Reminiscences from a Bangalore long forgotten - Ration Shop

Most of earlier posts were longish posts with each focusing on a relatively recent or should I say current topic. So I thought I would go back in time and try and describe what it meant to be a child growing in India in the late seventies and early eighties. I often refer to my generation (which is inching towards the mid-thirties) as "probably the last generation to have seen an India of shortages progressing to the new India of reasonable plenty which we see today" but what do I mean when I say this?

Just this last Sunday I was sitting having an interesting conversation with dear friends (lets call them S&J) and the topic strangely veered towards this topic of how much change my generation has seen. Although the difference in age between my S and myself on one side and J on the other would be no more than 7 years the difference in perception was stark. S and I started talking about how life was and as is my wont I brought up a few of my pet examples. All these examples I am sure will be familiar in some form or other to people from my generation but were totally alien to J and her generation. To me it just showed how quickly life had changed to the extent that people just a few years younger cannot even imagine what was to me a reality at that time.

In this post, I want to highlight one such example illustrating how on such dramatic change and how much of that change I have been a witness to. The example I am going to give was a central theme in most urban / rural middle class homes and even I would say upper middle class homes and it is called a "Ration shop". I remember growing up in Bangalore - a relatively small (at that time) yet fairly cosmopolitan city and distinctly remember the role played by this concept called the ration shop. For those who have not seen one before, let me describe a typical ration shop. A ration shop is usually best identified by the nondescript nature of the store. The only distinguishing mark would be a tin board hanging or placed outside the store with the "latest" administered price of all items sold in the store written with a wet chalk to ensure durability of the writing. Ration stores were distributed all over the city and the smallest suburbs usually had their own ration stores. In Bangalore, this yellow and black board with white lettering was for a very long time a fairly identifiable landmark. In fact, people would indicate driving directions with the ration shop as a landmark. That should indicate to you the importance of the ration store, never mind that the ration store had a mind of its own when it came to shop timings, stock keeping, and so on.

Now to the best of my knowledge the ration shop is probably the only place almost ALL families would go to buy .... wait.... hang on to your seat - OIL and SUGAR in addition to essential food grains/cereals like rice / wheat. If I recall correctly, in the late eighties a family of four was entitled to a total of 20 kg of rice per month @ 5 kg per head or some equivalent quantity of wheat and 2 kg of sugar a month at 1/2 a kg per head and this purchase would be entered into something called a "ration card". The "ration card" for those who continue to wonder is a small palm sized book (this is in the state of Karnataka) with information on the holder of the "ration card" including the members in the household and a picture of the head of the household. The ration shop itself was run on some form of fixed time contract. The person owning this contract therefore was invariably out to fatten his purse in the quickest possible time and to this end, he resorted to tacts such as creating artificial demand for essentials, or diverting rations from one eligible ration card holder to another in exchange for a little extra and such like cheap tricks. I remember witnessing some ration shop managers exhibiting an almost a demi-god like demeanor when it came to rendering service. Most middle class people in the cities patronized the ration shop only to purchase sugar and oil since these essentials were either unavailable or very expensive out in the free market. Of course, it was not uncommon to see people purchasing kerosene / rice / wheat too from the ration shops but these mostly purchased for the explicit purpose of handing them over to domestic staff who invariable had no ration card.

Now why am I inflicting this torture on you with descriptions of this antiquated concept? Well, its because like I said at the start, that I would like to go back in time a little, so this is a snapshot of LIFE in the seventies and even up until the late eighties. If you spare a thought to people who started their life in that age and time, you will probably realize that many of them (parents of my generation most certainly) had a wee bit more to contend with than having to fret over the color of the next family car.

If I find pictures of a ration shop I will definitely put them up here, but for now, with these memories I leave you and I will return with another memory from the past in the coming days.

