Remembering the half -saree

Half-saree was still the official dress for most teenagers in Madras in the early 70s. (Pic courtesy:Kenny Wordsmith.)
Girls from liberal families wore western clothing. Salwar-kameezes were still not very popular. Mass produced salwar sets hadn’t begun flooding the market and local tailors lacked the skill to stitch them. Plump heroines in Tamil films sported tight versions of this 'north Indian' dress in duet songs which emphasized their fake breasts and fat thighs so much that they were definitely not a favorite with middle-class parents. I am pretty positive that I could have persuaded my conservative parents to let me wear a loose kurta over jeans rather than one of those salwar suits.

When I was growing up, middle class parents had just one rule by which they decided what their girls could wear. Anything that did not show off their shape in a flattering light was acceptable. I am reminded of my friend Anuradha who was an irrepressible rebel. When we were about 14, she wanted to wear tee shirts over her trousers which set off a volcano in her house. After losing the fight she told us “My mother thinks it is my fault I have breasts”. We laughed but soon I began to notice a similar subtext in the statements that my grandmother or mother made about how a woman is supposed to carry herself or walk. ‘Don’t push your chest outside. walk modestly’. When we were in class 7 and 8, the class teacher would have a talk with some of the girls and a few days later they would come wearing half-sarees. This went on till we reached class 9 when half-saree was compulsory for everyone. We experienced freedom only on the games field where we were allowed to wear divided skirts and a loose shirt. Otherwise we hid the contours of our frame behind 3 metres of cloth which covered us over the long skirt and long blouse.

When I was about 18 an older friend asked me if I had ever seen myself in the mirror without clothes and I was shocked that she could talk like that. Of course I had not. And I was not sure I could even do it because there was a kind of shame and fear associated with one’s body . It was safer behind those layers of clothing. But in college there were many times that I wished I could wear western clothing and ‘belong’ to the hep crowd. Many of us wished we were flatter so we could venture beyond the half-sari and wear smart western clothing. Like Anuradha said it seemed that it was our fault that we had breasts.

Looking back I can laugh at these memories. There was a time when I would have cringed to use the word ‘breast’ in public and here I am writing about it in a public blog. Our perception of our body and exposure norms have changed a lot in these 3 decades. Today people have no hesitation about flaunting their cleavages or wearing tight clothing to show off their shape and size. Breast implants and enhancement procedures have become as common as laser treatment for excess hair. I laugh thinking of the time when we would have been happy to delay the growth of mammaries just to be free from the restrictions that society around us imposed on us.
The dhavani or half-saree symbolized our suppression or lack of pride in our forms.
I didn't realize that there would come a time when I'd actually be grateful for the concept of a half-saree.

On friday, there was a documentary on national geographic channel on body modifications in different cultures and times . They showed the neck rings used by the Kayan tribe of Tibeto_burmese origin now living in Thailand.
and the footbinding custom that was prevalent in China for a long time.
While the former is largely voluntary and footbinding is not prevalent anymore, I was shocked to learn hear about a practice called breast-ironing practised in western Africa.
Breast ironing is exactly what it says - the flattening of a young girls’ breasts with a hot and heavy wooden rod or stone to push the breast muscles back in order to delay their development. YOu can see in the picture some of the tools used in the process and they are usually heated before applying on the breast
But why this brutality? Mothers subject their daughters to this barbarity in order to delay breast growth in their daughters in order to prevent rape and early marriage. Even when they feel their pain, they think it is for their own good in the long run.

"Before this breast band, my mother used the grinding stone—heated in the fire—to massage my chest. Every night my mother examines my chest (and) massages me, sometimes with the pestle," Matia adds. "Although I cry hard because of the pain, she tells me: 'Endure, my daughter; you are young and there is no point in having breasts at your age'."
Josaine Matia, 11 years old
Yaounde, Cameroon

This is precisely what I saw in the visual in the documentary and the victim didn’t even look like she was 11.
Read on more here:
www.unfpa.org/16days/documents/pl_breakironing_factsheet.doc

The study also gives the following facts:

Some 24 per cent of girls in Cameroon, about one girl in four, undergo breast ironing.
Breast ironing occurs extensively in the 10 provinces throughout Cameroon.sample survey published in January 2006 of 5000 girls and women aged between 10 and 82 in Cameroon, estimates that 4 million women had suffered the process.
Today, 3.8 million teenagers are threatened with the practice.
Up to 53 per cent of women and girls interviewed in the coastal Littoral province in the southeast, where the country's main port, Douala, is situated, admit to having had their breasts 'ironed'.
More than half (58 per cent) of cases breast ironing were undertaken by mothers. Other relatives also participate

.

