bangalore

a bangalore rickshaw with the strange breast like backrests for the driver

study trip to bangalore this time. same class different place. last years amritsar was gorgeous. this year… well.. lazy.

the journey to bangalore-- the highlight was the impromptu movie that the kids decided to make- or was it a tv serial? 'naye krrish ki khoj'.. where chachi sawant, the old krrish and a bitchy judge were choosing who is to be the new krrish, and the contestants were a ektaa kapoor heroine, thakur from sholay, himesh, bobby darling and more. mad mad fun.


'krrish ki khoj' - the judges

'krrish ki khoj' - the contestants

we lived in a seedy joint near the railway station with lilac colored rooms and a five storied atrium organizing the interior. i shared a room with ninad on the second floor with a used condom decorating the window sill much to our disgust. besides that the hotel was all right really. mahaveer it was called and being close to the railway station and the theaters at least when you got out of it there was a chance of getting a rickshaw- which is more than one can say about some of the other parts of the city.

the 'atrium' in the hotel

ridhima on the fountain

meeting in the basement

rupali and ninad in the lilac room



film posters and cut outs - a man, a hot chick and another man with a building between his thighs

bangalore as a mini new york - on cubbon park. vijay mallya as donald trump

gateway to an older community in whitefield

the first two days we spent in a bus with the kids driving around the city, looking at some of the different landscapes that the ‘it revolution’ is leading to. the whitefield and infotech ring towards the east, the inner city markets, mg road (of course), some of the older suburbs like malleshwaram and russel market. after the first two days the students chose their own paths to follow; and we were free (almost). some chose flower sellers in kr market, some peripheral villages in the power loom industry, some film posters and cut out makers, metro lines, policies and imaginations for the new city, etc. they are compiling it all into a book. it might be interesting.

kr market

kr market below the mysore road flyover

tipus palace oustide the old town

'rural restaurant' at malleshwaram

scrap dealers - russell market

russell market

russell market and the church

whitefield - hi tech city

bangalore is about three cities – i think. it was once a divided city in terms of the native town and the cantonment- but now has a third city coming up in the east- the city of glass clad buildings, malls and residential complexes with names like ‘palm meadows’ and ‘italiana supreme’. in the development of this third city the older two have been ripped into and overturned. but yet in the landscape of the city very little violence is seen. its as if it has all been repressed under clean and green roads. and it is beautiful – though a little - how should i put it- tedious. this domesticated city makes it perfect for the moral and aesthetic value system of the large middle class who crave the sanitized and pristine prettiness of the city, and soak in the aura of it being the most ‘western’ city in the country. it is. it must be nice to live in.

rupali, ninad and me spent our three days lounging in tourist destinations of the city. on the first day the garden of lalbaug where we sat at the foot of the enormous tree, walked on the edge of the lake, took photographs of the crystal palace, until we found suitably tribal performers dancing folk dances among the trees. horticulture and anthropology side by side, in the confines of the park. while some of the dancers were obviously proficient, others looked like they were picked up from some random village and asked to recreate dance steps of long forgotten rituals and were inventing them as they went along. i liked the fact that none of them were in costume. they were wearing the cheap terrycot checked shirts and trousers that are really the clothes of rural india now.

lalbaug

bull temple

then there was the vishvewarya museum of science and technology. one old fashioned modern building with mosaic floors and ceiling fans. after a long time i found a museum that actually made me excited about the subject matter- from the lower floor with the amazing mechanical toys inviting you to touch them and play with them to the top floor with the sophisticated but tactile electronics gallery. there were kids all over the place as it was a saturday and the building was thankfully untouched by the characterlessness of the infotech bangalore. the balls on the tracks doing their crazy antics was probably the highlight of the trip.

vishweshwarya science museum

the next day was rupalis birthday and unfortunately for her the most mind-numbing day of all. the bangalore palace is a bizarre tudor styled atrocity in a large lawn with horses where you pay 100 rupees to browse through the leftovers of a dynasty who must have licked many a white ass to ride horses and kill elephants for footstools out of the elephants feet. chandeliers and 350 cameras along with many a naked woman’s portrait on the hand painted walls… wallpaper from china, weighing machines like horses for jockeys.. the palace was under renovation and the unrenovated rooms with their piles of dusty furniture were far more interesting than the recreation of the grossness of the past.

bangalore palace

an elephants foot as a stool

for some reason that day we decided to also go to forum mall at koramangla… stupid move. sunday at a mall and that too that mall. people all over the place watching and staring. terribly overcrowded and nouveau riche brand of tacky. well ironed t-shirts and jeans with sneakers on and baby in tow. there was something so yuppy about it that it made me quite unhappy- such a world away from the lanes and markets of cottonpet and chickpet that we had visited two days before.

