Found this rather interesting hoarding on DVG road in Gandhi bazaar. No clue what they’re getting at. Buy the interesting bit is the thing about “permanent business centre along with entertainment facility for member”. I don’t know what it is even supposed to mean!
Let your imagination run wild!!
No, not that red bus. I’m talking about the red BMTC buses in Bangalore. They used to be red till 1998 or 1999, and then the government of the day decided that the buses were due an image change (red being danger and all that). This coincided with the spinning off of the BMTC from the erstwhile BTS (which was part of the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation). The buses were all painted blue.
Over the years, new kinds of services have been launched. There was the Pushpak – coloured beige. Then there was the slightly premium Suvarna, coloured a very light purple. And then there were the pass-only green buses, women only pink buses (yes, really) and the red Volvos. For some reason, red buses have started making a comeback to mainline BMTC routes, though I don’t quite know the reason for the reintroduction of the colour, or if they are any different from the blue and white buses.
So for the first time in fifteen years or so, I rode a “normal” red BMTC bus today (in the intervening period I either rode “normal” blue and white buses or premium Volvo red buses). Some pertinent observations from this rather momentous (!!) journey.
I was close to Shivajinagar, and had to come home to Jayanagar. Considering that it’s a pain haggling with auto rickshaw drivers in that area, I decided to take a bus (especially since I was coming from a place really close to the bus stand). I quickly walked up to the Shivajinagar TTMC (“travel and transit management centre” or something). The footpath on the St Marks Road extension on which I walked was quite poor – I hope the TenderSure project that is rebuilding roads and footpaths in the middle of the city reaches there soon.
Even navigation within the TTMC is quite bad – it’s badly designed in the sense that there’s no space to walk where you have no chance of being hit by one of the hundreds of buses there. A helpful official told me where I would get the bus to Jayanagar, but to get there (walking fast) was quite a challenge. Finally I got there and found a red 27E (going to JP Nagar) and hopped on.
The BMTC is definitely not cheap – the journey set me back by 19 rupees (to put that in context, I had traveled there in the morning by auto rickshaw and paid Rs 86). It’s definitely been a long time since I’ve traveled by bus as I handed the conductor a ten rupee note and looked expectedly for change. I had to shell out another ten bucks.
I didn’t get a seat but found a comfortable place for myself to stand (right at the back of the bus). The concept of having the door in the middle of the bus rather than at the fag end is a good one – it allows you to go deep into the bus and find good places to stand. Also, you are looking ahead while standing and can look out for any shuffling in the seats which might potentially get empty!
What I noticed during my journey (which took 25 minutes which is not bad at all for that time of the day) is that each of these longish distance buses actually serve several small markets – if we can figure out a metric for how many times the passengers in the bus “churn” (it’s not too hard, just feeling lazy right now) it might help us plan routes better in terms of multiple short routes rather than a few long routes (that can help cut down uncertainty in timings, etc.).
So the bus for example completely emptied itself out at the Shantinagar TTMC (which is a very good TTMC IMHO, since no buses terminate there), and then got refilled a couple of stops later in Wilson Garden. Earlier, there had been massive churn near Richmond Circle. And so on.
This is perhaps related to the cost but there seemed to be a very different demographic that populated the bus (based on looks – I’m being judgmental and all that, I know) compared to the type 15 years back. In terms of social strata the bus seemed much less diverse today than 15 years back, and it worked both ways. It seemed like most bus travellers today could be broadly defined as being lower middle class – I hardly saw any labourer types (might be a function of the route also) or too many upper middle class types in the bus. It is interesting how these things change!
This morning I refused to board an auto rickshaw since it had one of those old analogue metres. Most autos in Bangalore nowadays use digital metres, which is the regulation. Except a few like the one I saw in the morning.
Now, given that most autos have digital metres people have a choice to choose only such autos. I’m sure the driver I met this morning will realise soon enough that he’s not getting as much business as he can due to his old metre, and make the switch.
It’s similar with usage of metres. In some parts of Bangalore it’s the norm for auto rickshaws to ply by metre. In such areas any driver who tries to make a quick buck by negotiating a higher fare is likely to lose customers. When a customer knows that after letting go of an auto which asked for excess fare, he had a good chance of finding one that will go by the regulated fare, he is less likely to heed to the demand for excess fare.
You can think of this being a case of what Malcolm gladwell calls the tipping point – once markets have tipped to one side (let’s say using regulated fares for auto rides) there is positive reinforcement that leads to an overwhelming move in that direction.
