Anita Nair - Cut Like Wound

Why aren't there more Bangalore books in this world? There's more to Bangalore than IT and traffic, you know. There are so many communities waiting to be explored - the Muslims who were part of Tipu Sultan's army, the Tamils who migrated when the British set up an army base here, the real estate mafia that springs up in any rapidly expanding city. There's so much waiting to be written about, and nobody's doing it. Everybody turns their noses up at poor old Bangalore.

Anita Nair didn't set out to write a Bangalore book. She just wanted to a write a nice dark meaty detective novel. But along the way, she manages to throw light on the dark steamy underbelly of Bangalore - an underbelly that middle-class citizens like me would have never known existed. Transvestites, corrupt corporators, gone-to-seed policemen, male prostitutes, young men hungry for sex - these are some of the people Nair chooses to populate her novel with.

A serial murderer is loose in Bangalore. A murderer who has sex with men and then strangles them with a manja thread (which is apparently a normal thread coated with glass particles). From the seedy by-lanes of Shivaji Nagar to the still-underpopulated places in Hennur and Nagawara, the bodies pile up, and it's up to Inspector Borei Gowda to figure the whole thing out (though nobody wants him to).

Gowda is a policeman in his forties whose career has gone to the dogs because he knows he's more intelligent and honest than his superiors (and doesn't have the tact to hide it). Gowda is a brilliant creation. He has a wife who doesn't want to stay with him, a son he doesn't feel connected to, and an old college sweetheart who's back in his life. Add to that an alcohol problem and the worshipful admiration of younger colleagues, and you have an interesting mix. Blasphemous as it may sound, I would put him right up there with the likes of Commander Adam Dalgliesh and Inspector Rebus in terms of complexity of character (for a detective, that is).

Nair's Bangalore is mostly restricted to Shivaji Nagar and the north-eastern parts of Bangalore - Banaswadi, Hennur, Nagawara. Lending local colour are things like the Infant Jesus festival, famous old Bangalore cafes, and of course the newer places like UB City.

The cover says Introducing Inspector Gowda. I hope Nair is planning to write a sequel (a whole series would be even better), because she's got a good thing going here.

An Open Letter to the BBMP

Dear BBMP,

As a user of your roads and pavements, I was very happy with you last year. You improved every single stretch of road that I use on my daily commute to office. When you re-did Old Madras Road and made it sparkling blue so that I could whizz along it and reach office in just ten minutes, my heart rejoiced. I read that the Chief Minister had said that Bangalore's roads were his priority, and I was so happy with him! Finally, I thought, Bangalore would recover from the neglect it had suffered under the previous government.

But now I'm very pissed off with you, BBMP. It's a small matter, but an irksome one.

For context, let me refer you to this blog post of mine, in which I've spoken about my ten-minute walk home from the bus-stop. The 'pavement' used to be a muddy stretch by the side of the road. It was dangerous (because I had to walk on the road at some points) and dirty (on rainy days), but at least it was better than nothing.

But now, thanks to you, it's become worse than nothing.

I'll grant you this - you started out with good intentions. One fine day, as I was coming home, I saw that my muddy stretch had been blocked off with paving stones. Clearly, you were planning to build a pavement there. I was happy. Finally, I thought, I'll be able to walk on a proper pavement and not just a muddy excuse for one.

Over the next few days, I happily watched the progress you were making. I gave my mental blessings and encouragement to the workers as they they filled the future pavement first with mud and then with small stones. During these days, we pedestrians had to walk on the road, of course, but we didn't mind. On a couple of mornings, traffic jams increased because of the piles of mud and rubble the workers left behind on the road, but we didn't mind that either. A few days' sacrifice in order to enjoy a lifetime of easy walking, we thought.

This was back in December, by the way. Mid-December, I think. During the last week of December, I went off on a ten-day vacation. Progress on the pavements had been slow, but I was hopeful that by the time I came back in January, everything would be ready.

Alas - you dashed my hopes with nary a care. It's almost March now, and the pavements are still as they were two months ago. I've lost hope of them ever improving. And the tragedy is that it's only the last step that needs to be completed - the laying of large pavement slabs over the already prepared pavements. Why this delay, BBPM? Is it that you forgot to order those pavement stones? Is your vendor taking a long time?

You know what, I really don't care why. All I know is that that non-existent pavement is endangering my life. My choice is between walking on those little pointy pieces of stone that you've so helpfully filled the pavement with (and twisting an ankle if I'm not careful) and walking on the road. I usually choose the latter. If there is an accident involving a pedestrian on that stretch, BBMP, you know who's responsible.

This may seem like a small matter to you. The lack of pavements on 600 meters of road? That's nothing compared to all the other work you've done over the past few months. But you know why it matters? Because this is for the pedestrians. All that road laying and tarring and what not that you did? That was for the car users - yes, we bus users benefited as well, but we know who you really had in mind. When it comes to the pedestrians,  you really don't give a damn. But if we bus-users and pedestrians all switched to cars one day (as I for one am increasingly tempted to do), then where would you be, BBMP? It's in YOUR interests to make things easy for us. Remember that.

Warm Regards,
A Concerned Citizen

Diwali Night

As I type this,whooshes and explosions surround me on all sides.The windows periodically light up with different colours. Any non-Indian would probably think I'm in a war-zone. But it's just Diwali in Bangalore.

I didn't think much of Diwali when I was a kid. Unlike today, we didn't have too many varieties of fire-crackers back then. There were the the usual sparklers in white and red and green, and there were the chakrams (wheels) and the conical thing that goes whoosh into the air with a lot of light, I can't remember the name of it. If we were lucky, there would be one or two rockets, and a big red malappadakkam, which was scary. These would be saved till the end, and only one of the grown-ups was allowed to light them.

When we became a little older, we decided that crackers were for kids, and stopped pestering our parents to buy them. I think this was also the time the Sivakasi child labour aspect gained publicity, so that may have played a part. And so Diwali became just another holiday for us - no crackers or lights or anything. It helped that we Malayalis don't celebrate Diwali in any case. We have no puja or sweets associated with Diwali.

