Subir Roy: Happy to dodge development

I am on my way to one of the many well-maintained parks in Bangalore early in the morning when it is blissfully cool, a world apart from the hot afternoons that even this so-called air-conditioned city has become used to in this time of the year. The massive rain trees have shut out direct sun rays that are trying to peep through and a street dog zigzags its way across the traffic-less street. The distant sound of auto-rickshaws from the main roads nearby can barely be heard and does not disturb.

A fit elderly couple ambles along at their regular pace. A maid sweeps the cemented front of a house, before washing and preparing it for rangoli, the auspicious design that is drawn every day by the women of the household. At the side of the road, a ragpicker methodically sorts out the recyclables from the garbage taken out of several bags. The birds chirp and keep repeating their calls to an unknown mantra, as if to compete with the chant that religiously comes out of the temple that stands in one corner of the park.

Behind the temple is a one-room living space of the park’s mali and his family. They are all out — mother, daughter, son and the most important newly arrived family member who peacefully gurgles while seeking to find her feet in a walker which, obviously, a far wealthier family has given away as their own baby has grown up. The mother radiates happiness as she occasionally glances at the healthy-looking baby while cooking something in a twig-fired makeshift chullah set up on the ground. The family’s stray dog lolls on the steps to the room.

In the park an aged good looking old woman and a young girl, obviously mother and daughter, walk at an equal pace. Trees all over town are in bloom. Holi is gone, largely unobserved in this southern city, but splashes of colour linger — yellow, violet and a pale exquisite magnolia. One of these has created a violet carpet on the walkway. It is amazing how nature bestows its most wondrous bounties so unsparingly. You hesitate to trample over those hundreds of little trumpets on the paving.

The only jarring note is a walker talking somewhat loudly into his cellphone. But overall such people are few and as if to maintain the balance, a few couples, who have skipped class at a nearby college, utter whatever they do in the softest whisper. The walkers make up a varied assortment — some in good shape despite advanced years, some misshapen well before middle age. The most persevering is an old man who has recovered from a stroke. He drags one foot and a slouching half of his body determinedly, undaunted by the setback. Out of such trivia is the peace of my early morning made up.

The neighbourhood of Indiranagar goes back to the sixties. Its straight, well-planned roads bind together a community of middle- and upper middle-class people who are meticulous and parsimonious in their ways. I know how careful my neighbour, a retired Public Works Department engineer, is with his money. But he is having the front iron gate to his driveway repainted, although it has been painted recently. Some of the small stains left by Holi will not go away, he mutters. I laugh and tell him he should have lived in Delhi. There roads, boundary walls and courtyards are made black, blue and purple by the time Holi is over and nobody thinks it’s odd.

It is totally peaceful and quiet most of the time but for the uncontrollable birds which have their say early morning and evening. Our house is on a street that connects the bus stand on the main road to a lesser area nearby. The quiet on it is flavoured in late evenings by those walking home with the music playing on their cell phones. We are on a rambling upper storey with huge rooms and large bathrooms, whose fittings can do with a bit of repair. Either rents are still too low for our landlord to redo the house and look for a richer tenant, or in his retirement from the nearly defunct ITI he is too laid back to bother.

There was a time when the good feeling created by the peace and quiet was partly taken away by a terrible water shortage. But that has eased a bit and also now that our children are gone, how much water two old people can use. If you are retired and don’t have to go to work at peak hours every day then you are spared the main downside of living in Bangalore: the horrible traffic jams on its main streets. And if the area is going hugely upmarket, with large shops sporting the best known brands gracing the major roads crossing the area, then you have the best of both worlds — main street shopping not so far away but the micro-environment where you actually live still miraculously unspoilt.

I could not imagine how well off we were until I read in the papers that some people who have acquired flats at exorbitant prices in new developments have to even bathe in water that comes in cans because the ground water that the borewell pumps up is so ghastly. Naturally, it is still early days for piped Cauvery water to become available there. We are lucky that we don’t have to buy into such areas and our landlord has not sold his property to a developer.