Our Bangalore - A day in namma Silicon valley

Mani wakes up at five in the morning on Sundays. He never minds the morning chillness of Bangalore and takes bath in ice cold water. He then wears his trousers with suspenders which gives him a mid-nineteenth century look. Sharp at six in the morning, he steps out of the house and walks through the Mahatma Gandhi road (MG road) which remains uncharacteristically quiet on Sunday mornings (but for the omnipresent auto rickshaws). He reaches the fag end of the MG road, the trinity circle, at 6.45 sharp. He then climbs the spire of the Trinity church and waits till his watch ticks to 7AM and then strikes the huge brass bell.

The sound of the bell gets dampened in the cosmopolitan buzz of the city. But in those pre-independence days when Bangalore remained as a military outpost for the Brits, the sound of the bell would be the wake-up call for soldiers to attend the sunday morning mass.

Mani is one of those few remaining traces of the erstwhile British Bangalore. It is quite interesting that the name 'Mani' translates to 'Bell' in Tamil, which happens to be the mother tongue of Mani. His father was one among thousands of migrant laborers that the British deported from Madras presidency to work in Bangalore. He grew up in Benson town which is on the periphery of the Bangalore cantonment railway station. He had seen a dozen of Victorian buildings torn down for some fancy software buildings or for the more fancier Metro-rail project. He never complains how the Mayo hall which until late 1990s can be viewed from anywhere in MG road, is currently just another building crunched between shopping malls and high-end pubs. He never registers his grief about  the 'Bible society of India' renting their building to the 'Hard rock cafe'. For Victor Mani Anburaj, Trinity church is all what mattered.

Later that sunday, I catch up with Arun in an urban coffee-shop in Indira Nagar. He is (of course!) an engineer by profession and whenever he is not travelling on official assignments to USA, he researches about the history of Bangalore. He tells me that much of history of Bangalore is unwritten and hence he has to meet many of second or third generation Bangalorians (there are not many) and collect information from them. He is an alumini of St.Josephs (these native Bangalorians take pride in their school). For example, every time I meet Arun he never forgets to tell that Rahul Dravid is also an alumini of St.Joseph's and how he had seen him practice cover drives in the school grounds with white flannels. 

Out of curiosity, I ask Arun "who were this Benson's, Cox's and Fraser's? who had lent their names to the old Bangalore districts of Benson-town, Cox-town and Fraser-town" . His answer surprises me. They were just another Englishmen. He sips the last drops of his Irish coffee on the sides of the mug, and says "They were neither battle-heroes nor martyrs. They were just common British soldiers" and with a tinge of laugh adds "That's what Bangalore is all about isnt it? You can come here as anybody, the city will make you somebody". I should agree to him. 

Later we take the metro to MG road again, and walk the entire time through Brigade road doing some shop-hopping. I ask him about the continuous affiliation to English names for Bangalorian streets and roads which is quite uncommon in India, for its a general trend nowadays to rename them to Indian names. He shows me the plaque in the corner of MG road announcing 'Field Marshall B M Cariappa road', and adds "if you tell an auto-rickshaw driver he wont understand it". 

Bangalore has long forgotten the Indian names which the government tried to push. Still Cavalry road, Commissariat road, Infantry road, Lavelle Road exists in their old names. The only person who had broken this tradition is Bangalore's own local boy - 'Anil Kumble' who after his 10 wicket haul against Pakistan in Cricket, has a circle named after him.

Bangalore is pseudo-western slams Nabanita Sen. She had spent her young days in Kolkata before migrating to Bangalore for work. She never feels Bangalore beyond the steel and concrete buildings of multinational companies in Electronic city. She stays in a 'Womens PG' (paying guest accomodation) in Madiwala, which is for practical reasons is a tower of Babel. 

That Sunday evening, We had decided to meet in one Bangaliana restaurant in Koramangala for dinner. "Try Rohu fish or Katla , it is authetic Bengali cuisine here", "I had never thought life would become so mechanical",  "I got an onsite offer to Canada, may be next year I will spend there" , "Aamir Khan had signed for Dhoom3".. To follow her conversation is just like driving a motorbike in peak hour in Bannerghatta road. 

After dinner and an ice-cream in corner house, we take a lazy Sunday evening walk. I casually ask her if she has any plans to move back to Kolkata. "No way! What will I do there" is the reply with a smile.

Nabanita wants to shop for some shawls, I take an excuse of recharging my mobile and stay outside the shop looking at my fellow bangalorians with Wordsworth'ian patience - Thousands of software engineers  thronging the shops in Koramangala in their late Sunday shopping spree with same frenzy and zeal as late Christmas shopping, People in neatly pressed formals offering credit cards of multinational banks, The sodium vapor lamp emitting a yellowy haze adding some more charm to the cosmopolitan crowd. Time and again a trendy motorbike whizzes past with thin girls in the pillion almost clinging to the fat machine and not-so-fat rider. 

