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

2013 and 2014

A fortnight after 2014 began, let me try to sum up 2013.

I read more, and I read better (though I didn't write about all of the books here). I traveled a bit, but less than I would have liked to. Unfortunately, I wrote about very little of those travels. For the first time in many years, I suffered an infection that lasted longer than a couple of days - and made me realize how terrible the power of a tiny virus is. I wrote more, though less than I should have. I won the first significant writing competition of my life. In the same month, I also suffered one of the worst disappointments of my life. I faced interviews for the first time since campus. I got a new job. I made new friends. I moved far away from my comfort zone, and learnt quite a bit in the process. I surprised myself by being tenacious. I enrolled for a lot of Coursera courses, but completed none. I got two job offers without applying for them. I took a break from Facebook for nine months. I took up the A2Z Challenge, and actually wrote nineteen posts! I went jogging for three months and lost no weight, but managed to lose two kilos a couple of months after I stopped. I was called 'slim' for the first time ever. I experienced the phenomenon of 'Shut Down' for the first time in my career, and boy - was it awesome. Now if only the phenomenon of holiday weight didn't exist. I lost touch with a lot of people I shouldn't have lost touch with. I missed four weddings I should have attended, two for no fault of my own. I was forced to use a Blackberry for the first time ever, and am still in such denial about it that I haven't transferred my contacts to it yet. My husband and I got ourselves a housing loan.

But 2013 was also the year of lost days, a year of many negative thoughts and much unhappiness, a year of falling prey to habits and being stuck in a rut in many ways. I hope 2014 turns out better.

So these, for what they are worth (because readers of this blog know how good I am at keeping resolutions), are my resolutions for the year:

1. I will write more - though not necessarily on the blog.

2. I will maintain a diary, because it makes people more productive.

3. I will consciously plan and travel more.

4. I will complete a Coursera course. :)

5. I will read more and I will read better.

6. I will go jogging at least three times a week.

7. I will consciously be happy.

AWOL

Once again, it has been a long time since I posted. The hundred posts target looks impossible now, but then I couldn't help it - it has been a crazy month. You make plans when you're free, thinking you'll have plenty of time to carry them out, but then life intervenes. I've barely even read a book in the past month or so.

It was partly my fault. I'd learnt earlier this year that planning trips on back-to-back weekends is a bad idea - not only do you fall behind on routine household chores, it also messes up your head. Unfortunately, a combination of events ensured that I couldn't avoid travelling this month. Add to that work-related travel, and it was a hectic month overall.

But don't get me wrong. The trips were all good ones, though I'm cribbing about them. Among other things, they've provided me material for a few blog posts. I'm planning a five-post travelogue; let's see if it materializes.

I was supposed to travel this weekend as well, and this was the trip I'd been looking forward to the most - a friend's wedding provided a convenient excuse to spend four days in Delhi. The plan was to visit the two-thirds of my family that is now in Delhi, shop to my heart's content, catch up with old friends, and attend a full-blown three-day Punjabi wedding.

But again, life intervened to ensure that I can't go. Strangely, the last time I planned to attend a wedding was when the horrible depressing three-week-long eye infection happened. And now this. The next wedding (this being wedding season) is two weeks from now, and I'm wondering what horrible thing will happen to stop me from attending that one. I tell you, such things could make even the most rational person become superstitious.

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.

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.

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?

X is for Xerox

This post is part of the A to Z Challenge.

Finding a subject to post under X was always going to be a challenge. But I have a very short true story that I experienced a couple of years ago. The brand managers at Xerox are going to be very happy with this story.

I had to take photocopies of my mark sheets for some reason or the other. I was wandering around a side-street in Koramangala, looking in vain for a photocopy shop.

I saw an elderly security guard outside an office building, and asked him if there was a photocopy shop nearby.

"Photocopy?" he looked at me with great contempt. "Xerox-aa?" 

