Bangalore Rising

The report on my twenty-four hour whirlwind trip to Chennai this weekend can wait. But I must tell you about the cabbie that dropped me off home from Cantonment Railway Station late last night. Cheerful Sudhakar Shanthakumar got chatty no sooner I hopped into his Toyota Etios cab outside the noisy & chaotic station. After the usual conversation starter “Aiyoo…baala traffic saar illi, parking maddakkey kooda kashta..”, we got talking about his car, his profession, his family, and life in general. When I eventually hopped off sixteen kilometres, and forty minutes later, close to midnight, I walked out shaking hands with a winner. Sudhakar is 41 years old, has a teacher for a wife, and a son who is a 7 th grader at Baldwin High near Hennur. Coming from a pretty poor background, he proudly claimed that he was self-made. With nothing more than a commercial driver’s license as his asset, he became a long-distance bus driver for nearly a dozen years, ferrying passengers to and ...

Religion: My classmate, Artemizia Vaz fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I told her that I was a Roman Hindu. She said she never knew such a denomination existed. Roman Hindus, I explained, were a small sect from Southern India, who went to temples Sunday mornings, decked up in dhoti and kurta, attended mass bhajan sessions at the temple, and celebrated Diwali on December 25. I lived a Roman Hindu for the rest of my college life. You don’t want an ill-tempered, large, strong woman as an enemy, do you? Godmen. I was deep asleep when my dad and mom woke me up. It was a tented waiting area somewhere near Manohar Pukur Road I think (or could be Sarat Bose Road…who cares anyway). Our turn to meet Elimbichapazham (Limbu) baba had come. At a godforsaken 1am. When we were ushered into this tiny room, the baba was seated on a low stage, with a couple of his ‘bhaktas’ next to him. I have a hazy recollection of this young man with a stubble, probably wearing kaavi thundu…he listened to my ...

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...