It wasn't until we moved to Delhi that I realized how big Diwali actually is as a festival. Our first Diwali there, we went up to the roof of the house to see the fireworks. Flowers of light bloomed all around us. Rockets went up into the sky with a whoosh and exploded. Below us, our neighbours lit sparklers wished each other. And then it hit me, in a way it had never hit me before, that the ENTIRE CITY was celebrating that night. Young and old, rich and poor, everybody could see and enjoy these lights.

I didn't think much of it back then, but apparently there is a reason that Malayalis don't celebrate Diwali. Somebody told me once that it's because Diwali is associated with Rama's victory over Ravana. Apparently we Malayalis identify more with Ravana than with Rama. But that didn't make much sense to me. Why would we identify with a Sri Lankan king?

The story I heard recently makes more sense. Apparently, Vamana vanquished our beloved King Mahabali on Diwali day. For us, it's less about the victory of some North Indian king over some Sri Lankan king, and more about our own king being sent underground, poor guy.

But Diwali seems to be spreading south as well, if how Bangalore is tonight is any indication. Maybe it's the number of North Indians here, or maybe it's the fact that it's such a fun festival, but Bangalore tonight reminds me of that first Diwali night in Delhi long ago.

Trivandrum Through Green Glasses

In Trivandrum, in the house that is 'home' still for another six months, it always sounds like it's raining. The house is surrounded by trees - coconut trees and banana plants of course, but also teak and jack-fruit and mango and coffee and others I don't know the names of. They loom over the house and protect it from the sun, but not from the rain. The wind riffles through their leaves up above, and I'm always looking out of the windows, fooled by the wind and the semi-darkness, to check if it's raining.

Why is it that these trees don't exist in Bangalore? Why is it that the first thing people do when they want to build a house is cut off all the trees in sight? Is there a law that says that the size of a city must be inversely proportional to the density of trees? Does that mean that these trees will soon disappear from Trivandrum too?

Trivandrum, it seems to me, has managed growth well. Technopark is one of the three largest IT parks in India, but it is situated well outside the main city; visitors can go there directly from the airport without having to touch the city proper. Around Technopark, multi-storeyed apartment buildings are coming up one after the other. Fast food restaurants have popped up like so many mushrooms after rain.

It's a strange sight. Coconut trees, thousands upon thousands of them, lay a green carpet along the shore of a lagoon. And between these coconut trees, a few tall cuboids, mostly white, have sprung up, and they hold their heads up proudly, despite being outnumbered by the trees. Technopark is expanding; I saw construction as I went by yesterday, ugly glass buildings that will suck up electricity. Soon, more people will arrive to occupy those glass office buildings. And then more tall cuboids will spring up among the coconut trees, until finally the coconut trees will be lost amidst all the white buildings. And that will be that.

Ah well - it's selfish of me to want things to remain the same. After all, Bangaloreans have been forced to give up their peaceful city and put up with migrants like me.

But then again - maybe I'll go back to Trivandrum too. Every time I visit, I sit on the terrace staring at the greenery, and I think of the drabness of Bangalore, and I shudder at the thought of going back. If it's so bad for me, a city girl, imagine how it must be for the true-blue village-born Malayali who has to go back not to the well-behaved benignity of Bangalore, but to the torturous sick desert heat of the Gulf.

It's such an irony that Malayalees, despite having such a beautiful home, choose to live outside all their lives, toiling in hot yellow deserts and cold grey cities, only to come back in their old age to Kerala and spend all their money on opulent houses, painted all the colours of the rainbow and then some.

***

Trivandrum is actually a nice little city, especially when it's not summer. It has cute narrow roads that go up and down like a roller-coaster. It has colonial buildings that look like red ice cream houses with silver icing. It has a pretty boast-worthy culturati. It has the sea, and really - what more do you need?

Right Now

I'm sitting in a cane chair on the balcony, a tulsi plant on the floor to my left, and a row of drying clothes to my right. The balcony is a boring old thing, if I had any imagination I would fill it with plants and make a tropical rain-forest that would drown out the fact that facing it on the opposite side, barely a few feet away, is the wall of the next building, a horrible splotched wall decorated with old pipes, both rusty-red and plastic-grey, but it's alright, this time next year it'll be a blue blue lake out there, and a nice wind that will make me shiver.

Somewhere below a mother and daughter are making an Onam sadya, the daughter asking the mother for instructions on Avial making, I think they must be living in different apartments and talking to each other across balconies, for why else can I hear them so clearly. I try to listen in, are they mother and daughter or mother-in-law and daughter-in-law? I can't tell, their language is middle Kerala, all musical and affected and polite, illya's and varu's, not the straight talk of my own part of the world.

Above me drone helicopters, that's the price you pay for living behind HAL. But I like them, I've been reading a history of Bangalore, and I feel connected to the city, to the romance of the old companies that helped make it what it is today. I squint up into the sky at the helicopter, and two birds seem to be giving it company, but they see me and they veer off and settle down on the roof of the building opposite me.

I break off a leaf of the tulsi plant and tear it up and hold it to my nose, and that smell, it takes me back about fifteen years, to a broken old well, moss-covered and dirty and maybe filled with ghosts, what does an eleven-year-old know? A tall tulsi plant grew on the side of the well and now I can't see a tulsi plant without thinking of that tulsi plant, I don't even know if it's still alive. They cleaned up that place, it used to be a broken old temple and a broken old well, and snake gods and tall trees and vines that looked like real live snakes, and we used to play there, the three of us, but now it's all cleaned up and you can't step on the grounds without taking your shoes off and now what's the point anyway?

My feet are warm because I've put them right where a bar of sunlight has managed to break through the buildings. It's a good thing we're on the top floor, at least I have a bit of sky, and it's a glorious blue sky, who was it that wrote about clouds like woolly sheep on blue grass, that sort of sky.

On my lap is Blindness, a book both the brother and the father recommended, and I've been resisting it for a year, but what better time to read it than when I'm affected by a pestilential eye infection that seems to have found a nice home in my eyes. First it nested in the white of my eye and turned it red and made me leak tears all day long, it stayed there for two weeks, and then it decided the black part was better, and now I can't see a damn thing for all the fog. But at least it means I don't have to cook an Onam sadya unlike the poor women downstairs.

