The charge of the steel brigade

Sunny’s turned 21 last week and to celebrate the occasion the owners had invited a cross-section of people to dinner, including several old Bangaloreans. One uses the term “old” advisedly; old Bangaloreans can be distinguished from the immigrants who comprise 65% of our city’s population of 10 million by the wistful manner in which they  hold forth about the good old days. They get very excited when someone mentions the Bangalore Urban Arts Commission or benne dosa in Malleswaram or when spotting the elusive slender loris in Sankey Tank. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that the influx of newcomers don’t care about these things; it’s just that they don’t have any idea of what this city was like back in the 80’s.

Imagine a total of 37,000 private vehicles for starters, high-ceilinged homes mostly without fans, a bus system that was far from perfect, but which worked after a fashion and a vibrant, happening night life with rock concerts in Cubbon Park and plays in Bal Bhavan. I could go on but I’m sure you get the picture? The burning issue of the day was the steel bridge and the fact that every armchair critic and his wife had risen at crack of dawn and participated in the largest civic protest this city has ever seen. Politicians beware: the poor and the disadvantaged have a very high threshold of suffering and can rarely afford the luxury of complaint. By contrast, to thrust an ill-conceived infrastructure down the throats of the privileged and thereby run the risk of awakening their collective civic conscience is a zero-sum game.  

From the heated discussion generated that evening one conversational gem of purest ray serene emerged from my friend, Vikram Chandra: “Bangalore can claim to be a developed, modern city only when the rich use public transport.” Mass-rapid transport is the only solution to Bangalore’s chaotic traffic given that our year-on-year growth in our vehicle population is 10%, with roughly five lakh new vehicles hitting the road between April 2014 and March 2015. We clocked about 4 lakh new vehicles in 2014-15, which was also a 10% increase from the previous year. Most old Bangaloreans love poetry, so this one’s for them.

The charge of the steel brigade
(with apologies to Alfred Lord Tennyson)

Half a centimetre, half a centimetre, half a centimetre onward
Into Bellary Road, airport-bound we rode,
Bangalore’s eighteen hundred.
Forward the Steel Brigade
No thought for the price we’ll pay
While trees and saplings fell,
Boldly they sold it well,
In the name of development.
 
Ours not to reason why,
Ours but to destroy and lie
Flyover to the left of us
Underpasses to the right of us
Trumpet bridge in front of us
Folly and blunder.
Fooled by our rulers well
Foolishly we ride to hell
We that once had a life
Now in our trafficked strife
Drive through the jaws of death
Daily through the heat of hell
For only eighteen hundred.
That’s crores, by the by.

The writer is a gourmet, travel writer and actor