Nabanita comes after half an hour buying nothing. We decide to walk down to Madiwala. We cross the road  at Madiwala checkpost , where a speeding BMTC bus almost runs both of us down. In Madiwala after dropping her in her PG, I look for the omnipresent auto-rickshaw to get back home. "1 1/2 meter sir" smiles the auto-driver.

(I wish to thank Mr.Arun, who made me understand history of Bangalore. He conducts Victorian Bangalore walk tours on sunday mornings http://www.bangalorewalks.com/html/Victorian-Bangalore-Walk.html)

Three Fingers - A short story

He was wearing a light grey sweater and had a hand-kerchief tied to his right hand. On further observation, I found that three fingers were missing in his right hand. The hand-kerchief is an attempt to veil his hand from sympathies or feared looks of mankind. Ramakant no longer feels the ghost fingers, which haunted him for the first few days since he lost them in a heavy machine.

He has learnt writing in left hand from then on. Inline with the rigorous traditional practice, Ramakant grew as a right-handed person since his childhood. But necessity overtook superstitions as he even started to offer flower to his favorite god, Ganesha, in left hand. Now he is left, but that is limited only with respect to dexterity.

Though not connected to this narration, it would be interesting to know how Ramakant lost three fingers in his right hand. It all begins with wit the dream of building a socialistic society by our first prime minister, Mr.Jawaharlal Nehru and his idea of experimenting with five-year plans copied from Soviet. It was after concentrating on agriculture and irrigation in the first 'five-year plan' in 1951 that Mr.Nehru shifted his attention towards 'Industrial sector'. He decided that industries are important proponents in a planned economy and spent a whooping amount erecting factories, importing machinery and building power plants. Naturally Soviets took interest in us, in the world infested in cold war fever. That particular machine, which had cut the fingers in Ramakant's right hand, was imported from Soviet in the 50's. The machine cuts papers of various sizes as per its calibration. 

All the machinery even to this day needs an inevitable human support. And those humans, after years of operating a machine, become a part of machine itself. They work like clockwork, pressing green and red buttons, feeding the machine one side with raw material, checking the oil level and all those things which engineering had considered human being as part of the design. These people work in shifts and always feel the person in the other shift operates that machine shabbily. 

Ramakant used to be very loyal employee, but just had his name enrolled in a trade-union. He never thought of being someone else other than that cutting machine operator. For an untrained eye, it may look even that Ramakant was born operating that machine. Ramakant would always smelt like a grease tin in those days, and his fingers would always be greasy-black even when not in work. 

It happened on a fateful day in a cold November morning, Ramakant was feeding sheets of paper from one side of the machine and it got in at a slightly tapered angle. The machine made a loud sound as the paper got jammed in one of those complex joints of the machine. As a reflex action, Ramakant tried to clear the jam with his hand. The giant shredder suddenly started to move down with all its weight. Ramakant was quick enough as he moved his hand out in a swift action, but cannot save his fingers. There the red fluid of life mixed with grey fluid of machinery and got splashed into the paper roll which got jammed. There was ambulance, there were doctors, the union leaders and then the factory manager, but all this remained like a piece of choir to Ramakant who were not singing to their tune. 

It was not the pain or grief which caught his thoughts in those initial days, but it was the fear of living without three fingers for the rest of his life. For those were the fingers which his mom held as he learnt walking, and those were the fingers which his wife entwined when they made love, those were the fingers which writes his half-baked poems, and more importantly for him, those were fingers which operates the cutting machine.

Ramakant was back from hospital after some days and spent time at home fighting against the ghost of his fingers. One day the union leader came with a box of sweets and a good news that Ramakant was offered a post as receptionist in factory guest house on compassionate grounds. Ramakant accepted the offer and showed monochromatic honesty and perfectionism in his job. 

As the vistitors checked-in to the guesthouse in holiday season, he would hand-over the heavy registration ledger with his shaky left hand (which sometimes offends some traditional right handed visitors) and ask them to enter their address, in-time,.. etc. Then shows them to their room with right hand firmly stuck inside pant pockets which throws an air of casualness around him. He warns them smoking is an offence inside the guest house and preempts them that the main gate will be locked at ten in the night. In off-season, the management had decided nowadays to leave the guest-house on rent even for those who were not employed in the firm. 

I met Ramakant today morning. He told me smoking is not allowed inside the guest-house and that the gate closes at ten in the night and handed me the registration ledger in his left hand. The portrait of Mr.Nehru was smiling at me from behind.