bangalore - coorg

back from bangalore and coorg last night. views of the city were spectacular between the clouds, made even more beautiful by the fact that it was home. 7 days is a long time away from bombay, which in spite of the mad traffic and crowded streets i do love.

it is strange just how in my head comparisons with mumbai keep popping up whenever i am in another city. is it just me, or does everyone suffer with the same ridiculous affliction?

bangalore is still quite beautiful, in spite of all the complaints we heard from the older residents about it going literally to the dogs over the past few years. granted, the traffic jam on the mysore road on the way back from coorg was much worse than even the mahim bottleneck- but the rest of the city was all right- it seemed. it does seem like its getting worse though. streets that i remember from my earlier long trip there (the srishti workshop a few years back does not count) that used to be in sleepy little residential neighbourhoods now have gigantic malls on them. and like most of the development driven by the new economy is not supported by any infrastructure at all.

there seemed to be two quite distinct bangalores. one the world of info tech and ngos and the other the older traditional neighbourhoods. they hardly seem to meet. flyovers and ring roads avoid any real contact with the older streets where we spied older markets and narrow streets much like our own null bazaar and bhuleshwar as we zomed above avoiding the traffic jams on our way to coorg. jayashree and madan (whom we lived with in a beautiful flat in richards town) say that the tension in between the two cities is what led to the flare up when young men vandalized glass buildings in the new city after raj kumar film star and icon died. it probably is so.

after all, all of the new bangalore is full of references to an imagined american dream. ‘melrose place’, ‘whitefields’ are names of the new places instead of the yelahankkas of old. bangalore is a rare example of a city that largely did not change the names of the streets after indfependence and i think that the same fascination for all things white might still be continuing. it does in a lot of the new cities though bangalore seemed the most western wannabe then most other places. symptomatic is mallyas ridiculous vulgar nouveau riche landmark on cubbon park. an empire state building replica aided by hafeez from mumbai. yuppyland. and the older city has been disappeared.

it must have been the people we met and lived with but we learnt a lot of the intricacies of small town politics in the ngo world which seems to have set up base in the city. it must be the weather and the gardens but bangalore is the base of so many internationally funded ngos working in almost every field imaginable. i was told by one person that this was true a few years back but then they all moved to delhi to be close to the centers of power and came rushing back when all the money for hiv-aids poured into the country and it was realized that south india had a lot of these cases. the world of ngos seemed opportunistic, fake and vicious. a small turf with too many people eyeing the same money. the stories i learnt about the incestuous interlinks between money and so called do gooder ngos was more than i could take.

koshy’s it would seem is the center of this world. we went there twice - the first for beer in the evenings and the second over a large sunday breakfast as alo and ashwin met their friends who were leaving for paris. it’s a place that is teeming with conversations about science, art, funding and gossip of all sorts. the center as it were of the bangalore i seem to know. the sunmica tables, the really low lighting, the good food- like i was telling mukul- it seems like the perfect set for the great novel waiting to be written- on the machinations of ngo politics and the chasm that separates it from the real world.

the aids film festival that we went to where jayashrees film on the accessibility and affordability of aids drugs was being screened was symptomatic of the problem. aids as i mentioned earlier is the big hot fund generator for many of the ngos nowadays. an offshoot of an international funding agency to display its social concern and to make sure its report looked good at the end of the year decided to organize a film festival showing films on aids. not that bad an idea, one would have thought except that they hired another ngo to ‘curate’ the festival. the choices that they made- at a huge price i am sure, were the most default choices imaginable. my brother nikhil, philadelhia, phir milenge. over and above that it was attended only be members of the two ngos concerned. what was the point of it all i wonder. chief guests were film stars who take roles in films with a ‘heart’ and even they seemed to be annoyed by the incestuousness of it all. ineffective completely and a humongous waste of money. the screening was also very badly managed. organizers walking in front of the screen, sound being rotten. it was a fiasco. but the report card i am sure looks good. i think i now trust non governmental organizations even less- and bangalore is teeming with these hypocritical corporate money spinners.

coorg is beautiful. we drove there in a hired cab and kept the car for the three days that we were there. madikeri town sits like a postcard town in the middle of rolling green hills. we spent two nights in the area- the first in a cottage on a coffee plantation and the second on the banks of the cauvery. we drove to talacauvery- the source of the river, abbi falls- an overrated waterfall but a beautiful walk down, nisargadham- where we paddle boated below the rope bridge and dubare with the elephant camp and where we swam in the cauvery. bylakupe was the strangest stop. a tibetan settlement in the middle of karnatake. a surreal experience. momos and pork chilly; maroon clad monks on motorcycles. the golden temple monastery is the main shrine. the buddhas in the main temple were huge and the gruesome paintings fascinating. the smaller monastery kagyupa was where we saw idols being made under a windmill with flags fluttering wild in the wind. the weather was gorgeous throughout – cloudy and overcast. photos later.