I don't know enough Kannada to render his next few words in the language he said them in, but the gist of it was that I should not be snobbish enough to call a Xerox a photocopy. If I wanted a Xerox, he said, I should ask for a Xerox.

He ended by gesturing down the road to indicate that the photocopy shop was further on. 

I walked on, bemused.

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.

O is for Ouch!

This post should ideally be part of the A to Z Challenge. But considering the fact that I've missed - damn! - five days in a row now, I'm not sure I should bother. 

This is what happens when life turns hectic on you. You make all sorts of plans, and then suddenly you have no time to touch a computer, much less spend enough time to write a single word. And the Blogger app on my phone somehow refuses to work on GPRS. 

Last week (including the weekend) was full of travel, travel, travel. There was a period of forty-eight hours where I spent more time in a moving vehicle (plane, train, car, auto - you name it) than stationary. But I survived.

I arrived back in Bangalore on Tuesday morning, and joined a new job. Yes, THAT happened. Long story.

And we also have a friend of mine staying over for a five-day trip. She is heading back to Chennai on Sunday, but we're planning a brief and hectic trip to Wayanad this weekend before she leaves. 

I think I've said this here before, but 2013 is turning out to be extremely travel-heavy. I've been told that the new job will require me to travel as well. But not for some time, I hope. Because I'm at a point where if I step into a plane/train/bus in the next month, it will be way too soon. 

Yes, that's me, self-proclaimed travel-lover, saying that. 

But back to the A to Z Challenge. The travel plans mean more breaks in the schedule. But I'm hoping some back-posting and scheduling will help me tide over the crisis. :(

H is for Houses: Past, Present and Future

This post is part of the A to Z Challenge.

I'm fascinated by houses. All the houses I've ever lived in are safe inside my head - some even live on in photographs. But it's weird to realize that they no longer actually exist as I knew them. The wall colours are probably different, the furniture is definitely different, the people who live in them are different. Those houses homes now exist only in the memory of the people who occupied them for that short period of time.

The Past

The first place Nikhil and I moved into after we got married was a small apartment in Koramangala. It had bright green (!) and warm yellow walls and a balcony than ran the entire width of the apartment. Unfortunately, it was also behind the bus depot. This meant that we had more light and wind than we had any right to. But we also went to sleep to the sound of buses being spray-cleaned. 

We moved out of that place a year later. I didn't really want to leave, because it was the first place that was 'ours', that we had set up by ourselves. But I had taken a year's break from work, and it no longer made sense to live in a place that was ten kilometers from Nikhil's office. 

The Present

The neighbourhood that we moved into isn't as 'posh' as Koramangala, but I like it better. It's full of the factories of public sector companies, though houses have sprung up in between. When these factories were set up decades ago, this area was far on the south-eastern outskirts of Bangalore. But as the city expanded, it gradually became one of the central neighbourhoods.

The presence of the factories means that sirens wail frequently, to announce the start and end of shifts. The sirens used to bother us in the beginning, but now we barely notice them - just like we got used to the sound of the buses being washed at night, I suppose. Since some of the companies are in the defence and aviation sectors, helicopters fly overhead throughout the day, and small planes are common too.

The broker who showed us this apartment referred to it as a 'penthouse'. Which means nothing more than that it's on the fifth floor, the same floor as the terrace, and hence is probably illegal. The apartment is so large that it feels empty. Furniture that used to look too big in our cramped Koramangala apartment barely fills the space here. I feel a constant need to buy new things to make it cosier. But I don't, because the flat that we're moving into next year (a flat that we'll own, yay!) is about 70% of the size of this one.

The thing I like best about this place is something most people would dislike. I leave the windows and balcony doors open all the time, and the wind brings in bits and pieces of life from the apartments below us. Snatches of conversation are frequent, in many languages. Some kid tortures his music teacher every afternoon - he tries really hard, but can't carry a tune to save his life. Maids gossip with each other and their employers - mostly during the mornings. Kids play in the playground downstairs - the afternoons are filled with their shouting and mock-fights. 

