Articles by Vaidya R

Another year, another bandh. It feels like 1991 all over again. Those empty roads, those days of being at home on weekdays, having to converse with parents in Kannada outside home. But yes, 1991 was definitely worse. There was news of people moving back to Tamil Nadu weeks before the final order. There was a build up. When the final verdict came and cities erupted, there was a sense of inevitability to it. Then there were shoot-at-sight orders and cops milling in front of the house in Chamarajpet. We camped on the terrace, more curious than worried – at 11 you had a…

Metro trains are jam-packed in the evenings. Pic: Karanam Ramesh It’s been three weeks now of using the Metro for my commute. I resisted writing about it until the dust settles and some routine is established. And a routine is now established. It has been an interesting, and somewhat, tiring three weeks. It is not easy going from a sedentary, get in, sit down in a van near home and get out only at work, and vice-versa commute to a lot of walking. It will take some time for the body to get used to this. And it will be good to…

Another evening, another Ganesha procession passing by to get to the Mallathahalli tank. It has been more than a month since the Ganesha festival, but the sounds of passing processions—typically a tractor with a massive Ganesha, surrounded by hooting teenage boys, drums in front and more boys (younger and teens) dancing around it—is still not unusual. One of the perks of living close to a lake, I guess. If there are still idols being dumped in the lake, wonder what the situation would have been over the month. The area for dumping is a small pond cut out from the…

Traffic at the Marathahalli-Sarjapur Outer Ring Road. File pic.  It has been two years since I wrote this on the sorry state of commuters and residents along the Outer-Ring-Road. Fast forward to the present, nothing much has changed. It might in fact have gotten worse as more and more bottlenecks have sprung up. In these two years, more people have added their own cars to the roads, more buildings have come up and more companies have moved in to the stretch between Sarjapura Road and Doddanakundi. Ecospace, a word that now mainly conjures up images of traffic jams when heard…

We stood around quietly, my brother and me, as Amma and Maami negotiated with the guys in the shop. The shop had bales and bales of cotton strewn all over the 10ftx10ft area, and housed three or four guys, in various stages of labour. After much bargaining from our side and patronising from theirs, we took home a pillow. It was grey with golden-yellow lines crisscrossing each other at right angles and turning black where they met. That night, my brother and I fought for rights to use the new pillow. Mysore Bedding and Furnishing. Pic: Vaidya R The place, Mysore…

After close to four years of doing Mallathahalli to Bellandur in Bengaluru, and enduring much travails with BMTC’s 500K, my commute changed, for the worse. The workplace shifted to Mahadevapura and there was a whole new paradigm of traffic jams and pile-ups to deal with. I put my money on the bus route 333T, a Volvo service which runs from the BDA complex in Nagarabhavi to ITPL, cutting through the heart of the city, via Okalipuram, Majestic, Old Airport Road and then Marathahalli Bridge. I would get down at the bridge and hitch my way towards Mahadevapura in the perennial…

Kannada pride in Nagashettihalli. Pic courtesy: M S Gopal My daily commute takes me from Mallathahalli (which gets confused with Marathahalli a lot) to a place in Kadubeesanahalli, which lies next to Devarabeesanahalli. My colleagues commute from places like Konanakunte, Gottigere, Bilekahalli, Parappana Agrahara, Kaikondarahalli, Doddakanelli, Kaggadasapura etc.I sometimes wonder how a non-Kannadiga who’s just landed in Bangalore Bengaluru, or living here for a few years, would take to these names. He/she would also have the problem of having to live in places like Garebhavipalya, Bommanahalli, Tippasandra or even Kormanagala, or Madiwala that make you pull out the South Indian…

A map of Bangalore from 1920s that shows planned localities including Chamrajpet area. Pic courtesy: Wikipedia One of the most iconic and beloved movies in Kannada while growing up was ‘Ganeshana Maduve’. In the opening scene, you have the director giving a voice over set, with a complete sense of irony, to the tune of Punyakoti, a long poem you had to memorize when you were barely nine. The voiceover introduces a vataara, or a colony, based in Ranga Rao Road, which straddles Chamarajpet, Shankarapuram and Basavangudi with the iconic Brahmin’s Coffee Bar, set at a corner. One of the…

When you generally have the same routine and wait patiently, and hopelessly for the same bus every day, you tend to know all the buses that pass through at that time. You tend to form patterns that, if nothing else, give you hope. There are also enough versions of BMTC red Volvos for you to look out for specific ones. My usual routine is to wait one stop before the Sarjapura Road junction for the 500K at around 4 pm. Around this time, you are greeted by a steady procession of 500Ds and 500NAs headed towards Silk Board and 500Cs…

A few days back BMTC Volvo crew went on a flash strike, inconveniencing thousands of commuters, against a new rule scrapping overtime when they fail to meet a target for the number of trips per day. They cited bad traffic and road conditions for not being able to meet those targets consistently. When we look at it from a more sympathetic perspective, BMTC crew and Traffic police personnel do bear most of the brunt from fast-crumbling roads and the rains which have added an all new dimension to an already overcrowded, grid-locked city. Given these conditions and the need to…