[Reader-list] Notes from Bangalore

[zainab at xtdnet.nl]

It’s been two months and nine days since I landed here in Bangalore. Can I
say I have arrived here? Not yet. Not yet.

Bangalore is a city of different time-spaces (or so I have concluded it to
be). Different areas in the city live in different time-spaces and time
practices. Koramangala is a different time-space and the town area, mainly
M. G. Road, is a different time-space. The area I live in, Thilaknagar, is
a different time-space. Each of these areas lives in a time-space of its
own – historic time and present time. I fathom historic time from the
architecture and built form of the buildings and surroundings. But that’s
not all. The built space, the history of the area have something to do
with people’s time practices of that area. Present time I see from
people’s everyday life and practices as well from new built form. And
there is continuous interaction between historic time, people’s practices
located in that time, present time and people’s practices of the present
time.

I don’t know in what ways this city has transformed but it sure has is
what everyone here says. For one, everybody agrees that the traffic on the
roads has increased. I have come from Mumbai, a much more dense city.
There, density produces a different experience of space. Bangalore is not
at all dense. And so the experience of space here is quite different.
Bangalore is just rushed and moving at close shaves, as I have experienced
as a pedestrian trying to walk on the streets. Every movement is a close
shave 


I see a lot of burkha-clad Muslim women on the streets and around the
spaces of Bangalore. Each sight of a Muslim burkha-clad woman in each
space brings in the experience of a certain historic time. You might think
I am suggesting that burkha-clad Muslim women are symbolizing some kind of
pre-modernity, but I don’t know what modernity itself is. What I am simply
saying is that each time I see a burkha-clad Muslim woman in the public
bus or squatting by the side of the pavement or simply walking on the
streets, through each of these sights I experience a city that suddenly
lives in a different time-space. I don’t know the time-space of a space
such as the Electronic City, what people’s time-space practices there are.
But when I watch burkha-clad Muslim women, I realize that different people
in this city are living in different time-spaces or rather different
groups in this city are living in different time-spaces and these
differences in time-spaces are not necessarily historic, but also very
much located in the present, in the everyday of the here and now!

Let me speak of where I live, that interesting space called Thilaknagar. I
am told Thilaknagar is one of Bangalore’s most successful slums, by what
standards and what benchmarking, I don’t know. At 5 AM in the mornings, I
sometimes watch queues of women waiting for something. I have guessed that
that something is sometimes fair-price shop kerosene and sometimes that
something is water. The times when I have watched these patient yet
seething queues, I have shuddered to think of the implicit violence that
this practice carries with it – that contest for basic resources. (Have
you ever waited for rationed water?)

Thilaknagar consists of Tamils and Muslims. The Muslims here are largely
Tamil-speaking. I live on some kind of urban mental boundary. This area is
also known as Jayanagar 4th T block. Now here is where the urban mental
boundary is (if you are with me uptil now). As you walk out South from
where I live in Thilaknagar, South-West towards Sanjay Gandhi hospital,
what you will witness is a gradual transformation of not just physical
space, but of the urban experience itself. From the unclean, messy
Thilaknagar to Jayanagar 4th T Block, onwards to 4th block, the shift is
both gradual and sudden. From some kind of messiness to some kind of
ordered affluence. Everything changes, including the relationships which
characterize the time-space.

Time-spaces don’t operate in a vacuum. Time-spaces also emerge from the
relationships which people share with one another, with the space itself
and the elements which constitute the space (including capital, territory,
land and identity, ethnicity, etc.) Out here in Thilaknagar, the
relationships are both antagonistic as well as existing. Since the last
few days, in the Southern part of Thilaknagar, there are calls from the
mosques given that Ramzaan has begun. And then, last night, in the North
Western part, there were pandals of excitement and festivity, celebrating
the nine days of Dussehra. Perhaps here is where the antagonistic
relationships exist. The Muslims and the Tamilians are historic enemies
here, but they exist. And the interesting thing is that both the Tamils
and the Tamilian Muslims are very similar in their essential personalities
– just different communal lines.

The other day, someone shit inside the gate of my stairways. When I saw
the little pile of excreta, I felt disgusted. Just about who would dare do
this? In a fit of irritation and anger, I brought out the broom and began
to clean, creating more mess than what was before. I gave up, left the
broom by the side of the gate, locked the gate and went away. When I
returned in the evening, the broom was gone. Then just a few days ago one
morning, I carelessly left the Chinese lock hanging by the gate. When I
got down in the afternoon, the lock was gone. I wondered who would have
taken it away. Irritated. Disgusted. No sense of property here. I checked
with the shopkeeper by the street. While he spoke, he also mentioned that
he lived about ten kilometers away from Thilaknagar. Curious, I asked him
why that far. “The kids enter your house; they scamper around; no sense of
privacy. I don’t think my house people would have liked this. I moved.”
And I curiously try to understand notions of property, space and private
and public ‘spheres’ in this curious time-space.

Let’s get back to the city. I was walking by the 4th block post office
this evening. The air was full of moisture. It seemed like the impending
dawn of another winter. I felt I re-discovered words that were lost. No, I
don’t own this city. I am a stranger here. I find it strange. I am trying
to prove my identity in every sphere as I attempt to settle in here
(before I can leave again) – identity for opening a bank account, address
proof for obtaining an LPG connection. I thought my sense of self came
from my words and all this while I felt a loss of sense of self because my
words were lost. But in the everyday life of the city (including
bureaucracy, state, government, etc.), self has to be proved existing
through address proofs. Ah, what futility! What futile words!






Zainab Bawa
Bombay
www.xanga.com/CityBytes
http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html