Books: Bangalore ~ the morphing of a Multiple City

In 2006 Penguin India commissioned me to do an anthology of writings on Bangalore/ Bengaluru. I asked myself if I could do one as good as some of their other city anthologies, such as Bapsi Sidhwa’s Lahore or Bombay by Naresh Fernandes and Jerry Pinto. Once the butterflies settled, I thought: why not?

On December 13, 2008, the book I edited ~ ‘Multiple City: writings on Bangalore’ ~ was launched at Crossword bookstore at Residency Road.

The writers in the anthology include U R Ananthamurthy, Shashi Deshpande, Winston Churchill, Rajmohan Gandhi, Ramachandra Guha, William Dalrymple, Thomas Friedman, Pankaj Mishra and others. The book includes essays, fiction, translations from Kannada, oral history, a film song, a nursery rhyme ~ and even a blog.   

Here’s what I wrote in my introduction to the book.

First person singular:
In Search of a City

         IT’S A windy May morning in the year 2007. About 7.15 a.m. I’m helmeted, strapped into the passenger seat of a motorized hang-glider. At the helm is a veteran naval officer with a passion for the air sport. The glider, 1000 feet above the city that I’ve called home since May 1992, soars skywards from Jakkur, then banks, glides and, as I seem to suspend my breath for an incredible fifteen minutes, offers me an alternate lens through which to view Bangalore or Bengaluru. Or is that a mythical landscape that unfolds below us?
 
      I’m conscious that I have no parachute on board, nor the shell of a cabin to cushion me from the breeze that had the windsock at the airfield jigging furiously since dawn. The chill morning air nips at my ear-lobes, teases my bare toes. Wonder surges through me as I consciously shift gears mentally – and jettison inherited or collective notions about the city we hover over.

      I gaze upon sheets of pristine water. Is that Hebbal lake? Verdant stretches, seemingly unpopulated, cross, twist and zigzag on terra firma. Is that the Life Insurance Corporation building on arterial Mahatma Gandhi Road, and the new United Breweries tower on Vittal Mallya Road? Impeccable toy-sized houses swing into sight, as if conjured up from a Lego kit, with dinky red, yellow and blue cars arrayed in open garages. The scene unfolding below has the unlived-in openness of a Google Earth exploration.
 
      I mull over the past years of searching for our city through writings on it. My journey has unfolded through stop-start scenes where I’ve stumbled upon facts and features, characters and cartoons, even alternate or divisive perspectives, in lieu of a grand, linear narrative. I’ve sensed unidentified shadows through multiple conversations, had chance encounters both literary and political, gauged readings over steaming by-two cups at the India Coffee House, even entered high-voltage debates about the interior landscapes of gays and hijras. I’ve listened to the narratives of Generation Next and tuned in to their grandparents’ ajja-ajji stories over set dosas at stand-and-eat darshinis, often buoyed by excursions into the Kannada literary landscape with practitioners and interpreters. 
 
      What layered identities exist, or once flourished, within this emerging global city? What schismatic tugs-of-war rage between Bengaluru and Bangalore, between the western pete that can be traced back at least five centuries and the eastern Cantonment, at least three centuries younger, between the City and the Civil and Military Station, the native and the colonial, as the Mysore peta and the silk roomal from northern Karnataka come to terms with the Gandhi cap? Did the traditions of stately Mysore vanish when the City and the Cantonment were united under a single municipal administration in 1949?  Is the cosmopolitan nature of Bangalore, then, a stumbling block to defining its identity? Has the IT-propelled new city taken the shine off its established public sector undertakings, its famed silk looms? Will the city on fast forward mode towards the future spell its doom, especially since its population has boomed from 1.5 to nearly seven million in barely three decades?
 
       As I fly over these warring entities, deep-seated flickers of unknowing flutter within me, along with unrequited curiosity, and yet a sense of belonging. This is a city, or multiple cities within, that have enfolded me and drawn me in, oddball that I am, Bengali by birth and south Indian by choice. Is this the terrain of the four boundary mantapas or towers that the Yelahanka nadaprabhu or chieftain Kempe Gowda is said to have founded around 1537, celebrated in folk ballad and contemporary narratives alike? Why did he choose the village of Sivanasamudram, ten miles to the south of Yelahanka, to build his mud fort in? Did the city derive its name from the meal of boiled beans or bendakalu that an old woman shared with him?
 
        Every city dweller I interact with seems to espouse a private vision of Bangalore. I stumble upon hidden stories retold in whispers, threadbare yet convergent narratives. Of a memorial to a 9^th century hero commemorated during an ancient Battle of Bengaluru. Of megalithic tombs and iron tools dating back to 1000 BC, besides records of Roman silver coins that hark back to the emperor Augustus. Of a tutelary deity named Annamma, whose temple borders the Dharmambudhi tank. Of a Jewish settlement that gave rise to Asia’s biggest shoe store of the early 20^th century. Of a city that had access to electricity before the rest of Asia. Of the base where India’s first indigenous helicopter was developed, and where the Bangalore torpedo was devised by British Captain McClintock of the Bengal, Bombay and Madras Sappers in 1912.
 
