Its Safe!
Its safe in bangalore. I covered around 45 kms in the last 2 hours. There was not a problem at any single place. Areas I covered are Jayanagar, Madiwala, Koramangala, Inner Ring Road, Domlur, Airport Road, Airport, Indira Nagar, Old Madras Road, Ulsoor, Fraser Town, Cantt Railway station, Cubbon Road, MG Road, Brigade Road, Adugodi.
All the shops were closed. Only hosptials and medical shops were open. Traffic was pretty less. And yes. The media especially NDTV and CNN-IBN exaggerated in their reports. Its not as bad as they reported. Hope all shops are open tomorrow, and life returns to normalcy as soon as possible!
Wow, that was some reporting!
1. 45 kms in 2 hours? Unthinkable on a normal week day!
2. All events reported in the media were only near the Kanteerava Stadium. Elsewhere it was totally peaceful. Unlike 2000 when the late Dr. Rajkumar was kidnapped by Veerappan, who was killed by police in 2004.
3. You travelled in the evening when things had subdued down. Maybe the same route in the first half of the day would have presented some different sights.
One thing is for sure. NDTV 24×7 is guilty of misreporting. For about 3 hours they kept looping one shot of violence near the stadium and kept claiming that large scale violence has erupted in bangalore. Yes the violence was there all along the route of the procession, but it was not correctly reported and NDTV fell short of getting us the images of the violence along side the procession. They were also guilty of reporting that the funeral was at Kanteerva Stadium. It was at the Studio. They also said that the procession took 5 hours for a 2Km route. It wsa 12KMs. On the contrary, the vernacular channels were more accurate in reporting. Lesson for me, next time don’t trust either NDTV or CNN. Go watch ver channels.
@VP: I am not a fan of NDTV, but some clarifications. NDTV did say Kanteerava Studio (and I was thinking is there something called a Studio). Also, papers are reporting that this was the worst violence in the state in the last 10 years. Probably so in terms of loss of life. But I think 2000 riots when Rajkumar was kidnapped were more destructive, more widespread and lasted longer than the one yesterday.