To get back to the metre example, when the fares increased a few months back traffic cops in Bangalore ran a drive where they checked for auto metres and fined those who had not made the switch by a particular date. Maybe that’s led to about 95% of the metres getting recalibrated. The beauty here is that market forces will take care of pushing this 95% to 100% and cops need not spend any more time and energy on enforcing this! Similarly if cops want to enforce usage of regulated fares they would waste time by doing this drive in areas where most rides are by metre – the focus should be on tipping the other areas over!
To summarise, some parts of regulation gets enforced by sheer market forces, and regulators should not be wasting their energies there. Focus should instead be given to those areas where market failure is extreme – for that is where regulation has a role to play.
I got a call a couple of hours back on my landline. The wife picked and was asked to transfer the call to me. When she mentioned that I was busy she was asked about what we think of Nandan Nilekani and whether we are considering voting for him. She told them that we are registered to vote in Bangalore North and hence our opinion of Nilekani doesn’t matter.
I don’t know how the Nilekani campaign team got hold of our phone number. Even if they got from some database I don’t know how they assumed we are registered to vote in Bangalore South. For ours is a bsnl landline and bsnl landlines in Bangalore have a definite pattern that most people in Bangalore are aware of.
Back before 2002 or so when landline numbers in Bangalore got their eighth digit (a leading two) the leading digit of a Bangalore number gave away the broad area.
Numbers in South Bangalore started with 6. A leading 2 meant the number was from the government office dominated areas. A leading 5 was for mg road and the north and east of the city (he cantonment area, indiranagar, koramangala etc) and a leading 3 meant it was a northwest bangalore (malleswaram to vijayanagar) number. 8 was reserved for the outskirts.
Now while Bangalore has expanded significantly these patterns are broadly in place. All you need to do to know where a number is located is to look at the second digit – a 3 there still refers to the north and west sides of the city.
Among the areas of Bangalore that make up Nilekani’s constituency the only one that has a second digit of 3 is vijayanagar (and surrounding areas including the govindrajnagar constituency). From that perspective the likelihood of a number with second digit 2 being in Nilekani’s constituency is really low. Clearly their supposed big data algorithm hasn’t picked that!!
Forget just the second digit – look further down the number. It is public information that 2352 is one of the codes of the Rajajinagar telephone exchange, and all numbers covered by that exchange lie in either bangalore north or Central!!
I wasn’t particularly convinced about Nilekani’s use of big data in the first place – it seemed like the usual media hype – now I think that while his campaign team does use data their use of it is not particularly good. The case that the team in charge of the data analysis for Nilekani lacks any domain knowledge of the city.
As I had mentioned in my blog post yesterday, I just finished reading Sanjeev Sanyal’s Land of seven rivers yesterday afternoon. And later in the evening I started reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Anti-fragile. And before you wonder, let me tell you that yesterday was a working day for me. Just that I had a long process running which gave me the flexibility to catch up on my reading.
So one topic that was mentioned both towards the end of Sanyal’s book and in the prologue of Taleb’s book was the issue of urban planning. And interestingly, the two agreed. In the prologue of Anti-fragile, Taleb has listed out a series of “fragile”, “robust” and “anti-fragile” systems. He has classified it by subject, and in each subject he gives us examples of the three systems. Being halfway through the first chapter, I understand that he is going to elaborate on each member of the list later on in his book, but I’m yet to reach the chapter (I’m still in chapter one, I told you) where he talks about urban planning. Yet, what he has written in that table in the preface on this chapter caught my eye. More so, given that it agreed with what Sanyal had written in his book. In the row on “urbanism”, Taleb has simply written “Le Corbusier” in the Fragile column and “Jane Jacobs” in the Anti-fragile column (the preface of the book is available on Taleb’s website. The relevant section of the table is on page 27).
In the last chapter of Land of seven rivers Sanyal talks about post-independence events that has affected the geography of India. One topic that he delves into is urban planning, where he contrasts the sterility of Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh with the dynamism of unplanned Gurgaon. He mentions that despite careful planning, little economic value has been created in the city of Chandigarh itself, and one reason why it is supposedly clean is because there exist no space for the poor within the city! The city’s rigid master plan is actually a hindrance to economic activity as it allows for little space for entrepreneurial activity to take place. So whatever growth and innovation Chandigarh has seen, says Sanyal, has actually happened in its suburb of Mohali, which is in the state of Punjab.