I've given up on the book, because I'm not reading it, I'm squinting at it, trying to stop the letters from turning into blurred black dots, and squinting is no fun, even in the sunlight, and why would I want to do it, I'm already half-blind anyway. But I like the way Saramago writes, my thoughts go wandering and they pour out like his prose, no breaks or full-stops, just an onward flow like a river towards an ocean, and hence this post because it's easier to write like this when you can't see what you're writing.

The Kingdom of the Wheeled

This post is written out of sheer frustration. Not one bit is exaggerated.

Please pity the poor Indian pedestrian. Pity her, because nobody cares about her. It doesn't matter if she's walking on the road for exercise, or because she can't afford a vehicle. Is she is out to buy milk for her child, or is she just walking home from work? Either way, nobody cares whether she lives or dies. Because this is the Kingdom of the Wheeled

Let's take the case of an entirely hypothetical young woman.

There she is, walking home from the bus-stop in the evening. She's walking partly for exercise (though it's only a five-minute walk), partly because she thinks travelling by car is the ultimate sell-out. Either way, she feels good walking. She stares up at the darkening sky, she looks at the leaves waving in the wind, she smiles to herself.

The road to her house is better than most roads in India, because it actually has pavements.

Umm... Actually, I should qualify that statement. The pavement's only on one side, and only part of the way. But still, something's better than nothing, right? That's what she tells herself anyway.

Unfortunately, the pavement is on the left side of the road, which forces her to break a cardinal traffic rule, one that's taught to all Indian children right from school. Walk. On. The. Right. Side. Of. The. Road.

As a child, she used to wonder how one could walk on the right side of the road. What was the right side and what was the wrong side? Or did they mean the other right - the 'left and right' right? If that was the right they meant, then wouldn't the right side depend on which side you were facing?

Clearly, she wasn't very bright  as a child. But she grew up, and she figured it out. I'm not sure which one happened first.

So there she is, walking on the left side of the road. There is no concrete pavement on the initial stretch of the road she's walking on. But the road has an unofficial 'mud pavement'. There are occasional fruit-sellers on this unofficial pavement, whose stalls force her to step out onto the road once in a while.

But wait - what is this? An open sewage drain seems to have overflowed, and is spewing its nasty contents out onto the road! She is forced to hop-skip-jump so that she doesn't step on the sewage, all the while trying to avoid the stinking water that passing vehicles want to spray on her.

There - she has crossed the dirty stretch! She is very proud of herself and her nimbleness.

A few more meters of the unofficial mud pavement, and she comes to a blind left corner where there's no pavement at all. She's walking right on the road now, and she keeps looking back to see if there are any vehicles that want to hit her.

Navigating this stretch is a problem for her on the best of days, but on rainy days it becomes worse. Rain water pools up along the edge of the road. Since she's not Jesus and can't walk on water, it's a choice between walking IN the water, and walking on the middle of the road.

Having survived this stretch, she heaves a sigh of relief. A proper broad well-maintained pavement starts now, and stretches all the way to her house. Her steps speed up in anticipation.

But what is this? Her jaw drops open in surprise. The pavement seems to have become a cowshed!

Two cows are sprawled out on the pavement, and their shit stinks up the entire area. Disgusted, she crosses the road to avoid stepping on the cow-shit.

She is pavement-less once again, but at least she's on the right side of the road this time. She walks on, clinging precariously to the muddy edge of the road. A futile white line marks the edge of the road and leaves a tiny area for pedestrians - the vehicles neither see it nor obey it.

The other reason she doesn't like this stretch is the stinking garbage dump on this side. Skirting the pile of garbage takes her onto the road again, so it's a very good thing that she can see the cars coming at her.

Next in this obstacle course is a line of shops. Shops are generally no obstacles, of course. But the cars and scooters of the people who're shopping there take up whatever little space there is for pedestrians. She is again forced onto the road.

But she crosses that stretch and - thank God - it's home sweet home. She turns into the lane that leads to her apartment block. The contrast with the road outside couldn't be starker. Old people gossiping, young mothers chattering, little kids playing.

Here at least, it's the cars that have to be careful. Here at least, the pedestrian rules.

The Real House

I learnt last month that the house that partly inspired this story has been demolished. An apartment building is going to come up in its place, each flat selling at the astronomical initial rate of Rs 5, 500 per square foot. Like dozens of other old houses in Trivandrum, this house too had become out-of-date, it couldn't live on in the new century, in the new Trivandrum.

(For those who've read the story, don't worry - the owner of the house, my grandmother's eldest sister, is not in the situation I've described in the story. She has five sons who take very good care of her.)

I couldn't help feeling a little sad about the house's demise, though I was never more than a casual visitor to the place. Somehow, despite never having spent too much time there, I have very clear memories of the house. But then, large houses are quite magical to young kids, especially when the adults are busy and the kids are left to their own devices. My brother and I have explored the large grounds, played hide-and-seek in the rooms, read books on the verandah.

I think the only occasion on which I spent a few days there at a stretch was during the monsoons of the year I was five. The house we were staying in at that time was on the banks of the Karamana Aar, and it flooded. Our house was in knee-deep water. To make matters worse, both my brother and I had chicken-pox. So we shifted to the grand-aunt's large house for a few days. Of course, I've also visited the house multiple times over the years I've spent in Trivandrum.

The house had a rare characteristic - two gates, one on either side, because the house was on a large plot between two roads. On one side, the road was much lower than the house, and steep steps led down to the gate. This gate was supposed to be the front entrance of the house, but later on, when cars became more common, the back gate of the house was more frequently used. The front gate was locked pretty much all the time. I remember my brother and used to find the moss-covered steps leading down to the front gate spooky - we rarely played there.

My grandmother's father built the house for his eldest daughter after she got married. So it can't be more than fifty or sixty years old, because she got married in the late forties. The rooms are not as small and dark as rooms in older Kerala houses generally are. They have high ceilings, large windows, cold red floors. Somehow, despite being so large, the house always seemed very warm and welcoming to me. I don't know if it was the house itself, or the warmth of the people who lived there.