Treespotting in Bangalore/Bengaluru

I spent a lot of time thinking about how to start this piece and finally decided that it really did not matter as long as I got my thoughts across. So here goes: A visit from my dear friends M&S (as I would like to call them here) a week back triggered a conversation about one of the Bangalore walks they had experienced. Bangalore walks for the uninitiated is an experiential tour of the sights and sounds of the city of Bangalore(Bengaluru is an alternate spelling/pronunciation), in South India conducted by knowledeable guides and similar in concept to the famous walking tours in cities such as London. So anyway, it was interesting to hear quite a few interesting anecdotes about the city I like call home and it triggered a curiosity within to join one of these tours. Sure enough, the curiosity turned into genuine interest when M proposed a nature walk one of the walking tours on offer. What follows is a short note of my experience on one of the walks along with a few after-the-event reflections. Hope you like it.

Bangalore walks organizes these walks and you can find out more about them from their website. Anyway, M&S, my mother and I were the members of the small group along with Roopa(?) for the nature walk last Saturday and this walk was in Lalbagh - one of the two lungs this city still retains thankfully.

We assembled at the foot of the hillock (a famous landmark for those who know this place) at 7AM this last Saturday and Vijay our guide for the walk introduced the walk against the historical backdrop of the parks origins. Now I must admit I belong to the wary kind when historical references are made since they tend to be generous in reference to rulers of the time. From that standpoint, the references to the garden being a creation of Haider Ali and Tippu Sultan did sound far fetched when I happened to read it in history books during my school days. Yet as I stood at the foot of the hillock, it did fill me with a strange sense of awe at the history surrounding the place. To me the interesting aspect of the history of the place emerged from the fact, this contrary to most historical places, this was one place that had actually grown from its initial size, the positive change attributed mainly to the changeover in control from Haider/Tippu to the British. Interestingly, there was not only the change in terms of the ownership but also in purpose and intent, so while it appears that Haider and Tipu saw the opportunity to create the equivalent of paradise as described in Islamic tradition by constructing a traditional Islamic garden, the British turned the place into a botanical garden bringing the elements of modern science and research.

As one moves from the foot of the hillock towards the Lalbagh glass house, one can visually grasp the styles employed in the design of the place. Now unless you are architecturally inclined or have a good understanding of landscaping and garden design a number of elements are likely to completely escape you so dont fault yourself for that. This is where Vijay steps in pointing out in fairly elaborate detail the subtle elements that appeal even to a layman like myself. A simple example would be the contrast in the use of straight lines only by Haider/Tippu in strict conformance with Islamic tradition with the use of curved boundaries by the British in a single large green amalgam.

As we walked history gave way in some sense to treespotting. I dont know if thats the right words but it certainly describes the activity adequately. So there it was, we were now on the trail of trees of various kinds, starting with the fig family (Ficus ... for the Linnealy inclined) and moving on to various trees of various kinds ranging from conifers to trees which I have never seen but heard (e.g., Mahagony, Ebony) to trees with mythological / historical context (e.g., Palash tree) and so on. It was definitely the most informative part of the entire walk.

Unfortunately, this was also the time I lost the plot because there was just too much history to keep track of and between botanists - Indian and European, viceroys, East India and British army characters so much happened that it was impossible to keep up. But anyway, there was nothing that could not have been researched separately especially with the Internet around, the best way probably is to retrace the path in Lalbagh and focus on a specific set of trees and inquire into the details. Back to the walk itself, after some more treespotting, we ended with a

So thats a short note on treespotting in Lalbagh. I hope to provide some more updates when I have done the walk myself a few more times, but for now, the report will have to stop here.

Infrastructure in Bangalore

This topic must be by now the most popular tea-time phrase in Bangalore, the IT capital of India and what a tragedy it has become. For someone who has spent his entire life in Bangalore, it is a sad time that has come to pass that the city has become unlivable. I would like to really go out there and question the wisdom of people who would like to live (well thats a grand term to use considering the living conditions) in this place.

The apathy of nearly everyone who has anything to do with the road and traffic infrastructure of this city is a telling tale. I am forced to resign to my fate each time I step out on the roads and do not expect to travel at anything greater than 30 kmph average over a distance of 23 km on what appears to the plain eye to be a multi lane highway. Surely this must rival the average speeds seen in the streets of London at the turn of the last century. Nothing much appears to have changed during that time.