Urban planning is a topic that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit in recent times, as I’m trying to figure out where to buy a house and “settle down”. Having examined several of Bangalore’s neighbourhoods, I’ve found a strong contrast between planned and unplanned neighbourhoods. The former (eg. Jayanagar) usually have wide roads, pavements, access to markets at frequent intervals (one thing where planning has failed, and for the good I think, is zoning. I wouldn’t want to walk to the main market for every one of my needs) and auto rickshaws. More importantly, they have people walking around on the streets all the time, which makes the neighbourhood safe. Unplanned neighbourhoods (eg. Sarjapur Road) usually have large condominiums, few shopping options and no auto rickshaws. You have either highways or small village roads and not too many people walk around. This makes the streets unsafe and makes you reliant on private transport, which in my opinion is not a good thing. Nevertheless, one must admit that given the massive influx into Bangalore in the last 10-12 years (on account of the IT boom), it is the unplanned neighbourhoods that have taken the lion’s share of housing the incoming population.
So the question is how much planning a city needs. Too much planning (as in Chandigarh and Delhi) can make the cities static, and not provide enough for potential immigration – which is necessary for increased economic activity. On the other hand, unplanned areas are inherently unsafe and don’t provide for a great urban quality of life (as far as I’m concerned one of the primary indicators of urbanism is public transport). Is there a middle ground of “light touch regulation” which derives the best of both worlds? How should urban planners approach this issue? How can we make our cities both dynamic and safe? As of now, I don’t have the answers.
PS: The title of this post is in reference to the name “Le Corbusier” which is French for “The Crow”.
Recently the Deccan Herald carried an article on how Basavanagudi was an extremely well-planned area. It showed the original plan of Basavanagudi (drawn up in the late 1890s in the wake of the plague that hit the Pete area), and showed how well planned it was – demarcating public spaces, market areas, clubs, schools and residential areas. What is remarkable to me is that an area that was drawn up in the late 1890s has roads that are mostly wide enough to take even today’s traffic (a contrast in Malleswaram, built in the same area, but with extremely narrow roads by today’s standards).
On Thursday, I had to go someplace in Gandhi Bazaar (in Basavanagudi) from my grandmother’s place in Jayanagar, and that was when it struck me how small Basavaanagudi is. South End Circle and South End Road actually demarcated the southern end of Basavanagudi, while the so-called “North Road” (also called Vani Vilas Road) marked the northen end of this area. And I ended up walking from my grandmother’s house (about half a kilometer south-east of South End Circle) to National College in about fifteen minutes – and if you go by the map shown in the article linked above, it is the entire span of Basavanagudi! If this was one of the “major” planned extensions of Bangalore in that era, it goes to indicate the city’s population at that time.
It is interesting to note in the plan (as published by Deccan Herald) that the area that is now MN Krishna Rao park was demarcated as a “public square”. While the area is still being put to public use nowadays I couldn’t help but think of New York’s Union Square, which is build on an area much smaller than Krishna Rao park, but which has multiple uses to different sections of the population. Krishna Rao Park, on the other hand, is now a typical example of a “Jairaj Park” (nomenclature I’ve come up with after the former BBMP Commissioner, who was responsible for populating the city with a certain kind of park). I wonder if people still play cricket inside the park.
Until I saw the plan of Basavanagudi I hadn’t realized the symmetry in design. If you notice, at each corner of the public square there is a large roundabout which is somewhat off-centre (Armugam Circle, Netkallappa Circle, Tagore Circle and Dewan Madhava Rao circle). Of these, Tagore “Circle” is actually a square which doesn’t particularly serve the purpose of the roundabout thanks to which an ungainly underpass had to be built recently. And if you notice in the map, beyond each of these roundabouts is a “diagonal” road. The symmetry in design is remarkable. As an aside, while I was walking back to Jayanagar from Gandhi Bazaar on Thursday, I realized that large roundabouts are pedestrian-unfriendly! Unless they allow the pedestrian to cut across them (like in New York’s squares), of course.
For a long time I used to wonder why there is a Muslim Ghetto in the south-eastern quadrant of Basavanagudi (area between RV Road, Patalamma Street and the extension of BP Wadia road towards “teachers college”). The plan explains this. In line with the sensibilities of those times, Basavanagudi had dedicated areas for different castes and communities, and this sector was probably the area “reserved” for Muslims. It is the same with other areas developed in that time – for example Malleswaram also has a “Mohammedan block”. What is interesting, though, is that even Jayanagar, which was planned post-independence, when secularism was in vogue, has its pockets of Muslim Ghettos. I wonder if they grew organically or were by design. Also, read the map carefully. You will see that different parts of Basavanagudi have been earmarked for different castes!