koramangla mall

on our final sightseeing day in the city we settled for a long morning read in the enormous cubbon park. huge trees, dappled light, a cool breeze and the clear sunlight. the public space of the old bangalore- so much more than the atriums that claim to be those of the new. i was reading the new booker winner – the inheritance of loss- because one has to.. it really is not as bad.. so far.

cubbon park - monday morning

after that we all went our separate ways to meet our respective friends. me to richards town to meet vidura where i saw the first trailer of his chinese indian film and then bharat with whom i had a coffee at café coffee day. following a failed attempt at a class late night kannada picture show i took a rick to venkas where i met his wife and sweet children. i ate too much tomato ki subji there and was puking all night so that the next day i had to abandon any plans beyond going to the indian institute of science to walk down the same tree topped avenues as my father had.

iisc - main building

ninad at iisc with knowledge coming out of his ears

we had also met gada and gaurav in bangalore at pecos’- one of the few remaining pubs in the city. i couldn’t meet either shibani or mihika though i spoke to each once or twice.

bharat, gada and gaurav at pecos with jimi hendrix and bob marley looking on

vidura


venka, sarita, mohit and medha

back in bombay now after a go-air flight that dropped us unceremoniously into the speed that is mumbai, while the kids are off to hampi and then goa. they’ll be back on the weekend and then college begins again. it has not been a bad month.

rickshaw

bangalore airport

photo post - pooja, chawls, sunita maushi, shyam

shriya at the pooja

the chawls waiting to be demolished

a pooja at the malyali samaj mandir organised by shyam and deepa. the building is a fours storied apartment building on the fringes of lic colony surrouned by the low rise chawls that are going to vanish in the next few months to be replaced by swanky apartment towers. the scale that these gave the area was lovely though i must say that the quality of the houses left a lot to be desired. i remember that this was the place the khare kept his dogs - the training center and also the place where that anglo indian family lived - i have forgotten all their names- except ryan(?)

sunita maushi at home yesterday evening. her brilliant advice on how to get rid off parents who are after you to get married. 'get married and annul the marraige in two months- no one will be after you after that.'

shyam at his place today. he is in the country visiting his wife and kid. this is the only time i will be meeting him as tomorrow i leave for bangalore.

roti kapda aur makaan

and to think that for the first fifteen minutes or so i thought i had come across one of the unsung geniuses of hindi cinema.. like when a shadow on a wall speaks of the all pervasive disillusionment of the educated unemployed youth of the country, or when zeenat aman makes her very watery, very sultry entry into the film with ‘haye haye yeh majboori’, or even the other beaten to death song that makes its first appearance as a overcooked multiple imaged, glittery and surreal dream ‘ main na bhoolunga’; or when notes are thrown into water in front of the india gate only to dissolve into flowers; or the long shot love scenes when a restless camera moves from face to arm to face to wrist..

until the point that is when the story takes over and it all devolves into a tacky melodrama with a bad brother becoming good soldier (amitabh) and a good brother becoming bad by dealing in diamonds with aruna irani; and becoming good again after hearing indira gandhi in the year before the emergency give her republic day speech (in fact the pro congress rhetoric even made him scrawl ‘vote for congress’ on a slum wall in a fight scene ). then there is the ubiquitous love triangle between poor boy, good business man and sacrificing woman punctuated by one terrible song dripping in self pity and cunning emotional blackmail. as if that were not enough even the over the top tricks that had me at ‘hello’ made me cringe at ‘how are you?’- the rape scene for example when the underage belle , moushami chatterjee, is raped by leering dealers in roti, kapda aur makaans in a multiple imaged atta covered scene with echoing voices going “roti…..” “kapda….” “makaan…”; or the end when the icons of the honest labourer, honest cop, honest business man and honest soldier are about to be run over by a speeding train on a bridge when bharat saves them from being chopped up.

ugh for all of this and ugh for especially the ham handed bombastic idiotic patriotic nonsense that i assume made his films so popular and so unbearable.

and its not over… at home are ‘shor’, upkar’, kranti’ and ‘purab aur paschim’ that mukul got vcds of and we are going to watch soon. but that will be after i return from bangalore. out for 7 days from tomorrow.

calypso reggae chutney

yesterday it was fun to see the rough cut of surabhis new film on the music of the caribbean and our relationship to it. the film had some great music, brilliant performers and some thoroughly interesting people talking about it from reggae musicians and dancehall divas in jamaica to chutney musicians, bihari migrants and calypso singers in trinidad. and the music was about everything that popular music can be about- youth, rebellion, peace and harmony, love and sex.. lots of sex. raunchy and fabulous- some of the performers were not to be missed.

