Diwali time in ‘Bang’alore

Diwali time in ‘Bang’alore

Diwali was the most eagerly awaited festival for children and it was
common to hear fire crackers go off several days before and after the
festival. Over the years, owing to prices, pollution and pets, the
festival is being celebrated on a lower key in Bangalore.
Though one doesn’t hear fire crackers days ahead of Diwali to signal
the approaching festival these days, the retail revolution has ensured
that one knows the festival is round the corner with the papers,
pamphlets and super markets announcing sales. The advent of the
festival was also evident from the open display of fire crackers in
shops. Before the ban on selling crackers in shops came into force,
one went to the family’s provision store to buy the season’s supply of
fire crackers. The shopkeeper’s tins of Ovaltine and Tinopal would
make way for packets of aane (elephant) patakis (big red fire
crackers) and kudre (horse) patakis (smaller crackers), besides
rockets, flower pots and the like.
Besides provision stores, people bought their quota of crackers from
their work places. Employees of Bangalore’s public sector industries,
which were once the biggest employers in the city, brought home
cartons of crackers from their factories, which sold it to their
employees at a discount. It was also common for people to buy crackers
through chit fund schemes.
Once the crackers are brought home, some of them are unpacked and left
out in the sun, presumably to keep the powder dry. However, it is
common to see crackers failing to go off after they are lit. But when
the little boy gets close to it to check the fuse, “bang” it goes,
sending him scurrying for cover, leaving the incense stick behind.
Children also innovate with crackers, like covering a bomb with a tin,
only to see it shoot up into the sky once the cracker goes off.
On Diwali day, lamps line up on compound walls, the flower pots light
up the streets, the bombs echo off the walls, the rockets hiss and
blast in the city’s several neighbourhoods. There’s not a minute’s
silence. A view of the night sky shows rockets in every direction
shooting up into the darkness and ending with a blast, which is only
heard a fraction of a second later.
After an evening of lighting the firecrackers, the little boy goes
indoors and finds circles in front of his eyes and ringing in his ears
owing to the incessant bursting of crackers.
It’s one festival that the poor pet dreads. After repeated barking and
whimpering fails to stop the barrage of crackers, the cur retreats to
the bedroom and takes cover under the grandpa’s cot.
vijaysimha@newindianexpress.com

The callings and the calls

The callings and the calls

There are some hawkers' cries that one seldom hears in Bangalore
today. With changing lifestyles, certain trades have become redundant.
The knife-sharpener with his big wheel, the cobbler with his bag
laden with the hammer, anvil, twine and needle, the vessel polisher
with his bellows and coal to light a fire by the road, were a common
sight in the city's residential areas some time ago. Children used to
crowd around the tradesmen as they got down to work. As the knife
sharpener steps on his pedal and works up speed on the big wheel, the
big eyes on the little faces would gaze at the sparks that fly as the
knife kisses the abrasive wheel. The housewife pays him a coin and
beams at the newly sharpened knife as she gets into the house. Elsewhere, the
cobbler inspects the slipper whose sole opens like an alligator's
snout and smears the resin over it with a piece of rubber. He then
works a neat seam around the edge with his sharp needle and snips off
the twine at the end of the exercise. He pockets the 25 paise, and
proceeds on his way. After the sparks from the knife sharpener, it’s
the magical special effects of the vessel shiner that fascinate the children most. They watch as he prepares a furnace on the
ground by digging a small hole, filling it with charcoal. The
reluctant embers are then goaded into a flame by a bellow that huffs and puffs
furiously. He then works on the holes in the vessel with his hammer
and puts it over the fire. And then picks up a handful of white powder
and applies it on the sooty surface of the brass or copper vessel,
transforming it into gleaming silver when he rubs the powder with his
cloth. Today, with roads widened to the edge of houses or footpaths paved with granite slabs or concrete, there’s no place to dig the little furnace.
Moreover, the housewife uses stainless steel and non-stick vessels. A
loose sole on a slipper is an excuse to buy a new one, and there are a
host of branded knife sets tempting the shopper on supermarket
shelves.
Like these tradesmen, also missing are the blacksmiths working on the steel rims of the bullock cart, or an ox or horse being shod as they are made to lie on
their sides on the ground.
vijaysimha@newindianexpress.com

Green light to the future

Bangalore was a city made for waking and cycling, given its wide
footpaths, shaded avenues and its short distances. A half-hour ride
would invariably take you to the city’s outskirts. But today, a
half-hour crawl in your vehicle takes you barely a few kilometres,
given the traffic.
Now, while the metro promises to help you bypass the problem, it has
transformed the stretch of roads it traverses from its origin in
Byappanahalli to its destination on MG Road.
Byappanahalli on Od Madras Road, was really the outskirts and close to
the Isolation Hospital, where people with infectious diseases had to
be isolated far from the city. Now, Isolation Hospital is no longer
isolated and Old Madras Road hosts apartment complexes, super markets
and glitzy offices.
The metro then veers off Old Madras Road and cuts through
Indiranagar’s main thoroughfare, Chinmaya Mission Hospital Road. The
road, that was once desolate, had changed long before the metro
arrived. Save for a row of shops at the beginning of the road near
Adarsha cinema and a few near the intersection with Double Road, the
stretch only had a few KHB Houses and sprawling bungalows.
Though it was the main approach road to the locality, traffic was
sparse, with a few double decker buses lumbering up and down the road
periodically. And with no reason to widen it, the road was blessed
with footpaths, allowing its residents to do all their visiting and
shopping on foot. Today, the only walking possible in Indiranagar is
on the treadmills in the several gyms.
Leaving, Indiranagar, the metro presents a stark contrast as it crawls
past the historic temple car in Ulsoor. The tall, granite stone temple
car shed, that one saw vehicles, pedestrians and cows fight for space
on the narrow, bustling, winding road, marked by chaos and cacophony,
is now dwarfed by the tall metro piers. Today, the road that was once
and lined by old establishments and flower sellers, has been
straightened and widened, leading up to Trinity Circle.
And as it reaches MG Road, the metro obscures everything on the road.
The old colonial buildings, or what’s left of them, are the only
reminders of the road’s past.
Long before work on the metro was launched, planners and builders
presented a concept of the metro with artists’ impressions of the
metro on MG Road in the city’s newspapers. Of course, to the readers
would dismiss as farfetched and something one only sees in sci-fi
movies and comic books.
Today, it’s no longer an artists’ impression. The metro is here, in
concrete, steel and aluminium. With the metro, the city seems to have
put its past behind and switched to higher gear, literally taking
commuting to a new level.
vijaysimha@newindianexpess.com