And oh, the aromas, especially in the morning! There is always at least one apartment that has dosa and sambar for breakfast. Sometimes, I smell kadala, though that might just be my phantom mallu nose. At lunchtime on weekends, the smell of frying fish wafts up, making Nikhil's mouth water. 

The only strange part about this place is the plot next door. It's a largely empty plot - just a tiny metal-roofed house in the middle. But in one corner of the plot is a set of three black headstones - one big and the other two small. I wonder what tragedy lies behind those three headstones. There's a huge tube-well right next to it. A tanker regularly collects water from the tube-well. I shudder in revulsion when I think of the headstones and the tube-well together.

The Future

A year from now, our brand new apartment will finally be ready (fingers crossed!). I'm already excitedly making plans for it - about the full-length bookshelves in the bedroom, and the sliding cupboard doors, and the wonderful lighting. I know that it will be a painful process to set up a new apartment, but hey - all those years of obsessive Apartment Therapy browsing should pay off some time, right?

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. 

Why We Don't Own A Car

Photo Credit: Vijay Sonar

When Nikhil and I got married, it was the Baby Question I was most worried about. Since I had married too early to give old aunties the opportunity to ask me the "So when are you getting married?" question, I thought said aunties wouldn't waste much time asking the "So when do we see a kunji kaal (little leg)?" question.

It turned out I hadn't kept up with the times. The question we get asked most these days is another one altogether. Yup, you guessed it.

"Why haven't you bought a car yet?"

Really, it's incredible. Our parents, close friends, distant relatives - somehow, the absence of a car in our garage seems to vex them no end. Their logic is simple - a  DINK husband and wife, both of whom have been working for many years, should have a car. The End.

Nikhil usually escapes the question by passing the baton to me, "My wife won't let me buy one."

I look daggers at him, but it's true - I'm the one who has been delaying the purchase.

My brain usually wants to respond to the question with another one, "Why SHOULD we buy a car?" And then, ideally, go off into a rant about how the correlation between social status and car ownership is just another plot of the bourgeois capitalists, etc etc. (See, my mallu communist blood hasn't gone dry, despite three years in the corporate world.)

But since I have more tact than I'm usually given credit for, I don't do that. Instead, I choose one of the many many reasons I have carefully listed out in my head. In fact, if you're a close friend, you'll be honoured with more than one reason. Here are my Top Ten, in no particular order:

1. Because we don't need one. Nikhil already has a bike. There are just two of us, and we're both fit enough to get on the bike, and young enough for it to not seem pathetic. The day we start a family (where family is defined as including a baby), that day we'll buy a car. I promise.
2. Because it doesn't make sense in Bangalore. If you've ever experienced Bangalore traffic, you'll know why. And if you haven't - well, good for you. A bike moves about ten times faster than a car in Bangalore.
3. Because we just bought a lake-facing third-floor apartment, yo! And we don't have any spare change at the moment, yo!
4. Because - HAVE YOU SEEN THE PRICE OF PETROL RECENTLY?
5. Because it makes more sense to hire a taxi when we can't do without a car. For example, when the parents visit, or the time we were going all around Bangalore looking for the perfect apartment. We spend about a thousand bucks on taxis per month, which is obviously less than most people spend on petrol per month.
6. Because Nikhil doesn't drive very well, and I don't drive at all. The reason Nikhil doesn't drive very well is that he only gets to drive when we go home to visit his parents. And the reason I don't drive at all is a long story involving a jumpy side-seat driver of a father who was too handy with the hand-brake - honestly, that story deserves a whole other blog post of its own.
7. Because I really, REALLY worry about the environment - unlike, apparently, everybody else I know. I don't see how we're going to make it to the next century if we keep on like this. And not buying a car is my tiny way of not ruining the environment.
8. Because of the number of times I have been stuck in traffic (in a bus, of course), and whole-heartedly cursed the idiots who drive themselves to work ALL ALONE in their big fat SUVs every day, thus adding to Bangalore's pollution levels as well as its traffic.
9. Because it would mean paying our non-tax-paying multiple-flat-owning landlord another six hundred rupees per month for a parking spot, and I think that's daylight robbery.
10. Because Bangalore has a mostly kick-ass public transportation system (except for the Metro which might as well not exist).
11. Because it's what's expected. And for once in my life, I don't want to do what's expected.
12. Because a car is a depreciating asset, as opposed to an apartment. (Dear Fin guys, I don't know if I used that term correctly, but please don't lecture me, okay? What I meant was that its price decreases over time, as opposed to a house. That's all. Thank you.)
13. Because - I might as well admit it - I'm a cheapskate.
14. Because I feel good when I travel by public transport. I feel all superior to the idiots who drive their own cars, I get to read a book in peace, I get to observe my fellow travellers, I'm spared the tension of driving in the messy Bangalore traffic, I feel like I'm still young and in college.
15. Because I don't want to buy into the story the Point One Percent are selling, and become part of the mindless Matrix.

