It’s a Bangalore thing

It’s a Bangalore thing
By Maya Jayapal
Deccan Herald
The text is complemented by illustrations and is in part funny, truthful and quirky.


Tushita Patel, former resident editor of the Asian Age describes this book as having started as a weekly column and over a two-year run, “the entire city became part of this book’s journey.”

It is indeed a journey spanning a century of tales encompassing every aspect of Bangalore that one can conceive of, and then some. The landscape, a little history “minus the boring bits”, life in the city and cant, living then and now, the exploding metropolis, the traffic, the ‘monkey top’ bungalows and their residents, including the watchman, the cook, the shadowy wraiths flitting in and out of the Conservancy Lanes, the growing pains of a schoolboy, the gardens, the “good time girls and boys” etc. All this is charmingly woven into the lives of the author and his family to form a sepia-tinted mosaic.

It is a story of a boy growing up alongside the burgeoning city. Bittersweet at times detailing the loss of innocence, the wealth of maturing. Quirky and irreverently humourous, touching on things everyone of a generation can relate to. And in between the light-heartedness, suddenly, the harsh glare of truth: “Those were legendary days in Bangalore, when governments governed, and the Public Works Department spent a large amount of its time and money actually doing Public works.”

The criticism is sometimes turned, ever so gently on himself, when writing on the messed up bridges in Jayamahal Park: “And people like me… what are we doing about it?” A haunting introspection in the article on AIDS: (when sweets from a sufferer were refused for other valid reasons such as diabetes): “He concealed his hurt, almost. He must be used to people shying away.” Visible sadness: “Festival processions have become a statement of anger”. But there is also a good dollop of hope: “Can we make the old friendly multiculturalism last? God willing, we will have the wisdom and the courage. Yes”.

Shining through

What comes through is Colaco’s deep love for the city that he was born in and has returned to; a love that transcends its present woes and pitfalls and potholes, a love that is visible in the repeated “MY Bangalore,” a love that gives him his identity. For him, it seems more a spirit than a place, a spirit that lies dormant under her raucous untidy streets, inside her monuments and parks, a spirit which has nothing to do with steel, or concrete, or greenery.

However, maybe organising chapters a little better would have made the book more compact, such as combining the chapters on Urban Menace and ‘Was my Bangalore More Peaceful Than Yours?’ The proof-reading could also have been more careful. But these are minor technical matters. What matters is what remains. A lingering happy feeling which starts in the pit of the stomach and radiates to a smile and a chuckle. A book to definitely own and dip into.

A CENTURY OF TALES FROM CITY& CANTONMENT

With illustrations by Paul Fernandes

Published by Via Media Books, 2003

306 pages, Rs 395