"It's pouring here in Bengaluru," our friend said on the phone, even as we sweltered in Kolkata's humid heat waiting for rains that just passed us by. Sub-Himalayan Bengal had too much of it, heading for floods, even as Gangetic Bengal cried for a drop.
Bengaluru lived up to its reputation - cool, cloudy, pleasant and drizzling. The hotel in Koramangala could not have been better situated - amidst well-maintained houses, some elegant. And the hotel staff, courteous to a fault. The young boys in waiters' uniform had barely any English but said their "Welcome" and "Have a nice day" lines without fail.
The wife and I decided to take a stroll, to make up partly for the day's walk schedule lost in having to catch a flight. The remembered shopping mall turned out to have remained just the same. Carefully chosen merchandise - I picked up just the type of tea strainer I had been looking for for a long time - and the staff, making up in courteousness what they lacked in fluent English.
Out on the street at office time, the real-life dream sequence snapped. It was the mother of all traffic jams I thought, as we walked back to the hotel. This is routine, we were told. How much things can change in less than a decade! The jams were there even then but they did not take over your life.
On the way back to the hotel we took a wrong turn down a side street and whatever was left of the dream was totally dashed. There were little piles of garbage which stank. Then for the next couple of days the experience was repeated. Pleasant houses and streets, courteous people who carry themselves with ease, not needing to be overly smart. And then the pile of garbage.
The comparison with Kolkata was unavoidable. Sultry, unbearable weather, yes; often rude people on the streets and even behind shop counters, yes. But the stinking garbage of yore was mostly gone. How could a city, Bengaluru, have so much going for itself and give it up so easily over so little. It is so easy to get rid of the garbage.
Then, before I lose sight of the total picture, the wife observed that you can get rid of the garbage but setting right the traffic jams is an altogether different proposition. And to drive home the point, added, "In Kolkata, too, there are jams, but the traffic at least keeps moving, no matter how slowly." But here, things are frozen periodically, interminably, as if ordered to be "statue" in a child's game.
What finally tilted the balance was the recall of the cough and blocked nose, not to speak of the allergic sneezing, that has become part of life in Kolkata, thanks to the heavily polluted air. So where do we go, I thought. Which is when our son called from Delhi.
We talked of the humidity being unbearable, made bearable by his joy in discovering what to him was the nicest street in town, Mother Teresa Crescent. I took a moment to catch on and then heartily agree that there can be little to beat the Willingdon Crescent of yore, what with the larger than life sculpture of Gandhi and his followers on the Dandi March by sculptor Devi Prasad Roy Chowdhary. Then, as great streets go, I ask him to also look up the much shorter old Rettendon Road. When he does not connect, I am able to recall its present avatar, and of course he has been down Amrita Shergill Marg.
Then I spoil the whole mood by asking him how his old wheezing problem is doing and he brings me down to earth by repeating what everyone knows - how bad the Delhi air is and what it does to people like him. Where do we go and live to have a somewhat bearable life without the polluted air cutting down the span of life ordained, I wonder.
Of course, I could go and live in the Himachal hills where our son and I have just spent an incredible couple of weeks. But there is a catch, maybe two. The children, who have yet to make their lives, cannot obviously go into such early retirement. And also for people like me, there is an unsurmountable hurdle: non-locals cannot own even the smallest of places and not even take something equally modest on a long lease.
And while I share with our son these disappointments, he reminds me of what has been prominent on the front pages of newspapers - the cloudbursts in the Uttarakhand hills that have claimed dozens of lives. The hills are great, he concludes, so long as you don't get washed away.
There is no Shangri-La, I ruefully conclude, but then realise that I have been missing out the obvious. We have just been to the Spiti valley where peace, Tibetan landscape and clean air are all present. There also the outsider cannot own even the smallest of properties. But that does not matter in a place whose claim to fame is an ancient Buddhist monastery, a symbol of renunciation. Also, there are no speciality hospitals. But who cares. Life will at least be great while it lasts. So maybe there is a Shangri-La. You have to know what to give up in order to find it.
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