Bangalore Rising

Back in the ‘70s, Southern Avenue was a tree lined, quiet street. Jolkhabar was across the street, famous for its spongy rosogolla, divine lal-dhoi, and yummy dhakai porota. The pantu-da’ar chaa-aar-singara’ar dokan   was diagonally opposite, sharing a wall with the panwallah who also made mouth-watering begun-bhaja; the puchka-wala sat right next to them at the corner of Southern Avenue and Lake Place. There was also the uniquely-Cal bhelpuri wallah who sat outside Mehta House, with just the 30-feet width of Lake Place separating him from the puchka-wallah. The bhelpuri-wallah had this gigantic, yellow, metal trunk with wheels. When he set up shop by opening the humungous lid, it exposed a massive tray with a million compartments. He would pull out two sheets from a glossy magazine tucked on the side, convert them into a short wide cone, put a handful of various lip-smacking stuff into the cone, toss in some gooey liquid, give it a nice swirl, garnish it with some sev and c...

Mumbai, 1987: Kamalakara Rao was my much senior colleague at Cyanamid, Mumbai. One evening, as he was heading out of the office on his trusted Vespa scooter, he spied another colleague Shamkant Damle walking towards the bus-stop. KR offered SD a 'lift' to his home in Dadar, SD politely refused, but KR insisted. So SD, who suffered from a groin strain, tried to get on to the scooter the usual way, failed, and so flipped the foot rest open so that he could stand on it and get astride. No sooner did SD open the footrest, KR raced away, completely oblivious to the fact that SD was not aboard. This happened on a Friday evening. Those were times when mobile phones were not around, and landlines were rare. So, after spending a torrid weekend, KR heaved a huge sigh of relief Monday morning, upon seeing SD. Rao had worried that Damle had fallen off the scooter midway. Or that he had gotten off ahead of his usual destination and not informed him. And when it dawned on him that SD had n...

The perks of visiting my mother-in-law's place in Chennai has always been the food of course, which is simply fantastic, and the complete freedom to do and be what I want to do or be…there is never an expectation from anyone to adhere to any 'home' norms. Its an all-women household, with a 92-year pretty much vegetative grand mom being the oldest resident. But having lived in the same house in gopalapuram for almost forty-five years, my mother-in-law (Jaya mami or paatu-maami as she is known to all) does not want to move, in spite of umpteen problems with her present home. And I can understand why. Her thirty year music school has kept her very busy and happy. If that were not enough, she is quite famous in the neighbourhood. Once an auto rickshaw guy gave her the ultimate compliment - amma, naan silappa romba tired-a irunthen-na unga veettu keeley ninthindu paatu kaypen-amma. Tension-ellam poidum amma. The keerai kaari and the veggie vendor knows her, the shopkeepers know...

Indians and Maintenance don't seem to go hand in hand. We buy expensive homes, but cringe paying our maid decent money for its upkeep, or delay painting our homes when a lick is due, or not repair an equipment the 'right way, right time'. This same attitude is visible in our public infrastructure too - our utilities look run down right from the beginning - the bridges look old Day 2, new roads get laid but budgets are not allocated for their upkeep, and sidewalks are built with nary a thought for its use. The list goes on and on. We Indians just don't have the orientation, the process, the skills, or the training to keep things in good shape. And that is because, deep within us, we lack pride - in ourselves, in our neighbourhood, in our city, or in our country. Pride is not about chest-thumping and singing Vande Mataram or Jana Gana Mana twice in a year. Pride is doing those small things, irrespective of whether it is our duty, to keep our own homes, and own our locali...

The sole purpose of our visit to the US this time was a package drop-off at Vassar College, a small liberal arts school, spread across 1,000 acres of pristine beauty, and tucked in a quiet part of Poughkeepsie - a good six miles from main street, if there is one. And the package was none other than our strapping young lad who is finding his feet back in the US, but this time as a freshly minted adult. Founded in 1861 as a women's college, Vassar turned coed in 1969. Former Vassar grads Meryl Streep and Lisa Kudrow suggest a strong affinity amongst students to drama and arts, though its pre-med and pre-law programs are apparently extremely good. Touted as one of America's Top 10 liberal arts (and sciences) schools, Vassar has a reputation to guard. They screen carefully, and look for variety in their student community. LGBTQ is big there, and so is liberalism. And that brings me to a very interesting interaction. After dropping our son off in school for his freshman orientation...

I can never get the pronunciation right. Pough-keep-see. Pa-keep-see. Pu-keep-see. Peek-see. Peep-see. Anyway, the name is longer than the town itself. Now you know that is a lie. But P'see is indeed a small town of 70,000 people - Southern Avenue would have more people outdoors on a hot summer day that all of P'see I suppose. While I have not read the history of P'see much, I understand IBM put it firmly on the map several decades ago during their growth boom in the '50s and '60s, as they were searching for towns to set up offices not far from their HQ in Armonk, NY. IBM has since downsized their operations in Poughkeepsie but they still have a few buildings full of techies, and have a street named IBM. Small town America is very interesting and very predictable in its own way - the same strip malls with similar stores, the same shopping mall with large box stores. Target, Converse, Reebok, Body Works, Burlington Coat Factory, Foot Locker, DSW, Sweet Tomatoes, Fre...

New York city always fascinates me. It is, in my opinion, one of the world's three great cities, with London and Mumbai being the other two. All three have some open spaces in the middle of the city - Hyde Park and St Johns Park in London, Azad, Cross Maidans and Cooperage in Mumbai and of course the famous Central Park in New York. Of course, there are more things in common, and some things very very different from one another. Each time I visit NY, I walk away a bit more fascinated by the city and its people - the chaos of traffic and unruliness on the road, amidst the order of nice broad walkways, traffic lights that work, and pretty decent roads (their potholes thankfully are fewer and smaller). But NY is far safer than either London or Mumbai - certainly Mumbai. When I went to NY for the first time in the early nineties, apart from all the touristy things that I got to see, I found out about the infamous peep shows near Times Square. Of course, during the last part of Mayor M...