[Reader-list] Tellings of times

[mamta mantri]

Dear Zainab,
hiee, this is mamta, guess u remember,, anyways, i
have a question to ask,, having foollowed ur postings
religiously, what are ur intentions while writing
these encounters. is it plain narration,, mere
documentation, or is it something that i cant get at?
at the end of the day, they all look the same to me.
interstingly,, i want to say that ur posting abt all
that u wrote of mbai,seemed very appealing to me,, but
the ones on Bangalore seem to look the same!!!! is it
becos of belongingness to a particluar city and not
other??? 
open for discussion
mamta 
--- zainab <zainab at mail.xtdnet.nl> wrote:

> I boarded his auto from Kormangala. My warped sense
> of direction, I felt clueless about which direction
> to proceed towards. He asked me which route should
> he take to drive me to Langford Town. I said ‘take
> whatever route you think is best’. Later he told
> me to memorize the route because, “people in
> Bangalore are not good, haraami hote hai, they can
> take you for a ride. This is the shortest, quickest
> and easiest route, so you should remember it now.”
> 
> Our conversation started when I said to him that
> traffic seems to have increased a lot in Bangalore.
> “There are so many out-of-country people here.
> Look at this city, it has expanded beyond its
> capacity, now to Uttarahalli, Devanahalli. There are
> at least eight to ten lakh out-of-country people,
> coming here to study and work. These people come
> from Korea-Japan and those countries and settle in
> the outskirts. Then, there are about forty lakh
> people who are not from Karnataka-Tamil Nadu-Andhra
> Pradesh. They are from Kashmir, Bihar, Orissa,
> Maharashtra, North. The number of outsiders in
> Bangalore has increased so much, that it is now hard
> to find a Kannadiga in this mass – chiraag leke
> dhoondo, to bhi nahi milta”. He is Kannadiga, he
> told me. Every aspect of his conversation was a tale
> of time, every telling a memory of the time gone by
> and/or a narrative of the time that is.
> 
> “Now look here, there are so many people from
> outside who are coming here to study, like yourself.
> You are afraid of this traffic and so you are not
> purchasing a two-wheeler. But many people are. My
> own sister, when she was married, they had only a
> moped in her house. Then they bought a kinetic, a
> maruti eight hundred, a scooter, a luna, all this in
> addition to the moped. How much does this make it?
> Five vehicles. And how many people to drive these
> five vehicles, just three! In Bangalore, the road
> capacity can handle only fifteen lakh vehicles. How
> many vehicles are running on the road now? Thirty
> five lakh, more than double! The problem is that
> this is not a planned city.” I marked his words
> – the problem is that this is not a planned city.
> 
> “I was living in Bombay once upon a time, in
> Bandra. With a daily earning of three hundred
> rupees, I would eat well, spend on rent and yet save
> money. Now what is the value of three hundred
> rupees? That was a time. Things have changed today
> – mahaul hi alag hai aaj. I had a little
> accommodation there for which I gave a pagdi of two
> lakh rupees. The space has not increased an inch
> till date, but the value has gone up. What an
> irony!”
> 
> We got stuck in a little jam around Kormangala when
> he pointed out, “People who work in Electronics
> City or even in Whitefields, they have to travel at
> least three hours each day. What a national waste of
> time! All those daily three hours, they add up to so
> much. And all those daily three hours can easily be
> put to productive use. The money earned in all those
> daily three hours would ultimately go into the
> national economy, isn’t it? Desh ka hi fayda hota!
> I once drove the manager of an IT firm in my auto. I
> asked him, ‘Sir, why did you people not think of
> building houses for your workers in Electronics City
> itself? Wipro, Infosys, why did you not think of
> housing your employees close to the place of work
> itself?’ He said to me, ‘at that time, when
> Infosys, Wipro were building, they thought of
> purchasing those extra four or five acres for
> expanding their businesses. Now the prices have gone
> up so much that they cannot afford to build housing
> there.’ I look at the!
>  se fellows traveling to work. They come from as far
> as Peenya, Malleshwaram and Rajajinagar – what a
> national waste of time, isn’t it?”
> 
> “There was a time when I was driving people in the
> auto for a minimum fare of seven rupees. Look here
> today, the minimum fare the minimum fare has gone up
> to twelve. In Bombay, I could take a taxi from
> Bombay Central to Bandra in twelve rupees. Can you
> imagine this now? Impossible. Prices have gone up so
> much. I imagine that Bandra has become unlivable
> now!”
> 
> Like all journeys, this one ended too. I did not
> bother to note his name. The display card was
> scratched and it was dark. I tried to visualize the
> space that he was talking about, the space of this
> city. All I could conjure up was a chronology of
> time and memories as he spoke with his words. 
> 
> Tales of time,
> Tellings,
> A time gone by,
> A time there is,
> And a time to come …
> 
> 
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