and then there was remo trying hard to compose some sort of fusion music with the variety of performers impromptu with sometimes good and sometimes not so good results. it was good to see a film about music; about the act of making it, its role in our lives and about how it reclaims and reimagines identity.

trip summary in fragments. aurangabad -paithan - daulatabad - ellora – lonar – ajanta

aurangabad caves

aurangabad is a sleepy town with a nice enough inner city. the best view we had of it from the aurangabad caves carved into the brown hills overlooking the city. the other time we ventured int these hills is on our long climb in daulatabad fort.

daulatabad fort

in the inner city the ‘biwi ka maqbara’ is a poorer cousin of the taj mahal and far more than a monument as even local families throng to it to play games in the sunken fountains or on the gardens all around the building. in fact that was one thing that i found interesting on this trip. there were far more local tourists and visitors from the lower and lower middle classes than i had ever seen before.

biwi ka maqbara

every class has a different relationship to history and conducts oneself accordingly. we go there expecting to be awed like we are supposed to be awed by the presence of the ancient. we walk around in silence, speak only in whispers and expect to be moved by the age of the building, by the craftsmanship of the filigree. we wear clothes that emphasize that relationship- casual in a self conscious kind of way. this relationship is even more emphasized when the tourist is a foreigner or an nri. the foreigners wear tatters for they are emphatically deglamourized in front of the monument. or is it their way of ‘fitting in’ (?). the nri wears the garb of the tourist but can’t let go of the incessant urge to be clean. so his shorts are ironed and the t-shirt tucked in. i think we lay somewhere in between these two. while all of the above approach the monument as single individuals, the local tourists approach it as a collective spectacle. the clothes are the sunday best. chiffons and sequins glitter under the burkhas, the jeans are stylishly acid washed and the shirts multicolored. the engagement with the building is vocal as much as visual. while we walk around in expectant silence around us screams and shouts of pleasure and excitement rise, much to our irritation.

shopping complex in aurangabad

the newer parts of aurangabad are banal like most new towns are, but the roads were wide and empty. ‘manmandir’ the hotel we lived in was a clean japanese influenced three storeyed building catering to all the needs of a tourist like a ac dormitory, a bus stop, and a tourist station serving the most god-awful poha in the morning.

manmandir hotel

i don’t think the bad food was problem isolated in the hotel though. the search for a decent meal was one of the themes of the trip. there was not a single place where there was even an edible meal possible- and we tried it all. the udupi, the bar and restaurant, the local joints, room service, the mtdc restaurant (which was by far the best). finally we had to settle for a five star in the city which gave us the tepid bland fare so predictable in such places. marathwada needs cooking classes.

dam on the godavari at paithan

monkeys on the car at ellora

kailash temple

most of the holiday was spent driving in and out of the city to the tourist hot spots for mukuls shoot. paithan is a small little town to the south famous for its weaving centers of which we saw nothing and the dam on the godavari where we sat for a few minutes. ajanta and ellora i had been to twice before and though the enormity of kailash temple as impressive this time, i was even more struck by the beauty of ajanta.

ajanta

the sleeping buddha

the buddha is the only religious figure that is capable of giving me the goosebumps- and that too only the ones sculpted and painted at ajanta. i am wary of religious claptrap in general but the calm smile on his face as he sleeps or as he stands way taller than you in multiples carved in smooth stone, serene and gentle sent shivers up my spine. the location helps of course. nestled in a valley of green rock and trees, a river flowing at the base, and the sudden sharp perfect geometries of the caves carved into the craggy flanks of the mountains.

the tourist center where we had to park the car was terrible though. a delhi haat shopping complex with shop keepers heckling you to buy more things you just do not need.

buldhana tea stall

the drive to lonar and back through buldana took us through rural maharashtra glistening in the few weeks past the monsoon. in between the dusty diesel scented towns were fields of golden bajra and sunflower. families huddled on speeding motorcycles and entire troupes of nomads in a line of bullock carts.

from aurangabad to lonar via jalna

lonar is famous for a lake formed by a meteor when it crashed into the earth 50,000 years back. the only hotel in town is an mtdc resort on the edge of the crater. we arrived there late in the evening to stand on the hill and look down as the sun set behind the hills around the lake. the next morning we walked down the steep slopes to the green mineral rich water and sat at the remains of the temples on the waters edge.

lonar

to drive to aurangabad was tiring but rewarding. the landscape was beautiful at this time of the year. the fields were rust and gold and the sky a pristine blue with white clouds.

aurangabad to mumbai