For as long as I can remember, I've loved cars. I used to (and still) get excited when I saw a cool car on the road. It doesn't need to be fancy, fast, or expensive; it just needs to be cool.
Adult money is cool. You finally get to make your 12-year-old self happy by giving them everything they wanted. So eventually, it was time for a car.
But before that, motorcycles had entered the scene. I borrowed my dad's motorcycle in college, and had it some time after that, too. I used to take it everywhere. 50 meters from my class to the library? Yes. 500km to the closest beach? Also yes. Not too long after, I got my first motorcycle, which also came with me everywhere. A car was always in sight, but was always something for down the road.
I now call Bangalore home, also home to some of the planet's worst traffic. During my first week after getting my own "cool" car, I spent most of my time with it stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Grid locked. This only reinforced my long-standing theory that motorcycles are the best way to get around this city.
But no, it was not just my love-hate relationship with city driving that got me here to gridlockd. Tron: Legacy has been my favourite movie of all time ever since I first saw it back in school. I would accurately describe it as a 2-hour-long music video for Daft Punk's score, and it also has a way of making you fall for motorcycles. Most of the story takes place inside the Grid - a digital frontier. I would describe it as a world that exists inside a computer. The Internet has always been a place for me, one that existed on the family computer, accessible only during sanctioned after-school time. This blog may very well be a place on the Grid.
I use public transport to commute to work these days, and I walk back home. While Bangalore is by no means a walkable city, I get by. Each form of travel has a way of making your mind work differently. On a motorcycle, you are just out there, using all your limbs and senses to travel. In a car, you are a bit more relaxed. You have music to keep you company. On a plane, you are dehydrated, and despite sharing one of mankind’s greatest inventions with a bunch of strangers, you go into your own shell – you sleep, or you consume media. But while walking, your brain does not really have much else to do. Your legs already know where to go and when to turn. Which leaves the brain to be bored, and do what it does best: think.
I guess what I am trying to say is, gridlockd is a space where thoughts and ideas that most definitely came from a time when I was not grid-locked can exist in the grid.