It would be interesting if someone were to dig up the original masterplans for different localities in Bangalore, and also in other cities. It would be instructive to see how cities were developed at different points in time (for example, immediately after independence came the massive localities of Jayanagar and Rajajinagar – neither of which can be walked across in fifteen minutes). Also, this plan for Basavanagudi indicates that there were no villages in the area where it came up – which was not the case with areas such as Jayanagar which were planned around such villages. Again it would be interesting to see how villages were co-opted into the city.
I can go on but will stop here. I encourage you to also take a close look at the map and make your own inferences, and share them in the comments section.
So it’s exactly a year since I moved to the north. North Bangalore that is. For exactly the last one year, I’ve called a place in Rajajinagar 2nd Stage (not to be confused with Rajajinagar 2nd Block) my home. It’s been a roller-coaster ride, I must say. Lots of ups, lots of downs. I must admit a year in I still haven’t settled in completely, and for the record, I’m already plotting a move back south.
The problem with the area where I live is that it is an area of houses built on 30 feet by 40 feet plots. While that itself is not a problem (with an FSI of 1.5, you can build a 1800 square foot house here, which is pretty massive), the problem is that this area was “built” in the early 1970s. Back then, nobody had cars, and given the economic situation nobody aspired to have a car. This, coupled with the smallish plots meant that people didn’t make a provision in their plots to park cars. Again – given the economic situation when this layout was built, it is a perfectly rational decision.
Now, forty years later, with rapid economic growth in the last 20 odd, everybody has a car. And since there’s no space to park them inside the houses, people park them on the streets. So on every street in my locality, you will find cars parked continuously on both sides of the road. Unfortunately people haven’t figured out a protocol of one-ways, so sometimes that leads to traffic deadlocks when cars approach from both sides of the road. Thankfully we are spared of such deadlocks since we live on a road that leads to a dead end (a real dead end, not a “Bangalore dead end”, which is just a T-junction).
Thinking about it, I find the land use here rather suboptimal. Most plots have two-storeyed houses, and given the size of the plots, the plots are fully built. So there is less than five feet space between my window and my neighbour’s – and on Sunday mornings we get woken up because Neighbour Uncle likes to talk loudly on the phone sitting in his porch (the neighbours reconstructed their house a few years back, so they have a porch to park their car). Essentially there is little privacy.
There is little of other things also – like open spaces and trees, again a function of the plot sizes. I have a solution for this, but it is going to be hard to implement, and I don’t want to be the ones doing that. Yes, everyone has a plot of land to call their own. But they live in houses that aren’t too large and don’t have much privacy or open spaces or gardens.So I think it would be a profitable enterprise for a real estate developer to buy up the entire area (let’s say about two or three roads at least), merge the sites and build a high rise apartment here with all “facilities”. Even if the realtor were to pay above market rates (necessary since a lot of people wouldn’t want to sell) and compensate the incumbents handsomely in terms of houses, there is profit to be made. But then everyone wants their own “piece of land”.
Notwithstanding any of this, where I live is a great area. It is residential and solidly middle-class, and I can buy just about anything I want within a kilometer of my house. I only need to walk about 100m to catch an auto rickshaw, and it isn’t that hard to get an auto home at any time in the day. The biggest problem I find here, though, is infrastructure.
Malleswaram is a pre-car area. It was built in the 1890s to rehabilitate people from the old city (pete) area following an outbreak of plague. Consequently, the roads aren’t particularly wide. Which ever way I want to get out, I’m faced with narrow roads, and that combined with heavy traffic means travel times to the centre of town and beyond are large. And to make matters worse, Dr. Rajkumar Road (one boundary of “mainstream” Rajajinagar) is a highway, with buses leaving for all parts of Karnataka passing through this road.
I have a habit of living in cusps. My last residence was at the trijunction of Jayanagar, Basavanagudi and Banashankari. This one is on the border of Malleswaram and Rajajinagar. Maybe the next time I move, I should think of going into the “middle” of some area.
First of all, I’m serious. Second of all, this is not the first time I’m writing on Bangalore’s nightlife (or the lack of it). The last time I wrote about this topic, I had argued that most people in Bangalore are fundamentally illiberal and opposed to extended night life, and official response was just an embodiment of this sentiment. This post is more positive.
I think I have hit upon a solution to create a night life in Bangalore. This is based on my experiences at Amritsar and Ajmer. Both of them were extremely spiritual experiences (no, not that spirit. Alcohol is banned in the vicinity of the main shrines in both these places). Both places offered fantastic food (again, vegetarian food only in the vicinity of the Golden Temple – but bloody brilliant; and brilliant mutton biryani near the Dargah of HKGN in Ajmer). And most importantly, both towns had a vibrant night life.
