A REQUIEM FOR THE GARDEN CITY

A lot has been said and written about the plight of Bangalore. Crawling traffic, infrastructure bottlenecks, an apathetic government, Bangalore represents the worst of our civic governance failure. So I shall not go on another all-too familiar diatribe on all the infrastructure ills of India’s silicon valley. That's not what irks me. What I am bothered about are the people. Because people lend character to a city. They define a city. And that's where Bangalore has changed. Just like every other city, I guess. In some cases, irrevocably. It’s no longer that sleepy little town, which was a pleasure to visit. If you were an outsider like me, you went to Bangalore only for two reasons. Either for a holiday or to settle down. Today people come there with stars in their eyes, to ride the great Indian tech boom.

Today, six out of ten persons in Bangalore are from outside. Bangalore has become a city of outsiders. Like an brand-man and an old Bangalorean, Harish Bijoor says, "there are two kinds of Bangaloreans these days. The ones who came here twenty years back, and the ones who’ve come here two to five years back." The problem is Bangalore’s increasingly getting taken over by the new comers. Flashy, yuppie and frankly sometimes, garish. The old Bangalorean’s mild-mannered nature just gets submerged in this collective new-world clamour.

What irks me is that a large number of people (atleast the ones who are most visible and vocal) in Bangalore, have become pseudo. They want to be seen hanging out at certain places simply because it is a hip thing to do. It’s ‘cool’, in their lingo. People pretend to have fun. They’ve become image-conscious and have the money which they need to spend in style. There are too many wannabes hanging around Forum and Garuda. In short, it's what I call the Delhi-fication of Bangalore.

Gone are the days, when hanging out meant eating crispy dosas at MTR or steaming Bissibelle baath at Udupi Krishna Bhavan or simply strolling aound Lal Bagh or Cubbon Park. You could call me a sucker for old world nostalgia, but we went there to eat or stroll and generally have a good time. Not to be seen to be eating or seen to be strolling around. Today, eating out is a lifestyle statement. Going for a movie at PVR is a status symbol. What’s important is where you are eating and what you eat. Not whether it fills your stomach.

I went to a place called Opus when I was in Bangalore. Not a bad place, I must admit. Nice ambience, decent food and way better music than anything you'll get to hear in Delhi. But the people who came there were more Delhiite and less Bangalorean. Fake accents, designer clothes and a swanky attitude to go with it. A friend of mine (an old Bangalorean at that) has a wonderful term that describes these people. 'Fu fu-Shi shi'. Which basically means ‘wannabes’. Bangalore, I'm afraid has become a city of pretenders.

I maybe making too much ado about the natural changes brought to a city’s demography with time. And no city, least of all Bangalore, is immune to the winds of change. But there are larger sociological implications to this growing phenomenon. And sometimes it’s led to violent clashes in a bid to re-territorialize the city. Most recently, when Dr.Rajkumar died, violence engulfed parts of Bangalore. It was as much for the loss of a great cultural icon as it was an assertion by unemployed local youth that they don’t want to be left out of the great Indian dream. That explains the symbols they chose to target..software offices, corporate buildings and government installations. The overall damage to property/business far outweighed the loss of lives. Eight people killed. Forty million dollars of business lost. The same holds true of the 1991 anti-Tamil riots. As much as it was a protest against the Tamils, in the aftermath of the Cauvery tribunal’s interim order, it was also a remonstration at the lack of educational/economic opportunities for indigenous Kannadigas. Consider this. 21 people killed, 15 of them in police firing. On the other hand, the damage to property, 20 crores. And that in 1991, was an astronomical sum.

For all its bluster, the IT industry, the so called jewel in Bangalore’s crown has created just about six lakh jobs. A majority, sixty percent of them indirectly, as allied services. Under 2 lakh are employed directly in the IT and BPO sectors. And that in a city of seven million is quite minimal, considering the pre-eminent position IT claims in the city’s scheme of things. Even today, three and half million people, that’s half of Bangalore’s populace lives in ‘shadow areas’, a government coined euphemism for poverty. But no one writes or reports about it. Almost as if, the poor of Bangalore simply don’t exist.

In essence, Bangalore’s is a tale of two cities. One, living on pretensions, the other in poverty. One, savouring the delights of a good life. The other, struggling from one meal to another. Islands of prosperity in an ocean of poverty. The garden city may yet tide over, what maybe considered a temporary phenomenon. But for old timers like me, Bangalore will never be the same again.