Children of a lesser road
'That will be one and a half.’ said the auto rickshaw driver with an intimidating tone when I told him my destination. I felt like I was being interrogated in a police station and they had just figured out that I was lying. Reluctantly I nodded my approval. What should have been a basic transportation method to get from point A to point B had now translated into a weird extortive ritual that led to silent and desperate submission.
Welcome to Bangalore.
They say one needs to get a marriage done and a house built to really get a crash course in reality. In my case however, considering getting a house built is the only reality I have encountered so far, it was a piece of cake. The entire process of finding the land, getting the contractor, hooking in the architect and starting off the project seemed like child’s play. In a flat ten-month period I had managed to transform a speck of a modest 2400 square foot into a three-bedroom bonanza. When I visited India last Xmas for the house warming I still remember joking about the ease with which the puzzles fell into place. My family agreed with me in unison that building a house was no longer a challenge given the right inflow of funds and resources. Fair enough. But we quickly swallowed in our grins as we realized that the real challenge was not building a house…it was getting to it.
Bangalore has grown almost ten times in the last decade. From being a lazy little city with lazier folk it has now become a throbbing hotspot for almost anyone who wants to live here. This growth has made finding real estate all the trickier. I was thanking all my Gods when I managed to bag a prim looking plot back in 2004 for a reasonable price. But what I had not counted on was that I had also been adopted into the pantheon of trivial existence. The kind people react to as if they had just sucked on a lemon. The kind people roll their eyes at. Yes - my family and I were now officially the children of a lesser road.
We could not go anywhere in our humble Fiat since there were never any parking spaces around the city. Just the thought of having to steer through the lane-less and brain-less traffic of Bangalore would send a shiver down our spines. So we chose the lesser evil. To our rude surprise, the lesser evil turned out to be the greatest demon after all. Just the mention of our neighborhood would sky rocket the price of our worth. Every time we would mention the words “left” and “right”, the rickshaw driver would greet us with sighs of discontent. He would look back at us in the rear view mirror with an accusing stare. The vehicle would cough itself to a stop at our humble abode as I flipped through ‘one and a half’ of our worth as payment.
There was this one incident when a driver demanded 20 rupees extra than agreed upon since according to him our house was in the ‘burial ground’ (sudugaadu in Kannada) and hence would clearly not have any passengers on the way back. When we debated that he even went ahead and abused the members of my family. An equally dirty rebuttal triggered off from my father in pure Kannada. Within a matter of minutes respect had been violated and shamefully hanged in public. Was all this for 20 rupees? No. It was the price we were paying for being adopted into the family of lesser roads.
This is the story of tens of thousands of Bangaloreans who live with such constant verbal (and sometimes physical) abuse by the auto rickshaw community. We are treated like dirt despite paying them for their service. A disturbing and overwhelmingly disgusting culture where the passenger is made to feel like a worthless piece of human waste. A woeful debt we are part of for being kind enough to invest in our motherland and help improve her economy.
As I leave you with images of the children of lesser roads, I hope a day will come when despite the terrible condition of the area we live in, despite being in a location which is not necessarily passenger-friendly, despite being investors who are helping Bangalore grow - we are treated with the same respect we deserve for being human beings.
Welcome to Bangalore.
They say one needs to get a marriage done and a house built to really get a crash course in reality. In my case however, considering getting a house built is the only reality I have encountered so far, it was a piece of cake. The entire process of finding the land, getting the contractor, hooking in the architect and starting off the project seemed like child’s play. In a flat ten-month period I had managed to transform a speck of a modest 2400 square foot into a three-bedroom bonanza. When I visited India last Xmas for the house warming I still remember joking about the ease with which the puzzles fell into place. My family agreed with me in unison that building a house was no longer a challenge given the right inflow of funds and resources. Fair enough. But we quickly swallowed in our grins as we realized that the real challenge was not building a house…it was getting to it.
Bangalore has grown almost ten times in the last decade. From being a lazy little city with lazier folk it has now become a throbbing hotspot for almost anyone who wants to live here. This growth has made finding real estate all the trickier. I was thanking all my Gods when I managed to bag a prim looking plot back in 2004 for a reasonable price. But what I had not counted on was that I had also been adopted into the pantheon of trivial existence. The kind people react to as if they had just sucked on a lemon. The kind people roll their eyes at. Yes - my family and I were now officially the children of a lesser road.
We could not go anywhere in our humble Fiat since there were never any parking spaces around the city. Just the thought of having to steer through the lane-less and brain-less traffic of Bangalore would send a shiver down our spines. So we chose the lesser evil. To our rude surprise, the lesser evil turned out to be the greatest demon after all. Just the mention of our neighborhood would sky rocket the price of our worth. Every time we would mention the words “left” and “right”, the rickshaw driver would greet us with sighs of discontent. He would look back at us in the rear view mirror with an accusing stare. The vehicle would cough itself to a stop at our humble abode as I flipped through ‘one and a half’ of our worth as payment.
There was this one incident when a driver demanded 20 rupees extra than agreed upon since according to him our house was in the ‘burial ground’ (sudugaadu in Kannada) and hence would clearly not have any passengers on the way back. When we debated that he even went ahead and abused the members of my family. An equally dirty rebuttal triggered off from my father in pure Kannada. Within a matter of minutes respect had been violated and shamefully hanged in public. Was all this for 20 rupees? No. It was the price we were paying for being adopted into the family of lesser roads.
This is the story of tens of thousands of Bangaloreans who live with such constant verbal (and sometimes physical) abuse by the auto rickshaw community. We are treated like dirt despite paying them for their service. A disturbing and overwhelmingly disgusting culture where the passenger is made to feel like a worthless piece of human waste. A woeful debt we are part of for being kind enough to invest in our motherland and help improve her economy.
As I leave you with images of the children of lesser roads, I hope a day will come when despite the terrible condition of the area we live in, despite being in a location which is not necessarily passenger-friendly, despite being investors who are helping Bangalore grow - we are treated with the same respect we deserve for being human beings.
posted by ShaK at 7:24 AM
2 Comments:
True. With the influx of immigrants from other states growing every day, most of the Bangaloreans are now indeed children of a lesser road. Several of my friends in areas like Puttenhalli have similar experiences and their area turns into hell (the next stage after sudugaadu) during rains. All these comes down to the basic questions: Are the recent developments to the City a boon or a bane to the Locals?
The developments can be a boon if the infrastructure mantra and basic needs for public transportation are taken care of. Till then we will have to live with this curse.
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