I find it so weird that the house now lives on only in the memories of the people who lived there and visited there. Also, if I feel so sad about the house's demolition, I wonder how the five sons of my great-aunt must feel - they grew up there.

But I guess time has to pass, and the world has to change.

Thoughts on Commuting in Bangalore

Long time readers of this blog will know that I'm against people using cars for their daily commute. It's a belief that has evolved over the past four years in Bangalore, and probably has a lot to do with how terrible Bangalore is traffic-wise. 

I also ascribe this belief in part to my first company, which tried to promote green values in its employees. (Though it was slightly schizophrenic in its actions. People were encouraged to cycle to work, but manager grades and above had subsidized car loans as a benefit. It ran buses for its employees, but the monthly charges were prohibitively expensive. It sent out nice colourful mailers to promote Bus Day, but refused to have parking fees for car-users.)

Anyway, back to topic. 

My daily commute offers me contrasting perspectives on Bangalore traffic. It's a pretty short commute by most people's standards - only 5-6 kilometers each way. But thanks to Bangalore's convoluted system of one-way roads, the commute becomes about eight kilometers long if I choose to travel TO office by bus. AND I would have to walk about two kilometers in total - not an easy thing to do in heels. So I take the easy way out - I get the long-suffering husband to drop me part-way, and then I take an auto. 

Yup, that was quite the decision to make for a bus-supporter. But I tell myself autos run on CNG, so it doesn't matter. (If you know otherwise, please don't tell me - I want a clear and ignorant conscience.)

But here's where the contrast comes in. 

In the mornings, sitting in my cold and windy auto, I curse pedestrians. And it's not me being elitist, by the way. To get to my office, I have to cross a junction where cars from my part of town turn into and join the main arterial road that leads to my office. It's a crazy place, with people trying desperately to get across before the allotted thirty seconds are over. And that's precisely when some amazingly intelligent person will decide that it's a good time to cross the road.

I've noticed this phenomenon at other places too - the pedestrians of Bangalore seem to have a biological urge to cross the road when the lights are green for vehicle movement. I've seen this over and over and over again. This may be forgivable in places where there are no traffic lights, but not at busy junctions, where there are separate timings for pedestrians to cross. Is it lack of common sense or lack of awareness of traffic rules?

But then I reach my office and get off the auto, and it's now my turn to be a pedestrian. Not for long - I just need to cross the road and enter my office building. And what a road it is - cars and buses and scooters and autos all screaming past like they don't know they're going to be stuck in a traffic jam just a kilometer ahead. 

Since I'm the pedestrian now, my resentment is towards the people in the vehicles. Would it kill them, I wonder, to slow down and pause for the pedestrians to cross? Do they think the zebra crossing is funny road graffiti that they can happily ignore? 

There have been times when I've stood at that zebra crossing for as long as ten minutes before being able to get across. And my chief entertainment at such times is to curse the men who're happily and ignorantly and idiotically driving their cars all alone to work. (I don't curse the women though - given what I hear from my friends, it's generally the women who do all the work at home, so they need all the extra time they can get. But my thoughts on that particular topic need a whole different blog post of their own.)

The evenings are better though. To assuage the grief that my conscience is giving me for having taken an auto in the morning, I take the bus back. I have to change once, and it takes double the time - but at least I feel better. To be honest, I like BMTC buses - the service is pretty frequent, the buses are generally clean, and the conductors are (mostly) civil. I keep wondering why more people don't use buses for their daily commute. 

Personally, I can't understand why anybody would voluntarily put themselves through the torture that is Bangalore traffic. Driving anywhere in evening rush hour takes an hour. Instead of torturing yourself, wouldn't you prefer to travel by bus - read the paper, watch people, get some more exercise than you generally do?

Things You Learn on Rainy Bangalore Evenings

1. Walking in the rain is not fun when it's involuntary.
2. Wearing white in Bangalore during the summer showers season is probably not a good idea. 
3. Fourteenth floor offices are pretty awesome - as awesome as watching black clouds slowly creeping across the skies, periodically shooting bolts of lightning at the ground.
4. Finding an empty auto in Bangalore on rainy evenings is about as easy as finding that needle in that haystack everybody keeps talking about.
5. If you thought Bangalore auto-wallahs were assholes who always charged extra - wait till you actually manage to find an empty auto on a rainy evening. They'll ask for 5X without batting an eyelid.
6. If you've been super-productive during the day and actually managed to finish everything you'd wanted to do an hour earlier than you'd expected to - well, it's a sign from the Universe to just pack and leave. Otherwise something bad is going to happen - like pounding rain just when you're leaving. And you're going to be stuck in office for an hour, waiting for the rain to stop.
7. Buses are awesome. Period. How else will you feel that sense of joy when the right bus lands up just when you reach the bus stop - and it's empty!

People who are now planning to leave comments saying I should buy a car (you know who you are) - spare me.

U is for Up Above the World

This post is part of the A to Z Challenge.

My new office is on the thirteenth floor of one of the tallest buildings in central Bangalore. I only discovered yesterday that it WAS the thirteenth floor, because the builders seem to have bowed to Western superstition and named it one storey higher. (I remembered Stephen King's 1408 when I saw the lift buttons. PLEASE read that story if you haven't already.)

Thirteenth floor or not, the office is brilliant because of the view. It's only when you climb up that high that you realize that Bangalore isn't that tall a city after all. There are so few skyscrapers, and the few tall structures are all apartment buildings rather than office blocks. 

Our building is right next to some Army land, which means that we get to look down upon a scenery of green trees, empty roads and brown playgrounds - very un-Bangalore-like. I sometimes stand at the windows in the afternoons and look down upon the toy vehicles moving slowly along the roads, and the Lilleputian kids playing cricket in the playgrounds. Half a dozen eagles are always visible in the sky  - majestic creatures gliding on the wind. 