The last couple of days have been especially harrowing. Returning from ITPL on the outer ring road towards Sarjapur road, I was witness to what must have been the longest traffic jam in Bangalore's history. Traffic stretched end to end from the crossing with Sarjarpur road all the way past Intel's campus' if you know what I mean. This for the non-Bangalorean is a distance of about 2 km plus and is a three lane highway along with a service lane and believe you me, the entire stretch was choc-a-bloc with trucks, mad max sumos and if that was not enough BMTC buses joined the fray trying to cross the median to the service lane in what must be the most bizarre exhibition of stupidity. The Darwin awards people definitely need to start including special sections for extreme stupidity, the current categories do not sufficiently capture the enormity of the deed.

So there it is, for the average Bangalorean to be subjected to a barrage of vehicles on the road each driven by what appears to be a possessed individual ready to do anything to get past the others on the road and absolutely no patience. I think a solution at this stage is to examine the possibility of individuals like myself and you the reader highlighting the chaos and the anarchy into which the city is descending into. It is not too late but it sure will be if we continue to suffer in silence.

Honking and Bangaloreans

HORN PLEASE OK, Havent we seen that someplace before? Well if you have been anywhere near an Indian highway and missed this, you ought to see an eye specialist and a good one at that. That phrase succintly sums up what I felt this morning as I drove to work. It was an urge to honk and do so liberally, in fact I was being coaxed to honk.

Whats it about Bangalore that simply seems to urge its motorists to honk at every conceivable and inconceivable opportunity. One cannot believe the multitude of sounds one gets to hear on a regular basis if you just cared to step onto the road. I am not qualified to state if this is a pan-Indian phenomenon but it is certainly a Bangalore phenomenon.

So anyway, this morning I thought I would spend sometime analyzing the sounds if one can call it that. So even before I started to consciously start jotting down the points, I was jarred out of my reverie by this new fangled LPG auto, with what appeared to be a broken silencer and an equally outrageous honk which onomatopoeically goes something like "KKRRRRRR" or something close. Then came the twin masters of the Bangalore road rage (did I say rage, please read as race too!!) - the Toyota Qualis and the Tata Sumo. Vehicles from venerable automoble giants but for the common man on the street including many road users such as myself, the source of plain disgust. To be fair, the manufacturer is certainly not to be blamed for the bad driving practices adopted by most if not all of the drivers of these vehicles but the manufacturer can certainly be put in the docks for inflicting the honks from these vehicles (not the emission, the horn!!) on other road users. I dont know if it is scale F or G, but it is certainly loud. I wonder if manufacturers will consider providing for attenuators which cannot be altered or replaced for these vehicles.

So now I move on to the commercial vehicle segment which in India is classified as LCV for Light Commercial Vehicle - a 4 or 6 wheeler with a 1-3 ton carrying capacity or thereabouts and HCV for Heavy Commercial Vehicle - a 6 or higher wheeler with a 6+ ton carrying capacity. These vehicles ply mostly on the outer ring roads in Bangalore and usually sport what are known as "Air Horns" which despite restrictions on its use is the most popular honky in town.

And then finally, to the other segment consisting of the two wheelers and the modern fancy imported cars plying the roads. I cannot fathom this segment at all. Among the classes surveyed earlier, this would be the one class that can claim to a higher degree of education but when it comes to honking, this segment of road users appear to be the pits. Irrespective of whether these vehicles are driven by drivers conveying nattily dressed men and women to their workplaces, the honk is something we simply seem unable to control.

So many honks later, I decided I would lose it completely and just then was this three wheeler trying cut right across my path and I instinctively pressed by palm against the center of my steering column and out came this wonderful, high pitched "PAAAM" and my nerves were soothed. Boy it sounds good to honk. So say cheers to the Bangalorean driver and drink to the HONK. Many the honk live long!!

Starting raves and rants

The blog concept was a truly alien concept when it was introduced a year ago by a friend. It took some time to examine the true utility of this communication medium. So anyway here I am with my first post where I introduce the concept of true raves and rants, the kind of things you can crib about but do absolutely nothing about. This is only the starting point and hopefully at some time in the future there will be sufficient critical mass to perhaps even get something done so they dont remain pure raves and rants.