There. I was supposed to stick to ten, but I had so many more.

Do you own a car? Do you agree with the above? Will you decide not to buy a car just because you can afford to? Do you choose to travel by public transport when it's convenient? Do you car-pool? Do you think it lowers your social status to travel by public transport - buses, the Metro, etc? Do you want to be a puppet of the car manufacturers? Have I managed to change your thinking at least a little bit?

I really, really want to know. 

Watching Ourselves Grow Old

And all of us are going old. It was inevitable, of course. But it's sad, nonetheless.

When will we realize that we are? Growing old, I mean. When will we realize that we can't continue the same lifestyles we always had? That we're no longer immortal. That Time has touched us with his black brush, that we can no longer remain arrogant, uncaring. That we can longer eat and drink and smoke and smoke up like we used to.

When others tell us? When we watch television shows in which it happens to other people, and it strikes us in a blinding epiphany? When our bellies overhang our belts by a certain number of inches (because they already do, you know)? When we wake up from restless sleep, and try to decode the unsettling dreams we struggled through? When a friend dies one day - a heart attack, a brain hemorrhage, or something more innocuous?

'Carpe Diem' is so much more poignant now. Because the number of days we have, they dwindle. They're no longer infinite, stretching ahead of us like an endless golden beach.

It's easy to waste a day, many days. Just sit still in a corner, and the day is gone. That's good in a way, because it helps us survive. But it's also bad, because you wake up one morning, and your life is spent, over, wasted. How do you make it count?

How do you manage to get up from the couch in front of the television, how do you stop your hand from stuffing your mouth, how do you stop doing what's easy and accepted and acceptable? How do you figure out what you want to do? And if it's different from what you're doing right now, how do you make that switch?

It irritates me, in a way. That people are okay to do this. That they're not even aware of their own potential, of what they're wasting. It worries me that I'm the only who's worried.

I tell myself I'm not like them, that I'm not wasting my life. But me, what am I doing? Do I know what I want, am I working towards it?

A flat on a lake-shore. A green painting on a wall. Enough money to travel and see the world. Fulfillment, the knowledge that what I'm doing makes a difference. Books, lots of books, and enough time to read them. A book of my own, but only if it's good. These are some of the things I want, things I have, things I would like more of.

And what I don't want? No TV. No car. No middle-class urban life. Trainspotting pretty much summarized it for me. Maybe I should put it up on a wall, as a reminder. Though it may be too late already.

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.

House Hunting in Koramangala

Nikhil and I have discovered a new dream profession. It requires zero intelligence, vast networks, and smooth talking abilities, and has good work-life balance because you only need to work in the evenings and on weekends.

It's the job of a broker.