       When the British defeated Tipu Sultan of Mysore in the Battle of Bangalore in 1791, the rural aspect of the location was its defining feature. It was a location defined by its keres or tanks. That’s besides its large temple complexes, its agraharas or Brahmin settlements. In the 21^st century, the technopole represents the city as much as the annual Karaga rites at the Dharmaraya temple in the old city. 
 
      “Jeans pants on the outside and madi panche on the inside,” wrote Bargur Ramachandrappa, former Chairman of the Kannada Development Authority, describing the reluctant metropolis. Is the Mysore state emblem of the two-headed Gandeberunda bird, then, an apt representation of the city’s state of mind, straddling the puranas and technological advances with equal felicity?  
 
      Even as I juggle these notions, I carry memories of other cities, other homes, within me. Of the quintessential Tamil culture that enriches Chennai/ Madras, where silk-draped maamis in Hakoba blouses and rubber slippers critique a Carnatic music concert with as much panache as they weigh up Thiruvalluvar against Shakespeare. Of the jostling mass of Mumbai/ Bombay, with its folk-rich Ganesh Chaturthi and equally fervent Bollywood worship, its capacity to make outsiders feel at home despite the ebb and flow of a city constantly on the move to wherever. Of eating rich shahi tukra and biryani that the palate still lusts for at intimate chowkis at the Qutb Shahi tombs, or bargaining for mirror-studded Ladla Bazaar bangles in the bustling Charminar at Hyderabad. Of the beat of the dhaak and the sensuous, swirling aroma of dhuno as the priest calls the deity into public consciousness at the annual conclave that is Durga Pujo in quintessential Kolkata/ Calcutta.
   
     How does Bangalore fit into this framework that defines a city for me? It seems to engage with its past with insouciance, within a continuum where the past, the present and the future collide every milli-moment. Its streets voice their cosmopolitan culture and urban angst as much in Kannada as in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam or English. It does not offer outsiders a pageant of archaeological monuments; instead, in the words of a wag, it has just ‘two rambling gardens and a crumbling palace.’ It is as much at ease with the masala dosa of Vidyarthi Bhavan as with the stiff upper lip colonial traditions of the Bangalore Club, or the shining new towers and gated communities of IT-based international commerce.

      I try to touch base with the essential Bangalore/ Bengaluru. But for every home truth that stands its ground, I chance upon a contradiction that seems equally valid. Questions jostle with answers in uneasy combat. What makes Bangalore pulse to life? Could it be the yoking of the local and the global, the contradictory aspirations of a ‘wannabe Singapore,’ as media debates would have us believe?
 
     Fifteen years ago, my friends from Chennai, New Delhi or Jaipur and I would often lie back on the grass in a secluded patch of Cubbon Park and ask the lazy, wandering weekend clouds in the blue sky overhead: What defines this city? Where is it going? Where is the Garden City? The Pub City? What makes this a resurgent hub of contemporary Indian art and dance today? What heaves through the underbelly of Brand Bangalore? Will it explode when the past and present collide with the future? Or will the laid-back nature of its citizens soothe ruffled feelings so that life flows on?

      From the hang-glider, the numbing crush of traffic on roads gone berserk seems like science fiction. Even the erasure of the pensioner’s paradise by realtors and mall maniacs appears unreal, however temporarily. For the city I spy below is green, calm, an eminently desirable location, even a space of infinite promise. Of what?

      Of a home truth that I acknowledge as we ease into a gentle touchdown at Jakkur. An essence that is celebrated in Bangalore or Bengaluru daily, through its myriad tongues, its multiple origins, the cacophony of sound tracks within curvilinear recountings.  

       It is a truth that this anthology seeks to represent. Not within an encyclopaedic sweep or a comprehensive, defining narrative. The multi-pronged gaze of the contributors trace the city, its culture of confluences both real and surreal, whether viewed from terra-firma or while airborne. As flexi-cities within the single location tumble into view, it would be impossible not to celebrate their underlying spirit. A spirit that, to me, is best summed up in two words: Multiple City. 

*        *        *        *         *          *           *           *             *            *           *          *            *        *

Author Shashi Deshpande shares a Bangalore story

A cross-section of the audience that evening

Here's a link to an interview with Kavitha K in Midday, Bangalore:

http://www.mid-day.com/lifestyle/2008/dec/051208-Bangalore-People-Aditi-De-Editors-Multiple-City-Book-Launch-Interviews.htm

And a talk piece in Citizen Matters:

http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/view/728-aditi-de-talks-on-multiple-city

Writing: Shashi Deshpande ~ Breaking that long silence

Shashi Deshpande at her home in Bangalore

"I don't like to call myself a feminist writer. I say I'm a feminist, but I don't write to propagate an ism," stresses Shashi Deshpande ' Sahitya Akademi award winner in 1990 for her novel 'That Long Silence' ' "Basically, mine is a quest for the human self within the woman," she adds.