My colleagues tell me that Nandi Hills is visible on clear days. Which seems a bit of a stretch to me, to be honest. But I haven't been able to test this claim yet, because there hasn't been a clear day since I joined. 

Gray skies have greeted me pretty much every day, and there was even a mild thunder storm a couple of days ago - we had samosas to celebrate the awesome weather. The clouds started piling up in the early afternoon, and the sky went black. Sporadic lightning soon started. The wind whoom-ed so loudly I initially thought some machine had malfunctioned somewhere. Somebody opened the window, and a warm breeze blew in, carrying a few rain drops and that wonderful smell of rain.

I've tried to figure out the names of the few tall buildings I can see from the window. But the distances are very deceptive up above. I got a big shock when I realized one day that the nearby buildings I could see from the lift lobby were the ones on MG Road. MG Road seems so far away when you're at ground level, because of the signals and the traffic. But up above, it almost seems like I could hop there from the roof.

The guy I replaced in the team has asked me to make sure that I look up from my screen and take in the view every once in a while. In my case, self-confessed tree-lover and rain-lover that I am, I'm having to make myself NOT look at the view all the time. I just hope that I don't get used to the view over time, so that its beauty fails to move me.

On the Chalukyan Trail: Part 1 of the Badami Travelogue

The Red Rocks of Badami

Ruined temples restored to their former glory. Red sandstone against the blue sky. Monkeys jumping from one tree to another, framed black against the dusk sky. Fields of jowar and sunflower. A few minutes of unexpected prayer inside a dark temple. A sunset of blue and orange.

These are the things I'll remember about the trip to Badami, the ancient capital of the Chalukyan kings.  It was the perfect trip in many ways, though it didn't begin particularly well.

A bad beginning, thanks to Meru Cabs

The best train from Bangalore to Badami is the Solapur Express, which leaves Yeshwantpur station at 7:45 PM and reaches Badami in twelve hours. It's a slow train when you consider the distance, but a convenient departure time and a convenient arrival time make up for the delay.

We booked our Meru cab for a quarter past six, calculating that traffic is always heavier on Friday evenings. Usually, Meru cab drivers call about fifteen minutes before the pick-up time, to confirm the pick-up point. We didn't receive a call. 

So we called them up, and were told that they had cancelled our booking. That's right - we had a train to catch in ninety minutes, and they had cancelled our only means of getting there. Without even bothering to inform us, whether by a call or a message. 

We would have loved to chew out their brains over it, but we didn't have too much time. So having promised to raise a complaint at the highest levels, we grabbed our suitcase and ran. 

Unfortunately, it's tough to find free autos around that time, especially those who'll agree to travel such a long distance. We finally found an auto twenty minutes later, at six-thirty. We told the auto driver to gun it. 

He said, "Sir, seven forty-five only no? Aaraam se." 

Despite ourselves, we believed him. After all, it was only eighteen kilometers from our house to the station.

Sitting in the auto, Nikhil fired off a tweet about what had happened. Since he has 7000+ followers on Twitter, Meru Cabs couldn't exactly afford to ignore him. Almost immediately, we received a call from  them - it seemed like the caller was some poor boy at some back-office. Nikhil explained what had happened politely (read: yelled at the kid) and ended with a rhetorical question, "How are we supposed to get to Yeshwanthpur station by 7:45 PM?" 

Believe it or not, here's the reply: "Sir, you can't."

Wow. Clearly, they need to train these kids better. Though I don't really blame the kid - his ears must have got burned by the kind of shouting he received.

Meanwhile, our tension levels were rising higher and higher. After all, we were in the middle of the traffic hellhole that is Bangalore on a Friday night. We got stuck in traffic jam after traffic jam, till even our auto driver's optimism started to wear out. To make matters worse, there was Metro construction happening all along the road leading to the station.

At seven-forty, we were stuck at the signal just before the Yeshwanthpur station. With luck, we calculated, we would be able to make it if we ran. So we waited for the signal to turn green. We waited. And we waited. And we waited some more. 

Incredibly enough, the signal just by-passed our road entirely - the signal for the road next to ours turned green for the second time. 

"Wow," I thought fatalistically, "Even the traffic signals don't want us to get on this train."

Our auto driver, who had become infected with our tension levels by this time, decided to just gun it, red signal or no. We joined a roaring honking stream of vehicles, all trying to enter the narrow road leading to the station. If you've ever been to that station, you'll know that the road leading to it is a sort of market, with shops on either side and vegetable carts right on the road. 

When we finally got off at the station entrance, it was 7:50 PM. By this time, Nikhil had started cursing everybody and everything - including the Meru cab guys, the traffic on the roads, even Bangalore city as a whole. He had almost decided to quit his job and start farming in some lonely piece of land in Kerala. 

We paid off the auto guy. He wished us luck. We RAN. 

Inside the station, we found our first piece of luck of the evening - the train hadn't left yet. Though Yeshwanthpur was the train's starting point and we were almost ten minutes late by this time, it hadn't left yet.

The bad news was that the train was on Platform 5. We ran all the way, with poor Nikhil dragging our heavy suitcase behind him. Up, across and down the foot over-bridge we ran, with people staring at us as if we were crazy.

8:00 PM - We actually made it. Breathless and panting and thirsty - yes. But we made it. We exclaimed over how unfit we had both become, and collapsed onto our seats. 

And thus began the Badami Trip. Next edition tomorrow!

A Carving on the Upper Shivalaya (Temple) in Badami

The Sunday Market at Bangalore

Photo Credit: Akash Bhattacharya

It took me almost four years in Bangalore to hear of the Sunday Market for the first time. I stumbled upon a reference in a blog post and googled it out, curious. Many had blogged about it, and all said the same thing -  a paradise for bargain hunters on the lookout for old stuff. The market apparently starts in BVK Iyengar Road, and extends all the way to the KR Market Bridge. 

And of course, Nikhil and I had to go. Nikhil's heart starts beating wildly at the thought of anything old, even if it would be better labeled 'rubbish' rather than 'antique'. And me - I'm a bargain hunter of renown, though I stop being one just before the actual bargaining has to start. 

