalore is pleasant and much more suited for human life.  Look at the advantages of this. You are not required to buy any woolen clothes or either buy, coolers and air conditioners that inflate electricity bills. You are insulated against this financial drag all because Mangalore sits at a more life sustaining latitude and longitude on the globe. What a global privilege!! So what are the other downstream benefits? You are in the lap of nature. You have your base in The Western Ghats-one of World’s bio-diverse heritage sites. And needless to say you have a rich variety of flora and fauna around you. The breath taking view that one can enjoy if you are of the habit of sitting on the benches overlooking the sea side (below our FC) is phenomenal. Perhaps many of you have sea facing cubicles and mind you that’s not a small thing. It is perhaps the rarest of the rare privileges which Infosys has provided you unknowingly and even did not care to factor it in your CTC (shush shush…). Jokes apart, I believe that in totality the wear and tear on life in Mangalore is definitely the least as compared to our ever burgeoning metros.

I have other yardsticks too to support my claim. But guess will talk about them some other time. In the meanwhile enjoy your stay in Mangalore to the hilt!!