When Nikhil and I started off on our house-hunt, we dreamt of finding a nice cozy little place. We knew the rent would be outrageous, considering we were looking at Koramangala. But we were okay with that, Double Income No Kids couple that we are. All we asked for was a place that we could come home to after work and find peace in.

Both of us had house-hunted in Bangalore earlier, and had found nice places in Koramangala with relative ease. Based on those earlier experiences, we decided not to use brokers this time. They charge a month's rent as commission from both the owner and the tenant, which struck as way too much. What was the internet for, anyway?

Till we discovered the reality. About 95% of the ads on real estate websites are posted by brokers (and half of those posting as 'owners' turn out to be brokers). No matter which site you look at - Sulekha, Magic Bricks, 99 Acres - they're all teeming with the blood-sucking leaches called brokers.

At one point, we were so desperate that we spent a rainy afternoon going back and forth along the lanes of Koramangala, searching for 'To Let' boards. A hopeless pursuit, of course, because brokers don't allow owners to put up these boards.

Finally, we gave up and called in the brokers. That was on Wednesday. Since then, we have covered every inch of Koramangala on Nikhil's bike, following young broker boys as they zip along without helmets in patched-together bikes, flouting all traffic rules, but never getting caught. We have been baked in the morning heat, we have been drenched in the afternoon rain, we have yelled at each other out of sheer frustration, we have been passed along from broker to broker like lucky coins.

The specimens of houses we have seen have been amazing. Houses with no bathrooms except a sort of servant quarters at the back (Rs 14, 000), a house that stank of dogs and made Nikhil almost throw up (Rs 11, 000), a house that stank of urine (Rs 16, 000), a house with a staircase a fat person would have trouble squeezing into (Rs 18, 000), a house a stone's throw away from a drain (Rs 19, 200).

We have seen at least 6-7 brokers during this time. Most were nice, except for one guy who took us to a place we had already discovered on our own, and then insisted that we pay him brokerage just because he told us it was still available. We're not taking the (mostly nice) house just because we don't want to pay him brokerage.

Right now, we're contemplating the Rs 19, 000 one near the drain. It's on the second floor, so we're hoping the stench of the drain won't be too much. It's a nice house, cozy, yellow, warm colours. It has an open kitchen, and a balcony that runs the entire length of the house. And the bathrooms are big enough, something which was an absolute must-have for me.

We've resigned ourselves to having to pay the brokerage. But really - does any profession pay so much for doing nothing as does brokering? You're getting paid just for your networks. And if you're in Koramangala and manage to get some 4 new tenants in a month, you're already above the Rs 1 lakh barrier. And I bet none of them pay tax either. Wow.

A Day in the Life

I was reading the other day about Google's Life in a Day project, where people from all over the world could submit videos on their life on July 24th. Google will now be creating a user generated film of how the world was on July 24th 2010. It's a unique project, but let me tell Google how the world is today. Well, not today - every day.

All of us, we have our dreams, our desires. I want to go to Hawaii, I want to buy her some diamonds, I wish I were that girl. No matter how big those dreams are, they get lost some time or the other. The world passes us by, uncaring. We have our little worries, our little tensions. Will I get my hike? Will she go out with me? Will my book get published? They don't matter, because nobody will remember them.

People were happy today. People were exploited today. People got married and had children today. People died today. People saw rainbows in the sky today. People watched today's sunset and thought, "I'll never be this happy ever again." People kissed and hugged and held hands and told each other they loved each other. People were asked for enormous bribes today. People lost their lands to uncaring governments today. People started new exercise plans today. People's stomachs rumbled of hunger today. People fell in love with a book today. People sat in closed rooms today and waited for someone to rescue them from their loneliness. People forgot to water their plants today. People sat outside their homes and idly chatted with their neighbours today. People were nostalgic about the sixties today. People bought new clothes at discount sales today. People sang aloud today out of sheer joy today. People flunked exams today. People slipped on banana skins today. People...

It doesn't matter, at the end of the day.