I’m not sure if I’ve touched upon this topic earlier, but the fundamental problem with Bangalore not having a night life is that it has never had one. Half of it was a traditional Indian city, and the other half was a rather sleepy cantonment town – which had its share of bars and discotheques, but most of which closed at eight in the evening (even twenty years ago, most of MG Road and Brigade Road would close at eight in the evening). Consequently, the city never did have a lifestyle. Even if you argue that the cantonment side had one, that the “city” side became more dominant after independence meant that whatever night life was there never really developed.
Fundamentally, a town gets a night life if people have some business being outdoors at night. Bombay had its textile mills that ran round the clock. New York was a busy trading port. Pick any city with a reasonable night life and you will find that sometime in its history there would have been a solid reason for people to remain outdoors late in the night. And yes, I’m talking about a solid business reason, not just partying.
The simple fact of the matter is that Bangalore has never had one (for reasons explained above). The situation is slowly changing of course, with many of Bangalore’s BPO and IT shops open through the night to service customers in the new world. Unfortunately, most such companies have insulated themselves from the rest of the city and built their own facilities for food, transportation, etc. Thanks to this, workers in such establishment (no doubt there are several) do not really contribute to the general nocturnal economy of the city. And so the administration can get away with downing shutters at bars and restaurants at 11 pm.
So what needs to be done? As the title of the post suggests, we need to build temples. We need “udbhava murtis” (idols that have sprung up from the ground) to magically spring up in several places in the city (not in the middle of roads of course). Then we need our religious leaders to declare that such murtis are the greatest to have ever existed, and to create a discourse that visiting one such murti will cure one of all past sins (or any such thing that will bring in crowds in large numbers). This needs to be a concerted effort, such that the demand for “darshan” at these murtis become humongous. The demand to see the murtis will be so humongous that the temples that are likely to spring up around them will need to be open round the clock!
And so we will have people visiting these temples late in the night, in the wee hours of the morning. Lots of people at the temple means an enterprising chaat wallah will find it profitable to set up shop outside these temples. They will be followed by a chai wallah, and then dosa carts will begin to appear. Police will want to read the rule book to these businessmen, but their removal will lead to incurring the wrath of thousands of hungry pilgrims. The police will quietly extract their commissions and let the establishments stay. Then, people will need to get to the temples at wee hours of the morning, so we will have buses running through the night. More people moving around will mean greater “liquidity” in the auto rickshaw market and they will become more affordable at these times.
It will take a while (no good things come easily). But soon the bustling economies around these 24-hour temples will mean that the city will be alive through the night. Laws will have to change, and soon shops will be open through the night. As will be restaurants, and in the course of time bars (no promise on that one; Till very recently even in London bars had to shut at 11pm). And the city will have a night life!
Of course, the road to this liberal utopia is through a religious process. But then, don’t ends sometimes justify the means? And who is to say that an all-powerful deity does not add value to society at large? It will take concerted effort though (these idols need to magically appear in strategic locations, and we need the support of religious leaders to bless such idols – this is easier said than done), but it can be done.
PS: After writing this I realize that I’d written something similar on the Broad Mind a few months ago. Apologies for re-hashing the same idea. But don’t tell me this is not more positive.
Right from the time I started subscribing to the Times of India (and consequently, “Bangalore Times”) back in 1998, I’ve wanted to be a “party types”. While I’ve always been quite nerdy and anti-social and socially awkward, I’ve always wanted to attend parties, and perhaps even attain the holy grail of being a “party types” – having my face on a tiny corner of Page Three of Bangalore Times (my wife, five years younger than me, beat me to this “achievement” in February this year; I was away romancing my bike and the roads (and cows) of Rajasthan when she unlocked this achievement).
I must say I got a chance rather early. The school I had just joined then (National Public School, Indiranagar) was full of interesting people, and my classmates used to organize “parties” every month or so. The “party hall” at an apartment complex where one of the classmates lived would be booked, audio equipment would be rented, out of which “music” of the likes of Prodigy and the Beastie Boys would be blared out. Girls would dress up (I was positively shocked when, just before one of these parties, two of my classmates were talking about buying new dresses for the forthcoming party!), boys wouldn’t, strobe lights flashed, and we would cry our throats hoarse trying to make conversation over the “music”. There wouldn’t be any alcohol, of course, as we were all under-age (we were in class XI), but that didn’t prevent us from having a good time.
