gladly beyond any distance
This photograph is a week old, but I can’t get it out of my head. Torrential rain, and Bangaloreans have to find innovative ways of staying afloat. sigh.
Btw, this is a photograph of Hosur Road, taken by S Eashwar, Deccan Herald, 15 September 2007.
Well, we did it. Unbelievably, amazingly so. We moved. Right now, I’m sitting in our ‘cozy’ (Bay area euphemism for tiny) apartment somewhere in Bezerkly, Caaalifornia. We moved from the city that was home for so many years, home both real and imagined, home both bliss and bane. Bengaluru.
We moved for so many reasons, all practical, well-thought out, but it doesn’t help the goodbyes. Bangalore was getting really rough on my asthma (wait, the increasing pollution was actually one of the *causes* for my asthma), and the craziness of the chaos, the traffic, the change in lifestyles, in attitudes, in the Bangalore spirit, was moving beyond we-can-manage-this-because-we-love-the-city to we-might-love-it-but-we-can’t-cope-anymore. Even our time with the Koramangala Initiative (a citizen’s forum in Koramangala) made us feel that without sustained political will, well-intentioned citizens’ efforts can feel frustrating rather than empowering.
Also, it’s been ten years of working for both Ashwin and me, and we felt the need to reflect on those ten years, and to challenge ourselves in different ways for the next ten. So Ashwin chose to go back to university (‘school’ as they call it here in the usofa), and I chose to finish that darn, never-ending doctoral thesis of mine.
All good reasons. Still hard to say goodbye. So I’m going to resort to what I know to be true: misquoting Bob Dylan always works. Goodbye’s too sad a word, babe, so I’ll just say fare thee well.
Besides, as the Governor of our newly inhabited state (Arnold Shivajinagar) is fond of saying, I Will Be Back. And he’s just following namma Bharatiya samskruti, where you never say ‘I’m leaving’, you always wave tata and say, ‘Bartheevi’, ‘Aashbo’, ‘Varen’, ‘Aathe hai’. We’ll be back. Bartheevi, Bengaluru.
Since I had such a positive response to my earlier post on old pictures of Bangalore, I thought this announcement from Jackfruit Research & Design would also interest readers:
LIFE AND TIMES OF BANGALORE AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY – a collection of postcards of the city as it was at the turn of the 20th century. Views of commercial areas, government, civic, cultural and religious institutions, parks, lakes and daily life, form an urban archive of Bangalore as imagined by the British eighty or more years ago. These souvenirs of the past provide a sense of the city as a colonial government and trading centre in the Mysore princely state.
As I’ve said below, Karnataka is celebrating its 50th year of creation (there was a reorganisation of most Indian states in 1956). Possibly from almost back then, a few photographs of Bangalore, courtesy the Navadarshanam Trust, via Ammu Joseph:
First, the Town Hall
Next, MG Road (South Parade)
And finally, the bane of many of our present lives: Hosur Road, Bangalore (Silkboard, can you believe this???)!!! [Update: I think it was called ‘Cemetry Road’ back then, at least so it says on this finally enlarged photograph; will check with those who remember]
You can be Bangalore-d in many more ways than one. It’s not just our world-class infrastructure that we can boast about at the moment. We are also, solely from anecdotal evidence, the world’s flu capital. No, not bird flu (for which we now have a cheap vaccine developed by Indian researchers), not chikangunya (‘that which bends up’, from the Makonde, a matrilineal ethnic group from east Africa… and you thought it sounded like it originated in north Karnataka? So did I), though these have added weight to the honours list. But the common, garden variety, seven-days-or-a-week influenza is… well… everywhere. Especially in me. Twice over in the last two weeks.
You think the world is outsourcing flu, amongst all else? Sigh. It feels like it at the moment in my little corner of the blogosphere. And I’m the privileged back-end office. Working overtime. Triple sigh.
In the hope of recovery – and for all the others who I know are suffering too – here’s a funny something from the master of cheerer-ups: Ogden Nash. And just in case you’re wondering: when I have a snuffle, my temper is uffle.