Stinking Bengaluru

I'm glad I live in the outskirts of Bengaluru, a reason being that I do not wake up to see mounds of garbage staring at me or worse have to smell it every time the wind comes my way. The dreaded problem of garbage has come to Bengaluru before other cities and this does not mean that it will not come to them. Many many years ago I made a train journey with a British lady and her boyfriend from Gujarat to Bengaluru. The lady kept making jokes centered around Garbage that I found difficult to fathom leave alone laugh at. Now I do, at least the fathom part. Garbage is a problem simply because the general population thinks it is not an issue that concerns them, that is till they see the garbage heap growing at their doorstep.That is the moment the finger pointing starts. Most households neither segregate or process their wet and dry wastes. Many a busy denizen just dumps his garbage at the street corner while on his/her morning walk and expects the garbage to disappear from his/her sight. This is a piece of magic that is not going to happen. Hapless villagers around Bengaluru who were absorbing our trash for years have woken up and cried a halt to dumping of waste around their villages even as we behave and live as if we are from an alien land living in Bengaluru and the issues of this city does not concern us. The garbage has raised serious questions on the spread of disease particularly dengue which is life threatening.While we can keep pointing fingers it is important to ask how the problem can be addressed as a normal citizen. Even while there are charges of corruption and neglect, the BBMP and state government claims to be looking at long term solutions in processing waste and thus reducing the need for landfills.While Bengaluru stinks we need proactive solutions and effort even at the cost of spending time away from regular work to avoid shooting ourselves in the foot!

The Circus in town

The patriotic fervor displayed by the honorable Corporaters of the BBMP in Bengaluru has been a touching sight. The gentlemen have been clamoring nay agitating for free passes to the Indian Premier League (IPL) games played at the Chinnaswamy Stadium .The further demand is that the passes be for the ‘VIP’ enclosure, where they can watch the matches with ‘dignity’.
Why should they get these passes? Why not, they are the people’s representative and have been elected by the people of Bengaluru. Did the people elect them to watch a cricket circus,in style, is another question.
A few days ago, I had the opportunity of travelling by a ‘City Bus’, the common name for public transport in Bengaluru, a practice I gave up almost thirty years ago for the comfort of my own car or a cab. After years of traipsing around in ships, aircraft and chauffer driven car’s I got a taste of what the common man endures when he/she has to travel in overcrowded, rickety buses which seem to bounce rather than run on our cratered roads.
Since, this was a ‘private’ public bus, it carried a TV, which showed a Kannada flick where the hero, a policeman seemed to be in a perpetual rage and wanting to beat the living daylights out of every gent that crossed his path. The movie was particularly engrossing as much of the population of the bus were glued to the small screen and barely seemed to notice the rough ride that we were being dished out. In its decline the emperors of Rome, fed their people on circuses where people and animals slaughtered each other. A ploy, to keep the hoi polloi from questioning their excesses.
Now one may ask, as to who is responsible for the roads in this fair city? Apparently the same honorable gentlemen who want to watch cricket in dignity. A good question would be,’ Can we travel in dignity?’
With the way in which the Bangalore boys are performing or rather not performing, it might soon come to pass that the honorable torch bearers of the BBMP may not be interested in free passes to the circus anymore. After all who wants the company of a loser? There is no dignity in losing, is there?
As for the bus ride, I quite enjoyed it, simply because it shook me out of my sedated and cocooned world and screamed; “Welcome to India”. The real India that is. The one I had left about thirty years ago, where the guy who battles the city bus on a daily basis, tries to do it with dignity and does not think of the IPL, where grown men, sweaty and tense in pajamas hurl a leather ball and attack it with a wooden stick, watched by a baying crowd.

pic is by J Vedamurthy