Unfortunately, I wouldn’t have too much fun, as I attended a grand total of three parties over the course of two years, during which four or five times that number were organized! It didn’t help that I lived quite far off from most of my classmates (I was in Jayanagar; I’d bus 12 kilometers each way to school, and most classmates lived close enough to school to cycle). It didn’t help either that those were “JEE mugging years”, and my parents thought I shouldn’t be “wasting my time” partying. Adding to the mix was my parents’ conservativeness and their view of dance parties as being immoral imports of undesirable aspects of western civilization. My “party life” was off to a slow start, and I continued to be socially awkward.
The less I talk about the “party scene” over the next four years (when I was at IIT Madras), the better. The only thing that “happened” was an article I wrote decrying the page three scene for Total Perspective Vortex, the newly launched “literary magazine” on campus. It was like a frustrated old fogey writing about sour grapes, but I thought I wrote quite well.
The famous bi-weekly “L square” parties on campus at IIMB revived my party life. I continued to be socially awkward, but here you knew most people, and most of them knew about my awkwardness. This was around the time I started drinking alcohol, though I wouldn’t drink much. When I drank, though, I let go of myself and I think I had a good time, though I continued to be socially awkward. I developed a reputation of hugging women when drunk. And when I decided to not drink and only observe, I would feel miserable, and “left out”. My red bandana became famous, though!
I contributed significantly to the literature on partying in those two years. It helped that I had started this blog (ok it’s predecessor on LJ) back then. I documented my first ever experience of getting drunk. Another day, I had one drink, stood aside and made pertinent observations. And then, on another occasion, I decided to write a letter to my mother (!! ) about partying.
The downside of L square was that I was used to partying “among my own people”, at organized parties. I never “went out”. As part of my first job, I remember going out one night for a party, but I was so tired from work that I wasn’t able to let go. There was another occasion when I went with a bunch of seemingly random people to Insomnia, the disco at the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai. Was again way too self conscious, and made my exit pretty quickly. Same story at my favourite “cousin sister”‘s bachelorette party. Too self-conscious. I should have perhaps interpreted those as first signs of my anxiety.
Priyanka had always claimed to be a “party types”, but would artfully dodge every time I suggested we go out “partying”. She perhaps recognized my social awkwardness (yes, that part never changed) and didn’t want to embarrass herself. She kept saying we should go out “with other people”, and put the onus on me to find other people to go out with, knowing fully well that I was completely incapable of convincing my friends that we should go out “partying”.
So the first “party” we attended together ended up being at the mantap, on the night before our wedding. We had arranged for a DJ, and while some elderly relatives looked on, shocked at our “lack of culture”, others gamely joined in. The music was kept in line to the median demographics of the crowd, and songs such as “aa anTe amalaapuram” sought to drill into my head that I was condemned to lead the rest of my life married to a Gult. The party ended abruptly when the cops from the nearby station made an appearance asking us to tone down the volume, and most people promptly went home.
I could say that my life changed last night. At long last, at the ripe old age of twenty nine, nearly three years after I met and fell in love with the self-proclaimed “party types” Priyanka, and nearly two years after we moved in together, she “obliged” and took me for a party. Joining us for the evening was her spiritual guru (hereby referred to as “Guru”) and a common friend of theirs (who we shall refer to as “Date”). We were headed to the City Bar at UB city, which was hosting a party with DJ R3hab (sic) at the turntable. Priyanka (we’ll call her “Wife” henceforth) would be my “guide” into the world of partying. For the record, she had only recently finished reading Raghu Karnad’s excellent essay on how the liquor industry shaped Bangalore. I had read it maybe a month back.
People talk about female infanticide and selective abortions, when they talk about the ticking time bomb that is India’s declining sex ratio. They quote numbers such as “914 girls for every 1000 boys for population aged 0-6”, and compare it to other countries, and our own numbers in the past. They talk about “wife sharing” and migration of girls from poor states such as Bihar to states starved of women such as Haryana. The starker story about India’s gender gap, though, can be told by observing the crowd trying to get into nightclubs.
In the Western world, nightclubs are frequently seen as places to “hang out”, and find interesting people, typically of the sexually preferred gender. Men and women alike, looking for interesting company, hang out at nightclubs, and many a relationship is formed because people “happened to meet at a party”. It is approximately as likely for a group of men to go out, as it is for a group of women, so most of these clubs typically see fairly balanced gender ratios. Apart from perhaps a few exclusive clubs, few see the need to take measures to ensure a balanced gender ratio, and this too is done “gently”, through measures such as “ladies’ nights”, where women get free drinks.