My Phone and Me

Dear Reader, I am writing this post in order to give you some valuable advice. My wisdom is free of cost, though I have gained it through painful experience.

And my advice, reader, is this: If any part of your phone stops working, just ditch it. Buy a new one, no matter how much you love your phone, no matter how minor the malfunctioning.

Why? Let me tell you my experience.

My phone is a Moto Rokr, which my uncle gifted me almost two years ago. It has always served me perfectly well, once I figured out the touchscreen.

Unfortunately, one fine day in March, the touchscreen stopped working. And since the Moto Rokr is a phone that has about five keys in total, this made it almost completely useless.

I googled a lot, to try and figure out what I could do to make it work again. Some website said I should try re-flashing it, so I did that. Nothing happened, except for me losing my entire contacts list.

Finally, I went and got the screen replaced. Eight hundred bucks, end of story.

Or so I thought.

Three days later, the cover of the phone started peeling off. Yup, peeling off. Apparently, the guy hadn't put the cover back on properly when he replaced the screen.

I was in Kerala at the time, and I tried to glue the cover back with Fevicol.

Long story short, my brand new screen got a few white pimples. And the phone and its cover continued to refuse to meet.

Fine, I thought. I'll put a piece of cello tape around the body and just continue using it for a while. So I did that for a couple of months, though both my poor phone and I had to suffer a lot of people's contemptuous looks. I stopped carrying it around unless I absolutely needed to. A phone with white pimples, held together by cello tape.

In the meantime, another tragedy happened. The touch screen's lock stopped working. Which meant that I had to always hold it in my hand, because otherwise it might go and dial some random number.

So I was again in a quandary. I could neither carry it around in my hand, because it looked so supremely fugly, nor could I put it in my bag.

Back to the repair shop.

The repair guy quoted thousand bucks for the replacement of the body and the lock. Fine, I said. Just do it - I just want a working phone again!

But when I went back to pick it up, he said that the fevicol had damaged the screen, and so he had had to replace the screen as well. Another five hundred bucks, he said.

I explained to him patiently that it was after he had replaced the screen last time that the body had started peeling off. He told me, equally patiently, that that was all very well, but who had asked me to smear Fevicol all over the screen? We spoke very patiently (okay, not) to each other for some half an hour, providing much amusement to the other customers. At the end of the half hour, I paid him the money and came back.

Clearly, I should have listened more in those Collective Bargaining & Negotiation classes in XL.

Anyway. The phone came back good as new. The body was completely scratch-less, the screen was absolutely spotless. Wow, I thought - maybe all that money was worth it.

And then the buzzing started.

Let me describe the buzzing noise. It's like a loud bee somewhere inside the phone, singing exclusively for my pleasure, and that of the caller.  And the best part is that the bee likes singing only when I'm at home.

When I'm in the repair guy's shop, trying to yell at him, it refuses to open its mouth.

Fine, I thought. I'll carry out all my phone conversations in other parts of the city.

So that was the status quo. Till today.

Today, my phone decided to just give up and die. It conked off without a word, without a final tearful goodbye. At first, I thought it had run out of charge. So I plugged it in, but it refused to show its lively blue face to me. Right now, I'm staring at it, completely emotionless and empty, resigned to the fact that two grand has gone down the drain, and I will have to buy a new phone. I just wish I'd made this decision four months ago.


Update: It's back, the phone is back! It seems it heard my plea and decided to come back to me! Woohoo! (Though the loud bee seems to be still residing inside it, but who cares!)

On Writing

Every story that needs to be told has already been told. And now we're telling the same things over and over again, in different words, in different colours.

Where do I fit in? Do I have a story to tell? Does anybody want to listen? My ideas are cliched, my tone amateurish. I read what I've written and wince at myself.

Yet I need to put words down. I get joy out of seeing them there, little black squiggles on white, little bits of my soul that I've squeezed out and lined up.

Maybe that's enough, at the end of the day. But not at the end of the life. Surely not?

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.