Lament for a Lost Bangalore

In my previous post, I wrote with an excess excitement about how METRO can restore the lost glory of Bangalore. It suddenly struck me that I was thinking about Bangalore in a positive sense after a long time. For more than a decade, I lived with a sense of despair about a city that I intensely loved. The sense of despair emerged out of intense love but lost pride. Why did we fall into despair? Why did we go so numb that we avoided even good memories of the past? What was so great about Bangalore? How did its collapse come about? What of the past glory can be revived or rebuilt?

In the late 70s and 80s, Bangalore was nothing short of heaven. Its just that we were not aware of it. We not only did not recognize it, we also took it for granted. Its heavenly character is now a thing of the past but thankfully Kannada movies of that era capture the essence of it - if you dont believe my words.

The roads of Bangalore had the right number of people. Their width was just right for the number of vehicles it carried. Vehicular movement jelled into human life as a natural extension. Cycling across the city was normal. The average width of the footpaths was equal to that of the motor-able roads. In places like Jayanagar, the former was bigger than the latter. A pothole is something I hardly saw in Bangalore until the early 90s in the metropolitan Bangalore. Almost every year a layer of roads were re-laid even when there was no severe damage. Although we used to nail the cricket wickets into the tar roads it did not damage the roads any severely. The traditional Bangaloreans washed their roads everyday with water - which the corporation today blames as one of the reasons for tar roads turning bad - but back then the tar roads seemed insensitive to such onslaught of water.

Bangaloreans valued space. Generally even a 20ft by 30 ft owner of a plot felt obligated to build only half and grow plants in the remaining part or leave empty if one could not manage growing plants. The first floor was the luxury of the top 5% of the city and the second floor was a vulgar display of wealth which no Bangalorean thought as worth risking one's social image. The wealthy Bangalorean did not feel it necessary to indulge in public display of wealth - average Bangalorean considered such display as shameful. At 10 PM, if an automatic traffic light signalled a halt a lone vehicle did not think of it as ridiculous to stop for 60 seconds and wait for the green light. This was normal and one did not beam such acts as high social responsibility.

Society was on its own ride. Bangalore slept after 8PM and children were expected to come home by 7PM but no parent ever worried where their children were until 7PM. We never told our parents where we were going in an era of no landline forget about mobile phone. While Bangalore could be notoriously insecure in the night during the day society acted as though security was not even a concept. Most of us knew people in the 500 mts of radious atleast as an acquaintance if not as friends. We lived in a highly diverse society without any liberals having to push for it or lament the loss of it. Our office going highly middle-class chawl was next to a milk-vendor's Cow-shed and one didnt think of it as unhygenic. It was common for us walk through a well formed line of cow-dung drops seamlessly moving without overstepping in an unassumingly carefree manner. Neither was it considered as below a status to live in such a neighbourhood.

Bangaloreans were oblivious to other cities being contemptuous towards their slow pace of life and often demonstrated that in their vehicle driving as well. Anybody could at any point in time stop in the middle of the road and talk for hours without suffering from a sense of loss of time or destination or people or money.

Much has been written about the weather of Bangalore - I will not repeat. But the birds of Bangalore - Oh - every evening it was a heavenly delight to watch parrots flocking back to their nests - their greens contrasting the evening orange. Sparrows were commonly sighted, one felt squirrels all the time around. Yes - dogs were a menace even then, but cats were a plenty. Air pollution was something environmentalists studied in their  text books entering into the common parlance only in the 90s. Yes - We drank the tap water without water filters!!! Kaveri water was available almost everywhere.

Politicians were at worst known for inaction. The rowdy elements were confined to certain quarters of Bangalore and the common man could live without criss crossing paths.

The biggest complaint that Bangaloreans had was city buses not coming in time but they walked and reached their destination at times! Does that not look like heaven?

There were plenty of problems yet undoubtedly there was more peace and life in Bangalore. In my next post - I will write about the problems that we faced then some hilarious and some extremely life-constraining and how we dealth with it - lest some of you think that I am imagining a romantic and unreal past.