It is instructive that one of the most popular sports bars in Bangalore (Xtreme sports bar in Indiranagar) prevents stag entry. It is hilarious, because watching sport is usually a male-bonding activity. If I want to get together with a bunch of fellow Liverpool F.C. fans and go watch a game, it is impossible to do so unless at least half of us are women (and I know only one woman who is a Liverpool F.C. fan and she doesn’t live in Bangalore). Preventing stag entry, as drastic it seems, however, seems like the only practical way for clubs to ensure a fair gender ratio and enable people to have fun.
As we rode up the escalator to the “Piazza” area of UB City last evening, we were greeted by a massive, mostly male, crowd. Most of them were trying to get into City Bar, but were being held off by bouncers who had declared a “couples only entry” policy. The few women we saw there were perhaps waiting for friends, for there was nothing stopping them from entering. The stags didn’t have any such option, but still hung on in the hope of being let in (City Bar usually doesn’t have any restrictions. My guess is that the rule was made on the go in order to ensure a balanced crowd for the party), and in the process made it difficult for couples and hinds to get past them and get in. The scene at the bar there told the story.
This was a puzzle that had puzzled me back when I was looking for a long-term gene propagating partner. Every social network I had been part of, every seemingly upwardly mobile cohort, there seemed to be a disproportionate number of men. A woman for every sixteen men at IIT. One in six at IIM. One in three, one in ten, none in ten and one in twenty in my four jobs. The story was similar in most engineering colleges and IT companies. And the heavy imbalances reflected in the club scene also. Where, I wonder, where have all the women gone?
Priyanka argues that it is down to our conservative culture and relative ease of boys to live away from their parents and to be able to “go out”. Another reason she gives pertains to girls getting married at a much younger age in our country (relative to boys). While these make sense, the latter is a “problem” Western countries also face, but they don’t seem to have a problem attracting balanced crowds to public spaces. Nevertheless, we seem to have fallen into a Nash equilibrium where most single women stay home, for a multitude of reasons, and most single men go to bars searching for single women, mostly in futility. It is only the arranged marriage market that perhaps clears this deadlock.
“No one drinks at clubs”, the experienced Wife had informed me, “everyone gets drunk before they go in”. In accordance to this diktat, and also seeking to warm myself after a swim in reasonably cold water earlier in the evening, I had carried along some (excellent) Amrut fusion in the car. Wife and I drank from it before we made our way to City bar. We were to realize we hadn’t been too “liberal” when we had stocked up liquor for the car.
If you are tall and big, like me, it is easy to get spotted in the crowd, and this can help people locate and keep track of you when you are at public spaces (like a club or a crowded market or a concert). But it can work against you when you have to weave through human traffic in order to get somewhere, like to the gates of the club as we had to last night. Wife, however, had chosen our company well, as the tiny Guru expertly weaved past the crowds and got us past the gates, with stamps on our wrists. My life as a “party types” was actually about to begin.
The alcohol took a long time to act, and even mixing drinks (the entry fee included a free Bacardi+Lime, which I gulped down to go over the Amrut I had drunk earlier) didn’t help. I instinctively reached for and fidgeted with my phone, to tweet, but met disapproval from Wife, who thought that was too geeky. I actually tweeted that I wanted to blog about what I was observing. Then things started to get interesting.
Wife and I decided to look out for interesting people. She quickly found two boys to lech at, and pointed them out to me. I wasn’t so lucky with the women. There was a sameness about their appearance. They all seemed to be wearing similar clothes, or perhaps most of them could be classified into two or three types based on the clothes they wore. Most of them were in skirts/dresses, though some wore trousers. Most shoulders were bare, with strappy and strapless tops/dresses ruling the roost. Long straightened hair was the norm, as were high-heeled shoes. To the slowly-getting-drunk me, even their faces all looked alike. There was little idiosyncracy about the looks of any of them, to particularly draw my attention. The only one I found remotely interesting, of course, was Date, who I had briefly talked to while we were getting in (she too, of course, was “in uniform”, as was Wife). I walked a bit after I finished my rum to dispose of the bottle, looked back, and thought I saw a girl who caught my eye. Turned out it was the Wife!!
We moved into the heart of the party, close to the stage where R3hab had by now taken over. I noticed a pile of women’s shoes near a pillar, and soon discovered that Wife and Date, too, were dancing barefoot! What is the point in wearing fancy shoes, I thought, if one has to take them off to have fun. However, I guess such questions are not to be asked about one’s wives.
