Multiple City , livre ebook
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English
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2008
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202
pages
English
Ebook
2008
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Publié par
Date de parution
27 octobre 2008
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9788184759099
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
Publié par
Date de parution
27 octobre 2008
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9788184759099
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
Edited by Aditi De
Multiple City
Writings on Bangalore
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
Dedication
Introduction First Person Singular: In Search of a City
PART I: ONCE UPON A CITY
1. The Ballad of Kempe Gowda A Helava folk narrative
2. A City Yet Unborn Suryanath Kamath
3. The Town of Boiled Beans R.K. Narayan
4. The Battle for Bangalore M. Fazlul Hasan
5. From Garden City to Tota ? Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha
6. Ramakant in the City Kerooru Vasudevacharya
7. City for a Song C.V. Shivashankar
PART II: COFFEE BREAK 1
8. A photographic essay from the turn of the twentieth century postcard collection of Clare Arni
PART III: THE CITIES WITHIN
9. New Shoots and Old Roots: The Cultural Backdrop of Bangalore Chiranjiv Singh
10. Directions Prathibha Nandakumar
11. Ooru and the World U.R. Ananthamurthy
12. Mall Miscalculations Pankaj Mishra
13. Bangalore: A Short Story Sherry Simon
14. My Friend, Mani P. Lankesh
15. Reworking Masculinities: Rajkumar and the Kannada Public Sphere Tejaswini Niranjana
16. Mapping Bangalore Shashi Deshpande
17. Romance of the Cantonment Geeta Doctor
18. The Serious Purpose of Life Winston S. Churchill
19. Follow My Bangalorey Man: Traditional: Nursery Rhyme Anonymous
20. A Rose Petal Life Anita Nair
21. Oh, Come to Gandhibazar! S. Diwakar
22. Turning Crimson at Premier s Ramachandra Guha
23. The Karaga Festival: A Performative Archive of an Alternative Urban Ecology Smriti Srinivas
24. Gopalaswamy Iyer Hostel Siddalingaiah
25. Corners and Other Childhood Spaces Janaki Nair
26. Majestic: The Place of Constant Return Zac O Yeah
PART IV: COFFEE BREAK 2
27. City Cartoons Maya Kamath
PART V: CITY SCAN
28. Meditation on Postal Colony Anjum Hasan
29. Through the Mahatma s Eyes Rajmohan Gandhi
30. The Wholly Raman Empire: Bangalore s: Emergence as a Centre of Science Shobhana Narasimhan
31. In Search of the Star of David Nemichandra
32. Notes from Another India Jeremy Seabrook
33. Do the Needful Mahesh Dattani
34. Sthala Puranagalu: Place Legends Pushpamala N.
35. Macbeth at Bangalore University Paul William Roberts
36. The Sound of Two Hands Clapping C.K. Meena
37. Temples of Food Achal Prabhala
38. A Dream of a Theatre Aditi De
39. On the Street, Everybody Watches Nisha Susan
40. Veena Tapaswi Doreswamy Iyengar K.N. Raghavendra Rao
41. Finger-lickin Bad William Dalrymple
42. Back to the Future Ammu Joseph
PART VI: COFFEE BREAK 3
43. The Morphing of Bangalore Drawings by Paul Fernandes
PART VII: THE 24/7 CITY
44. Nanolore S.S. Prasad
45. Brand Bangalore: Emblem of Globalizing India A.R. Vasavi
46. The World Is Flat Thomas L. Friedman
47. Dancing on Glass Ram Ganesh Kamatham
48. Call Centres Call On Sahana Udupa
49. I Dream of Bangalore Kevin Maney
50. Bit by Byte Sham Banerji
51. Metroblogging Anita Bora
Footnote
Nanolore
Notes on Contributors
Copyright Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
Copyright Page
For Ayan shona, With unconditional love from Pish, and a city you came to love as a working man of 18!
Introduction
First Person Singular: In Search of a City
Aditi De
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 alternative 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 has 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 ninth 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 twentieth 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 twenty-first 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 Gandaberunda 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 mamis 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 Puja 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, T
