Waiting for rain...in Bangalore

In the horizons at the edges of this city, that stretches as far as the eye can see in every direction, an endless maze of half constructed houses and occasional cluster of higher buildings. Through the brown-grey haze, enormous cumulous clouds are forming. The steaminess lulls me into an afternoon sleepiness that is almost impossible to shake even with the gentle cooling breeze of the office fans and the stirring air that seeps in occasionally through the open window; this same window that permits the sound of honking car horns and the tinny rattle of auto rickshaws to filter up as a few stories below they navigate the pot holes, animals, pedestrians and each other with alarming speed and chaotic precision. The colourful, aromatic and spicy lunch time feasts don’t help my sleepy mood.

The humidity is building on some days to a point where you can feel your body straining to experience the cool relief of a shower of rain, a shower that hasn’t yet arrived. But I’m not complaining, I love the steamy sleepy heat, especially now that I have discarded my too hot tight shirts and jeans, packed in the middle of a Sydney winter where I couldn’t quite imagine the enveloping warmness of an Indian summer, for cotton kurtas and loose cotton ‘MC Hammer’ pants. Bangalore is one of the mildest places in India, it’s usually about 30 degrees each day; a world away from the 40 plus heat of Delhi at this time of the year. But still, down on the streets of this city, frogs and trees are being married in full Hindu tradition, as an appeasement to the god Varuna, to bring on the late-coming monsoon rains.

What can I say about Bangalore India? A place of incredible contrasts. It's a busy and chaotic city with streets lined with ancient banyan and tamarind trees, rich and poor, hungry and fat, grey and yet colourful!! The Hindu and Catholic women are like beautiful shimmering rays of brightness in the city, their chuppatis thrown backwards over their shoulders and streaming behind them in a dazzling array of primary colours as, alongside black burka wearing women and the (slightly controversial) modern woman in jeans and tight tees, they expertly manoeuvre their way through the hair-raising traffic, the rubbish strewn sidewalks, the sleeping stray dogs and cud-chewing cows lazing by the road sides.

The city is a patchwork of busy lives, from IT business executives, McDonalds, KFC and exclusive stores to bare footed rubbish sweepers, corner sellers, beggars and those who live in the partially constructed buildings and shanties that dot the paths and roads. Walking to work from our original accommodation required a certain amount of guts and blind faith to cross the road and pass through the tunnel under the railway – which we nicknamed “Hell Pass” as it involved edging along the tunnel wall with cars, buses, trucks and rickshaws which bottle necked at the entrance and thus filled the tunnel to a total capacity almost literally brushing past us with only inches to spare as we made our way along its edge. I am still amazed at how everyone spewed into and got spat out the other end of the tunnel intact each morning.

We are now staying a short twenty to forty minute rickshaw ride from work, and have finally begun to have consistent success at getting the driver to turn on the meter, paying only a ten rupee ‘foreigner premium’ on top. The ride is a bumpy charge through crowded streets, often on the wrong side of the road (even when there is a divider) inches away from the wheels of trucks, buses, motorbikes, other rickshaws and donkey carts that crowd the deeply pot holed and badly built roads. Traffic lights are a rarity in this city of over 6 million so at each intersection a delicate dance of intersecting traffic takes place. It takes an iron focus on your destination and many stops and starts but each time everyone manages to navigate the whirlpool of traffic and resume the break neck pace, screeching to a stop to re-perform the dance each time at a road narrowing or unmanageable pot-hole.

I’m not sure the commute is worth it every day but we are staying in a really lovely part of town in a beautiful house with a retired Dr and her twenty four year old son, Vivek. We managed to rent rooms here for only $184 per month and we have a shower, t.v and hot running water!! Vivek is a bit of a party animal and so far has shown us only the pubs and ‘beer buffets’ (yep. all you can drink) dotting the streets where we live. Indian hospitality is first class, although having a beautiful Nepalese security man who runs to open the gate with a huge smile each time I enter and leave and a maid who receives a ‘tongue lashing’ from the homeowner each morning is a little weird.

The work they do at Janaagraha is varied but it all relates to trying to create a better city for the citizens who continue to drift in from the poorer rural villages. It is a monumental task. The sidewalks are littered with holes that drop straight down to the rat infested drains that run beneath the city and every second day or so it seems a story about a child who has fallen down the drain and been swept to their death features in the newspaper. It is amazing; workers walk away leaving enormous holes and often the granite drain coverings move or rock as you walk across them, (yes people have come a cropper on what looks like solid ground) there are perilous holes and uncovered electric wires everywhere, deeply rutted streets and rubbish dumps that spew across major arterial roads; yet when a monkey falls off a wire to its death there is an immediate burial and ritual and a huge public movement to have a shrine built at the site of the fall. So when a child falls to their death on the sidewalk it is hard to understand why the government is not galvanised into action. (I think the answer lies in its bureaucratic remoteness from the people) Janaagraha is working towards solutions, but the answers are more complex. There is a new monorail currently being built across the city from north to south and east to west to try to alleviate the traffic nightmare but it is expected to be completed in 2020.

Janaagraha advocate and try to work with the government to keep them accountable and to try and keep city initiatives on track. The city connect program they run has as one of its aims, getting school students on buses and taking parents cars off the road. The new bus pass system will send an SMS to the parent when the child boards the bus and when they get off. (I hope they can find it through the avalanche of spam SMS’s you get on your Indian sim card!! PS. no wonder the call centres are all based here; I can call home to Australia for less than what it calls me to ring you from there) - but that’s India: a place of complete contrasts, like the office where I work where there is no air conditioning and the computers don’t have USB ports, yet the employees sign on and off each day using a fingerprint scan technology. I am working on drafting laws to create the equivalent of local council wards so that people in the cities have a mechanism of access to the municipal councils. Currently, through their One Billion Votes (yes, literally! It took me a little while to comprehend that this was not a figurative number) campaign they have identified that the citizens are mobilised (ie shrine sites for monkeys and angry editorials about the state of the sidewalks) but when they seek to make a change they hit a rock hard solid bureaucratic wall. For instance, if the Council suddenly stops collecting your garbage you currently have no way of making your complaints known officially.

A world of rules and no rules; (its hard to explain) - where you can drink and dance but never together and there are pubs and clubs everywhere but the cops enforce an 11.30pm curfew so house parties are all the rage. The people however have such a disarming charm that I am falling in love with India. I’ll explain some more next post, this one has been long enough!! And elle; if you’ve managed to read this far! Hehehe (I don’t think you will have!) – I’ll put up some pretty pictures on the next instalment!!!