Sunday dawned cold but sunny. The market starts at seven-thirty and goes on till dark, the blog posts said. We got there around nine-thirty. 

And found - nothing. No bustling street, no stalls, no bargain-hunters. 

Puzzled, we asked around, and were told that the market starts further down, not actually at the beginning of the road. So we walked on down, and soon enough, were rewarded with the distant sight of a busy market. Harried shoppers, wandering cows, loud vendors; autos threading their way through the crowd; the road paved over with straws and cow dung; the wares displayed on open tarpaulin sheets. The very air was different over the market - dim and dusty and yellow.

The market begins with the clothe stalls. Almost right away, we figured out that we weren't the target audience for these shops. Most of the clothes were so shabby we couldn't figure out if they were second-hand or not. There were also plenty of colourful blankets, jackets, kids' clothes and towels. I wouldn't have minded a second look at the jackets; they looked good, with nice colours and fur-lined hoods.

Next up are the stalls selling old hardware - gears and spanners and nuts and bolts and other things I can't even name, most of them rusted and with their edges worn out, but cheap. For some reason, many of these stalls had old dumbbells of all shapes and sizes and colours. 

There were plenty of stalls selling kitchenware - old appliances, steel utensils, plastic containers, aluminium vessels. Cheap electronics stalls were common too - everything from phones to memory cards. The place is a true heaven for a technophile, especially somebody who likes putting something together from old pieces.

Unfortunately, we reached the end of the market without seeing anything we wanted to buy. There were some brass articles of questionable provenance, which I spent some time examining. They would have cleaned up well, but we felt it was likely they were stolen.

Refusing to be discouraged, we decided to strike off on one of the side streets leading off the main road. Ignoring the stink and jumping across a large dirty puddle, we entered a shady lane with stalls selling a variety of electronic devices. We spotted everything from old mobile phones to card swiping machines to non-digital cameras. 

And then we spotted the clock. Nikhil had been wanting to buy an antique clock for some time, and had been scouring e-bay looking for one. And here it was. A tall black wind-up clock with a pendulum, covered by a hinged front panel of ugly plywood and glass. The front panel had stickers of a colourful Hanuman and an Om symbol. When we asked the seller the price, he put up two fingers. And we were so clueless we couldn't figure out if that meant two hundred or two thousand. Turned out he meant two hundred. But of course.

We spent some time examining the clock, figuring out the extent of repairs needed: the mechanism would have to be replaced, as would the front panel. But in the end, we decided not to buy it. Nikhil's problem was that the clock wasn't antique-y enough. My grandmother has the real version, and it's a huge heavy one, nothing like the cheap plywood contraption we were holding.

We also spotted some nice-looking wall lamps. When we start on the interiors phase of our flat, we're definitely coming back here to score some knock-offs. 

And that was it. We told each other we weren't part of the target group for this market, and walked back leisurely, stopping at random stalls, enjoying the sights and sounds, avoiding the wandering cows. 

So overall? The Sunday Market is worth a dekko, definitely. Don't go there hoping to find anything you want to buy. If you do find something, consider yourself lucky and hope that the damn thing works. 

Changes in the Air

It is baking hot in Bangalore. Old-timers reminisce about ten years ago, when the weather never went beyond "slightly warm", even at three on an April afternoon. They speak with horror of the traffic, and the pollution, and the heat, and the dust. Walking about in the hot yellow afternoon, it is quite an effort to remember that Hyderabad must be hotter, Delhi must be dustier, Chennai must be muggier.


Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day 
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way. 
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way. 

Time feels strange these days. Maybe it always does during periods of change, if only one weren't too busy to notice.

Next week, after three years of corporate life, I am taking a break. Life will no more be split into five days of work and two days of relaxation. No more of hurrying to catch the 7:30 bus, no more coming home late, no more office food, no more of sitting hunched in front of a laptop.

I have to admit - it is damn scary. Life is easier when there's a set routine. And the easier the routine, the tougher it is to get out - of the rut or comfort zone or whatever you want to call it. People tell me it was a brave decision to make, but I did it without even thinking much about it.

I already know, of course, that it will require a lot of willpower. It is going to be a torturous year, where I will almost certainly be wracked by doubt, by a sneaking suspicion that I'm not doing what I actually should be doing, that I should be doing more than I currently am.

The other change is that we are moving to a new place. Not our own, though. We realized that we were doing the whole house-buying thing too hurriedly. After all, a house is a life-long investment - it's almost like deciding whom to marry. It's not something that should be decided with a deadline in mind.

So we are moving to a rented place as of now. The guy who showed us the place kept using the word 'penthouse', but all that it means is that it's on the same floor as the terrace. Which is actually good - I am looking forward to the monsoons, and to seeing black clouds massed up against the afternoon sky. People crib about having to shift houses, but I find myself excited about it. I guess mostly because I've never done it before and I don't know any better.

Hunting Again

And so we are back in the hunt again. Less than a year after we moved into the current place, we are looking for a house again - to buy, this time. With a year's worth of earnings in the bank, we have become so bold as to  think we can own a house.

Of course, we are low-budget buyers. We can't afford the Sobhas and the Purvas of the world. So we try the not-so-high-name builders, and the slightly older flats.

As before, it is a disheartening and dispiriting hunt. There is something extremely depressing about entering other people's houses and lives. The stained toilets and the washed underwear hung out to dry. The framed wedding photos and the multitude of gods on the shelf. The realization that this is how our lives would look to strangers, too.

And the houses themselves make the hunt even worse. Our spirits go down as we are asked to cross the posh locality mentioned in the ad and enter the not-so-posh locality nearby. The roads get narrower, the buildings closer together. There are no trees, there is no wind, there is nothing to see except buildings and clothes lines and electricity wires.

The flats are dim and ill-lit, the cupboards are of plywood. Children's voices echo from outside, women pace balconies and fight on the phone with distant people.

We leave each house dispirited. Our budget looks increasingly puny in this crowded and dusty city. On our way back, we stare with envy at the huge white houses of the posh locality. When, we wonder, will we live in such houses?

We will, of course. We are young. We are up-and-coming. We'll get there. In the end.

