Last weekend I got an opportunity to do some shopping and we picked mantri Square in Malleswaram. We reached there around 4 Pm and planned to stay for a few hours. It was quite an experience. The sheer size of the mall is something that strikes you as you go in.While the inside of the Mall is pretty normal with a fully functional AC etc., a lot of shops were yet to be opened.
After doing the usual rounds, we managed to get some shopping done in Lifestyle and Shopper Stop and headed upstairs to the "food court" to get some grub.
That’s where our evening begins to take a turn for the horrible. There were hardly a few food joints open and even the ones..like Veg by Nature, coconut grove, Shiv sagar, the Chinese joint whose name I can’;t remember etc were having brisk business...with hardly any items being offered from their so called menus..It was clearly a sellers market with people jostling and shoving just to get to the cash counters..In the end after much debate and muscling my way in. I finally managed to get a couple of pav bhaji’s for me and kids..then began the hunt for seats which finally materialzed after eons and eons of waiting by which time the pav bhajis had cooled down sufficiently to make eating it.. a non affair.
Finally we got ready to head home ~7 PM and headed to the "hi tech" parking garage on level 2.
when we got there, what did I see? A few cars lined up near the exit..quite harmless eh..? that’s until I tried to get my car out..! Nope..there’s no room to reverse my car with a maroon Honda Civic blocking my way..and the length of the queue increasing by the minute with no car moving out..This went on for about 20 mins..by which time I got out of the car and walked up to the exit to see what was happening..what do I see? cars of all shapes and sizes queued up and just 1 car being let out every 3-4 minutes or so.The reason being that a massive traffic jam has occurred on Sampige road and cars from the parking lot are being held back to prevent it from getting worse.
Now this is a parking lot with a capacity of 2000 cars !!! So if one car is being let out every 3-4 mins, you get the idea. I began seriously wondering if at all we;ll be able to get out of there ..! Speaking with the parking lot attendants and traffic police was met with shrugs of helplessness ..everyone seemed spectators to this phenomenon unfolding before us..
At 7:40 PM, I decided that getting back in the mall would be the wisest thing to do and I managed to kill another 30 mins in the SPAR hypermarket..heading back to the garage at 8:15 and what do I see...The maroon Honda civic that had been patiently waiting had hardly moved. Funnily enough, the occupants of the Civic seemed to be unruffled and were munching away (probably dinner packed from KFC!!). what was even worse was that the queue had filled all the empty lanes of the parking lot.This was too much for me and I decided to act. We came back to level 0 got out into the main road and in the middle of all the traffic managed to find an auto who would take us home and got in. Reached home in RajajiNagar by 9 15 PM.
My car?? I finally went back to the mall at about 10:30 PM went straight to the parking lot and drove out in less than 30 seconds. Will I ever visit again? Probably never.