Let’s be clear:I have never stepped foot inside Parijatha Gateway Hotel. This is not a review about the quality of the hotel. However, it is a review of the people who represent the hotel. Specifically one security who stood in front of the hotel on Tuesday, January 6, 2014 at 1.30pm.
Before we delve into my delightful experience with him (please note sarcasm) let us paint a picture of the hotel. The hotel is located bang in front of Bangalore’s Metro Station (Soap Sandal Factory). See the picture below for construction of the Metro. It is at a busy intersection close to Orion Mall, World Trade Center, Mysore Soap Sandal Factory and Metro Wholesale Mall.
Below the Metro station is a busy road with streaming traffic. If you are a pedestrian (like I am) it is difficult to walk here without the fear of being run over by a speeding vehicle very soon. Pavements are far and few. Bangalore Municapal Corporation is very much to blame.
Also below the Metro Station is a nice paved path which is directly in front of Parijatha Gateway Hotel. There is no gate to this section, nothing that says that it is private property of the hotel. It is a continuation of the patchy pavement.Also the fact that it is under the Metro station gives me the impression that it is public property. Now as a pedestrian, I have two choice: dodge speeding traffic or walk on a paved path. Obviously I want to choose the second option (because I want to live to see another day).
View of the hotel from the Metro station. The paved path below the station with the security guard who abused me in the background.
So I walk. Ahead of me are two young men in their early twenties who also choose to walk on the nice paved road. A security guard with a mustache that could give Veerapan a complex marches in front of them and orders them to walk on the road/patchy pavement. The men are reluctant but the security guard is blocking their path and yelling authorotatively so they decide to step away.
I decide that since their is no sign that says this is the private property of Parijatha Gateway Hotel, I would like to walk on a safe paved path rather than a trafficy road. It is directly below the Soap Sandal Metro Station which gives me the impression that it is public property.
The Veerapan-like security guard marches in front of me and orders me out of the way (with hand gestures and something in Kannada I don’t understand.) I refuse, saying it is public property and my right to walk here. The stretch is around 50 meters long. I walk down the path in perhaps 15 seconds. The entire time the security guard screams at me, abusing me, brandishing his hand in my face and swearing in Kannada. Although I can’t tell what he said exactly in Kannada, I can tell he called me an idiot and without brains. If I was a man, he would have physically accosted me.
Now, while the security guard was completely discourteous, I do not blame him. Although he is an obnoxious and arrogant man, he must have orders from his boss to keep pedestrians out (perhaps because most pedestrians do not fit the clientele of his apparently luxury hotel). Which is a pity. Since I live very close to the hotel, I may have visited, instead of spending time writing this post.
Totally ‘budged’ hotel
Another point, which is directed to Bangalore Municapal Authorities and all municipal authorities in India — pedestrians are people too!! Clearly class politics is involved here. People who walk usually don’t have enough of a voice to say ‘hey, build us pavements we can actually use” or “hey, great, you built a highway and a metro line and now traffic is zooming faster than ever. But how the hell am I supposed to cross the bloody road?”
Enough of this nonsense.
 – Yeshwantpur / Rajajinagar){kind=link}
I too faced many of this kind of situations. Property owners / business owners beside the roads are often under the impression that they posses the pavements passed by their business premises and restrict pedestrians to walk and many times they contempt the motor vehicle owners who try to park vehicles besides the roads.