Last Friday I and one of my friends went for a movie to the PVR cinemas in Bangalore. I was waiting in the long queue for movie tickets for that not-so-good movie and was grumbling seeing the rate charts. I lost my patience totally when my friend said he pays less than half of it in the same theater. Yes in Bangalore a ticket in PVR costs you 250 rupees for a decent evening show in classic, the very same combination in Hyderabad costs just 100 rupees! That’s the cost this city has to pay for being called as “the silicon valley of India”.

Not only this, I have figured out many differences. My readers will say now- a-days all the cities are expensive. But Bangalore has its own style. Metro cities, I believe, have places for all range people. They have five star hotels for the rich and 500 rupees lodging facility for the lower middle class people as well. The worst hit is the lower middle class group, who neither belongs to the typical so-called middle class nor is they lower class poor people. But metro cities have place for all people. You need not have money to enjoy. Every city has industries, corporate, heavy companies etc and its own side effects on the local place. Bangalore in a very short span of time brought many adverse effects of being the home to many IT industries.

As I said prices have gone high compared to other cities as they feel here people earn more so they can pay more. I was surprised to know that DPS (Delhi Public School), which has its branch school in Bangalore as well, has a different fee structure for Bangalore kids. The fee is some 15k (not sure) extra per year than the other branches. Why? Is it because the fathers are project managers in MNCs? House rents have seen immense rise in past 6-7 years. The moment you tell your job profile to the house owner they change their profile (house rent structure). There must be hotels for all range people, but here it’s just the standard ones. Every day one cannot afford to pay 40/- for 1 tiny masala dosa I guess. Private working women hostels, popularly known as PG, are so expensive and less worthy than the ones in Hyderabad. Prices must differ from city to city but not up to such an extent.

When I sat and complained all this to my colleague, his reply was “then why don’t you leave this place and work in your hometown”. That’s when I realized this change was because of people like me. We are the ones who come as outsiders, make good money here and give such unwanted changes to the localities. We as prosperous outsiders, software professionals can afford all these things (though we don’t really want to), but why the local people have to suffer? After all while booking tickets the person is not going to ask if the buyer is a software engineer or just a local person. Such horizontal mobility brings many good things to the cities but the people have to bear the undesired changes as well. That’s part of the process I guess.