Why would one of India's most acclaimed English writers need to reiterate her basic premises?

"I feel I came through only because I had faith in myself. The desire to say something was so strong. That was hard, when my whole life was considered unimportant, my work was considered unimportant, even writing by women was considered unimportant," explains Bangalore-based Deshpande. "Many women are silenced by lack of time. If I admire anything in myself, it's only that I kept on. It's easy to give up," she adds.

In the context of contemporary Indian writing in English, Deshpande is one of the most understated yet confident voices, who explores individual and universal predicaments through the female psyche. Her novels include 'Roots and Shadows' (1983), 'The Dark Holds No Terrors' (1980), 'That Long Silence' (1988), 'The Binding Vine' (1993), 'A Matter of Time' (1996), and 'Small Remedies' (2000).  That's in addition to two short crime novels ' 'If I Die Today' (1982) and 'Come Up and Be Dead' (1983) ' and six volumes of short stories. Besides this, Deshpande has also written books for children.

What does Deshpande's success mean amidst media deification of one-book wonders?

Laughing at the derogatory definition of women's writing as 'kitchen literature', she recalls her growing days in Dharwad. "I had a very free, unhampered childhood. My father (the noted playwright Sriranga) was very liberal. He did not differentiate between his son and two daughters. In fact, marriage never entered his agenda for us until my mother reminded him that daughters had to be married," she remembers.

Married at 24 to a doctor from a conservative background, Deshpande felt liberated by her nuclear family in the Bombay of the 1970s. "There I was, happily married with two lovely sons, but I was feeling very incomplete, even dissatisfied," she recalls. "When I read Betty Friedan's 'The problem without a name', it appealed to me. Frankly, that was my problem. I couldn't name it. I felt: 'I'm not only a woman. I'm not only a mother. I'm not only a wife. I'm not only a female. I'm a human being with a mind.' It gave me a lot of unhappiness that my intellect wasn't being connected to my female self. I was always Mrs Deshpande, Raghunandan's mother, Vikram's mother... That anger ultimately translates into feminism."

How did the Indian lens perceive fledgling feminism?

"I think feminism in India has really come from the bottom, through women's own lives. We've always had working women ' not just those who go to offices, but women in our villages have to work," Deshpande says.  "Activism spurred on feminism. When crucial court cases and other issues were debated by women, the awareness created was important. Whether within the women's movement against the price rise in Bombay or the uprising of laborers against landed people, it gave us a feeling that our voices mattered," she says.

Deshpande found herself in the international limelight when Virago in the UK published 'That Long Silence'. "After that, the struggle was over. Once you're published abroad, the Indian publishers are not going to say no to you," she notes. "But after the Booker and the Pulitzer, Indian writers have been under pressure to conform. Once our writers get over that and write honestly ' doesn't matter whether a western publisher wants it or not ' we'll have much better writing."
How has criticism impacted her life as a writer? 

"I should be able to consider myself a senior writer by now. The books I've written are not insignificant. But when the media talks about writers in English, you'll find my name was most often omitted, until maybe two years ago," Deshpande points out. "Or they put me among the women writers. Invariably, I get asked: 'Is your next novel about women?' I think that's ridiculous! If you're writing about domestic things or the family, they immediately put you in an inferior slot. Somehow, women's writing is always the zenana. Criticism has not learnt to deal with writing by women as just writing, whether it's good or bad. I think it's deprived me of my true place in literature."

Do women's issues in English differ vastly from the Indian languages?

Mulling over the Kannada and Marathi literature she has read, besides translations, Deshpande replies, "English writing is very urban-oriented. We all belong to a certain class. That's a limitation... I once read a translated Hindi story about a woman who's been told by her husband to stand for a Panchayat (local self governance) election. Her dilemma was so contemporary. You don't find this in English."

Deshpande shifts focus to feminist reinterpretations of history and myth. "As part of the recent Neemrana (literary) Conference, we had one session about the way history influenced us. To me, history is also myth. I have a problem with myths, which are all written by men. But where are the women's voices in the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, or the Puranas? Women were never allowed into the mainstream," she asks.

Liberating mythological women like Sita, Draupadi and Kunti, Deshpande has reinterpreted their stories through a collection titled 'The Stone Women' (2000). "In all our languages, women are doing this. I know there's a story by Vaidehi in Kannada about Sakuntala, in which she does not go back to her husband," states Deshpande. "To me, it's so true. Why would she, after all that humiliation? In the end, she tells her husband: 'If you want an heir for the throne, take my son. But I'm not coming.' Most women would do that."

Through myth and modernity, past prisms of prejudice, Deshpande has held her own, proving an icon to new writers. With feeling, she pleads, "You've got to read women's writing differently. If you're going to say this is only a story about a kitchen, and belittle it for that, that's stupid. It's the world of a human being trying to place herself within relationships, people, and ideas."

If that isn't the essence of existence, in literature as in life, what is?   

(Originally written for the Woman's Feature Service, 2002)