The first cop made his appearance at about 11:05 pm (the deadline for bars and restaurants is 11:30). Wife and I decided it was time to move on, and since I hadn’t eaten anything after the swim (and had quite a bit to drink – I would drink another shot of whisky at the bar), I thought it would be a good idea to hit a “midnight buffet”. We presently left the party, bidding goodbye to Guru and Date, partly in our effort to beat the crowd out of the parking lot. Bangalore, and UB City continued to party on as we drove out (yes, I was sober enough to drive). Some aimless wandering followed (I remembered people mention the Midnight buffet at Windsor, and promptly drove there without checking only to be told they had stopped it some time ago) before we settled down for the midnight buffet at the ITC Gardenia. It was past 1 am by the time we got home.
I’m a wannabe no more. I’ve always wanted to be “party types”, and I took my baby steps in that direction last night. “Project Thirty” is well and truly on, I must say! Much fun was had last night, and I kept telling Wife that “we should do this more often”. It helps that Bangalore has moderately relaxed the dancing-at-bars laws. My friend Deepak who runs Eclipse at The Leela tells me that there is a new “discotheque license” which enables an establishment to permit dancing. Of course, the 11:30 deadline remains, but I shall not complain.
I mentioned earlier that I had a reputation at IlIMB of hugging girls when drunk. I lived up to that last night as I repeatedly put my arm around Date and posed for photos, and gave her a hug as we were about to leave (Wife looked on, and clicked photos). However, Wife maintains that I lack social skills, and I really need to make an effort in the art of making conversation with women, and etiquette of taking a woman out (I continue to commit silly yet cardinal mistakes, like when I took Wife to the Windsor yesterday before checking if they had a buffet). I’m looking for a “social skills” coach. If any of you are willing to help me on that, I would be extremely glad. If you agree to guide me, I will treat you every time we meet as part of “my course”.
I’ve told the story of fourteen years of my life in this rather long essay, along with some comments and tidbits on India’s social structure. In these fourteen years, a lot has changed, in India, in Bangalore and in my life. One thing, however, refuses to change. I continue to be socially awkward.
After spending a little over three years here I’m moving out of my current residence just off Bangalore South’s K R road. I’m moving to rajajinagar, to live in the house above my in-laws’ house. It will be the first time ever that I’ll be living in the north of bangalore, having spent my twenty five years here in jayanagar, banashankari, kr road and bilekahalli.
The packers and movers are here, and I write this sitting on this lone chair in my drawing room – everything else has been moved to the truck. I’ve just had a lunch of muesli and yoghurt, and it will take a while before we completely pack up from here.
I feel nothing, and am mostly blank, contrasting with my wife who has been crying over the last few days saying she’ll miss this house – our first marital home. Part by part the house becomes empty, but this feels nothing like the last three times I moved out of a house.
Since I’m blogging this from my phone I’m not able to put the link here, but I was indeed a broken man the day I left iimb. I simply didn’t want to leave, and I knew that I was leaving a part of me behind as I quietly moved out. I still feel weird when I visit iimb, which is not too rare nowadays.
It was similar when I moved out of ‘deepa’, our family home in kathriguppe (banashankari) in 2008, to move to gurgaon. I wasn’t there the day the packers and movers came there, but did quite a bit of the preliminary work as we prepared to leave the house. Though I’ve never gone back to live there (first my mother, and then my wife, expressed reservations about moving to kathriguppe so that house remains on rent), it is still ‘my house’ and I still feel sad having left it.
It probably has to do with the fact that I don’t remember the process of moving in (the house was constructed when I was a baby). So it was always ‘my house’ and the place to go to when I came home from college. It hurts when I’ve to go there to meet my tenants, to see someone else living in ‘my house’.
The last time I moved home was from gurgaon back to bangalore and that time I had ecstatic. I had endured a rather torrid 10 months in gurgaon, and has absolutely hated most of it. It was a day of excitement and relief when I finally moved back. It was a hectic day, though, as the packers packed through the day, the landlord arrived early evening to collect the keys and we caught a late evening flight back to bangalore to end my gurgaon stint with a bang.
This time, though, it’s hardly sunk in that I’m moving. I see the house mostly empty now, but had seen it in a similar state before I moved in. And having had the experience of personally observing a move in the past, I’m less concerned and worried about that also.
Most of the things are packed now. One chair isn’t and I’m perched on that, observing the men in green uniform.. I don’t know how I’ll take to north bangalore. I don’t know how it will be living so close to my in-laws. I work from home so there’s no commute, but then it does take me farther from Bangalore’s network of data scientists that is concentrated in the south and in the east. I’ll be away from jayanagar and basavanagudi but the new nearby malleswaram excites much. After four years in apartments I’m excited to be living in a ‘house’ again,
I hope this is a change for the better. I still feel indifferent about the move, though.