But till then, wish us luck. Wish us a cozy place close to the main road, with lots of natural light, and enough water, and maybe some open space around. Wish us a home.

Weekend

New cities are exciting. Especially when you land there at six in the morning. Getting off a bus, being mobbed by autowallahs. A red sun rising between two trees. Women carrying yellow flowers in baskets. Sleepy neighbourhoods. Murugan Idli. Yellow autos.

The city I've heard so much about, the city I used to wish to be a part of, the city I started to hate for no fault of its. I finally saw it, and it made me realize how soulless Bangalore is.

***

Sitting on the rocks lining Pondicherry beach, feet dangling over the drop. Slightly high. Talking. Listening to the waves breaking upon the rocks below. Wishing he was here with me. The breeze coming in from the sea. Wishing it wasn't so cloudy. The realization that this will be one of my favourite memories years down the line.

***

It was seven in the night, and Besant Nagar (?) beach was so crowded. People sitting in circles on the sand. Kids running around. Young boys playing football. Colourful lights that went zooming into the air. Women selling peanuts. Above it all, and as a background, the waves pounding the sand.

Life

It's been raining for three continuous days in Bangalore. Lovely wet weather. The entire world is gray, it reminds me of foggy winter mornings in Delhi, waiting for the school bus and shivering in my short skirt. But now it's seven years later, and I'm waiting for the bus that will take me to office. I tweet from my phone about the song playing in my head. I think of how much my world has changed in seven years.

Inside the bus, it's too dark to read my Murakami. I settle back with headphones plugged in and the music on shuffle. The first song is Blue October's 18th Floor Balcony, which doesn't quite suit my mood. Skip. Next up is Norah Jones, and she is exactly, exactly right.

I open my eyes and stare out through the window at the Bangalore traffic. Honking motorists, construction work, wet orange mud by the side of the road. The proverbial traffic jams of Bangalore, made worse by the unceasing rain. I float above it all, uncaring. I'm inside my exclusive shell, and nothing can touch me here. The rain makes wet channels on the window, wiping away the dirt. I watch the water flow down and wish it was that easy to cleanse human souls of all the bad things we accumulate. Not just sins - attitudes, habits, resignation, blind acceptance.

Vellai Pookal. Ah, even better. Such a beautiful, comforting song. The very first strains make me happy.

A flyover is being constructed, and we get stuck at the junction. I can't see the sky, or anything remotely green. A monstrous pillar rises up high next to my window, drowning out light, sky, nature. At the base of these pillars, scattered all around, are iron rods and heavy machinery, rusted metal and concrete blocks. Holes gape open for no particular reason. It's a sea of heavy sticky brown mud, thankfully fenced off from the road. I close my eyes rather than have to look at such vileness.

Tum Ho Toh from Rock On. We move on from the junction, and enter the road that leads directly to office. The land is more open here. Fields on either side, waterlogged now and waiting for the sun. A solitary lake, fuller now than I've ever seen it. The gray sky, heavy and roiling with rain. Apartment buildings dot the horizon, and more are under construction. Soon, I'm sure they will even fill up the fields to build more of them. I hate apartment buildings.

The office is two minutes away. I sigh. I open my bag and take out the tag with my office ID card. I used to hate it so much, it was a sign of my selling out. But now I'm resigned to it. It's there around my neck, the whole day. I barely notice it. I put it on, and step out of the bus with the rest, heading in a straggly bunch to the office building.

My Neighbourhood

It's forty minutes past seven. As usual, I am late for my bus to office, and I'm hurrying along with my laptop bag flapping behind me and my long silver house key still in my hand. It's a straight road downhill to the bus stop. On the way, dignified old paatis with silver hair stare at me in wonder. Every day they see me, a strange young girl with long hair streaming backwards in the wind, fast-walking down the road.

On both sides of the road are single- and double-storeyed houses. I like them because - well, they're not flats, they're actual houses with histories and personalities. Most of these houses have at least one tree growing in their tiny front yard,  and these trees generously spread their shadow onto the road. The entire neighbourhood becomes quite dark at night  - the trees reduce the orange streetlights to tiny little pools on the dark road. And when it rains, I  never need an umbrella, except to ward off the wet leaves that float down with the wind and stick to my hair.

My house has a tall jackfruit tree that has no jackfruits. Just outside, the first sight I see in the morning after I bolt the tiny black side gate behind me, is a tree with yellow and red flowers - I don't know its name. And on the way to the bus stop, there is a jasmine plant, the whole of its foliage covered in white. It's beautiful, a dark green round canopy dotted with white stars. I always stare at it with longing, because it reminds me of home.

Mornings and evenings, there are exercise-freaks walking busily around the neighbourhood. I see them in the mornings and wish I had the time to be like them. I see them in the evenings when I'm dragging myself home uphill with the heavy laptop on my back, and wonder at their energy.

In the evenings, you can see young moms walking along with babies on strollers; kids playing badminton in the middle of the street; old gentlemen in groups walking and laughing together; dignified old couples, the lady with her pallu pulled demurely over her shoulder, the gentleman with slow steps and a walking stick.

Every time  I see them, especially the elderly people, I feel like a trespasser. They've been living their lives here in this neighbourhood for years, knowing their neighbours and their neighbours' neighbours, and I have brashly intruded into their colony and their lives. I don't know them, I don't even wish to know them. The reason I'm here is that I like the security they give me, I like the fact that I have this tiny island to remind me of home while I try to find my way in this vast ocean of adulthood.

Sometimes I can almost understand why they want to kick us out.

The Bengaluru Autowallah

My current favourite people to hate - Bangalore's autowallahs. Gosh, I've never seen such conscience-less people! You need do nothing more than flag one down for them to try and swindle you. I am actually surprised when one of them to go by meter - which doesn't happen very often, let me assure you.

The other day, I was coming back from Forum after dinner with Blue and Andy. It was around ten in the night. I had to take an auto, because buses would have dropped me to the main road, and the gali leading to my house wouldn't have been very safe at that time of the night.

The autowallah first quoted seventy rupees, but after some haggling by the Kannada-speaking Andy, he finally agreed to go by meter. Since it was after ten, the going rate was one and a half times the meter rate in any case. Within five minutes of getting into the auto, I knew I would have to watch out, because he tried to go by a roundabout route rather than a straight one. I told him the way, and then settled back, with the speakers blaring out Emosanal Attyachar at full volume.

Just before he entered my colony, he started cribbing - it's so inside, so far away, you'll have to pay me double. WTF! I told him - I'd told you everything before getting in, exactly where the place is, and anyway, there is a main road about two minutes away from my house on the other side. No no, he kept saying. Pay double or utaar denge.

Now, this was when I started getting really angry. How dare he threaten that he would drop me off on the way rather than take me to my house? Not only that, the street that we were in was very ill-lit and unsafe. It's a thriving market till about nine, but shuts down and becomes completely deserted soon after. I told him - no way, you have to drop me at my house, and I'm definitely not paying you anything more than one and a half.

About five minutes of this back and forth exchange, and he suddenly stopped the auto and told me to get off. I don't why I got off, but I did. Maybe because I was SO pissed by this time. I wanted to yell at him and use all the swear words I've ever learnt, but unfortunately I didn't know any Kannada ones. Instead, from God knows where, I got some random Hindi words that were definitely NOT swear words. I don't think I've ever even used the word tameez before in my entire life. And I only have a hazy idea what it means.

Either way, I suddenly started suspecting that the guy was drunk. He'd been singing along to the song in the auto, and his head seemed to be swaying a little bit. So I decided that it would be easier to just walk off. But I was so fucking angry I couldn't stop muttering swear words (English ones, and much too late) under my breath. And to top it all, I ended up paying him almost double because I didn't have change! He was belligerent and rude till the last.

I was pretty scared of walking home alone. So I called up Blue and spoke to him for fifteen minutes, till I reached home. I didn't face any trouble, not even from the college students standing around in packs everywhere. Ironically enough, I had more trouble from the autowallah than the random guys on the street.

When I got home and related the story to my flatmate, she said - why didn't you take down the guy's registration number? It's there on the back of his seat. I hadn't known this of course, but I don't think I would have done it anyway, given my suspicions that he was drunk.

Somebody please tell me this - why are Bangaloreans tolerating this? Why do they pay up every time an auto guy asks for 'meter plus ten' or 'meter plus twenty'? Or is it just me that they ask? They see that I'm not a localite and decide to milk me for more, is that it?

Anyway, I don't know what I would have done even if it had been broad daylight. Would I have threatened to take him to the police station? No way! Too much trouble, and which sane person in this country would willingly go to the police station and waste so much time and energy, when we know perfectly well that the guy is just going to pay a bribe and leave the place within half an hour?

I guess in the end we only have ourselves to blame, not these guys. They take advantage of our apathy.

Bangalore

It's exciting to be in a new city. To see twin lines of orange lights stretching ahead of you. To zip by glossy buildings that seem to have been transplanted from another world. To know that these very roads and corners, now so new and strange, will become dreary and familiar to you in a little while. It's exciting to know that there's a whole new culture waiting to be explored.

It rained just before I landed. At the innumerable traffic lights, the wet road reflects the red brake lights of the cars ahead. Half an hour into the journey from the airport to the city, I see a signboard saying, "Bangalore City - 9 KMs". I have to hand it to the foresight of whoever put the airport exactly where it should be forty years from now.

Unfortunately, the airport is just a sign of things to come. My aunt lives in the north of the city, in a place even Bangaloreans don't seem to have heard of. Travelling from here to anywhere else is torture. "Oh, that place?" the driver says of the hotel the alumni meet was held last night. "It's close by, just ten kilometers away." And it takes us forty minutes to get there. People at the party speak casually of travelling an hour or an hour and a half to work daily. I think nostalgically of Delhi, with its wide roads and flyovers, where you could literally zip from one place to the other - well, as long as they were the right places.

I keep getting taken aback by how long it takes to get from Point A to Point B in this city. Surely, Bangalore is deliberately trying to defeat its hapless commuters? It's an endless maze of one-ways and narrow roads and pretty police stations. Yes, that's one thing I have to give Bangalore - it has the prettiest police stations I've ever seen.

People seem to be trying to solve the problem, though. Radio stations and billboards urge people to try car-pooling. A bunch of flyovers seem to be under construction. A Metro is on the way, apparently. I don't know if all these ideas and things will materialize while I'm here, but I'm definitely going to live as close to my office as I possibly can. Ah well, at least my office offers transport.

Spectator

I'm sitting on the steps outside the Metro station at Central Secretariat, waiting for a friend. It's a mild day, almost warm - the bright winter sunshine falls upon me and warms my face and arms.

The road is blocked up for construction of some sort. A police jeep stands in the distance, the khaki-clad men watching everyone suspiciously. People scurry in and out of the Metro station. Buses, both Blueline and DTC, come screeching into the bus stop lane. The conductors recite place names in the poetry of long practice. Sweater- and muffler- and jacket-clad people get on and off.

They look curiously at me, this girl sitting nonchalantly on the steps in the sunshine. Huge shades, blue jeans, black Fab India kurta and black kashmiri shawl. A typical DU girl, yet not. Clothes a little out of fashion, surely? And a bit too much self-assurance, perhaps?

I still recognize the bus numbers, I find. After all, haven't I stood at this same bus stop hundreds of times, waiting for that magic numbered bus - the 610? Two years ago, I was one of this crowd, hurrying out of the Metro station to catch the connecting bus. Floaters and jeans and backpack - everything as comfy as possible for the three hour commute each day. Impatient to get home, not looking anybody in the face, perpetually hunting the distance for any sign of 'my' bus.

I look at them, these current DU kids, and they all look so young. Yes, that's me, all of twenty-one, barely a year out of college, saying that. They do, they really do. Especially the guys, trying to look cool in their low-slung jeans and their plugged-in i-pods and their gelled hair. Surely, we never looked like that? Or is it the fact that I'm out of all of it that makes me see the reality that always was?

My friend arrives. We hug, and enter the station. Now I'm part of the crowd again.