The documentary was traumatic. It brought back memories of my own childhood and the difficulty in coming to terms with the changes in one’s own body made more difficult by the society’s ideas about a woman’s body at that time - that the more attractive it is, the more vulnerable it made its owner to predatory males. Men could not be trusted to obey rules so it was the woman’s responsibility not to attract their attention.
The ideas themselves were not very different from those of the Cameroon mothers. And I am grateful that in my culture they came up with the half-saree as the solution even though a wooden pestle was readily available in my ancestor’s backyard too.


Here's a video on the subject:
http://current.com/items/88852332_breast-ironing.htm
(Thanks Praveen.)

Life is beautiful (not)

This morning, when I started out for my walk, my world looked pretty normal. Not perfect which is normal. But when I returned half an hour later I could not recognize my road as it was packed with vehicles of all kinds honking away impatiently . It seemed as though some kind of Traffic Tsunami had moved Bannerghatta Road to our doorstep crushing the 3 lanes in-between. And then I realized that this was indeed the final scene of a drama that has been unfolding on our road for about a month. Only we didn’t see it coming nor did we get any memo despite the fact that ours is a private residential layout.

Act 1 A month ago
Without any warning hordes of people descended on our layout armed with heavy iron implements. In another age and time this could have easily been mistaken for an invasion by a hostile tribe. They even behaved like invaders just digging away all over without any regard for how people were supposed to get out of their houses or how their vehicles were supposed to get out.. My neighbour who was out of town had been cut off from the road for the next 14 days as they dug up before his garage and went away without closing it. Fortunately, as they were about to dig a moat before my house I went looking for the guy in charge and asked him what the hell they thought they were doing. He said that they were widening the road and also added that they would be pulling out the plants outside my house. He sounded like I had done something illegal by planting them there. Anyway, I requested them to try and keep the trees and do whatever they wanted with the rest. So they dug up , left a lot of granite rubble all over the street, heaped the detritus outside our houses and disappeared.
Mission accomplished – in theory we had a road of the stipulated breadth. File closed. I am sure the contractor got his payment and went home happy. Apparently it wasn’t part of the mission to ensure that the extended part of the roads needed to be fit for use.

Act 2. A week ago
Few more trucks. Few more men who unloaded huge cement/concrete blocks from these trucks which were eventually placed on the side of the road to demarcate the footpath from the road.
Here a short note about footpaths would not be out of place. They don’t actually have anything to do with your foot or a pathway. The name denotes their historic purpose. In most parts of Bengaluru, we do not believe that people on foot have any right to use roads. If they stupidly insist on it, they may do so at their own peril.
See picture: Do you actually think anyone could actually use this path? or it was even intended to be used?
Act 3. Yesterday. 4:30 p.m
A digger/excavator type vehicle arrived before our neighbour’s house and two policemen followed on a motorcycle. I watched the policemen exchange some conversation with the neighbour who seemed confused. As he went inside banging the door shut, two men got some crowbars from the excavator and began to dig up a patch outside his house.
This seemed straight out of a murder mystery. I wondered what the police were looking for – stolen stuff? a body? some evidence for sure? A small crowd of on-lookers began to gather and the police were waving them away. I pretended not to look but kept my attention focused on the goings-on. After about 20 minutes of digging they called the policemen to take a look. As I eagerly waited for some offending piece of evidence to emerge, they brought a road sign that denoted NO ENTRY and placed it in the pit and shoveled the mud back in to hold it in place.

Even this did not prepare me for what was to come this morning. From this morning it seems that about a hundredth of Bengaluru vehicles have been passing right outside my house. There is no one to tell them where to turn and how to go or that honking is not going to help. Whoever had the bright idea to divert traffic through our layout did not seem to have thought of the fact that beyond our road, these vehicles would have to use a series of roads barely about 15 ft in breadth before they can reach the next main road. So there is mayhem caused by the bottleneck at both ends making the traffic halt every 5 minutes. As traffic is flowing in both directions, there is not adequate clearance for the huge buses to turn in and out of our road. Smaller vehicles are spilling into the bylanes of our colony , crowding them but still unable to get out. This has been going on from 7:15 this morning and as I write this at 11 a.m, from my terrace I can count 9 buses, 32 scooters and 42 cars on my road. And most of them are honking away as an outlet to their anger and frustration.
And not a single traffic policeman is in sight.
Even our dogs freaked out. That is poor kaiser, my neighbour,there in the picture

After living in this country for 51 years, I must be stupid or naive to even think these thoughts. But I will ask them anyway:

why don’t authorities think it is necessary to give any advance information to the general public
(even through a newspaper ad ) especially when it is something that rips your normal life apart
-like diverting thousands of vehicles through a residential layout?
- or digging up the road right in front of your house?
- or tarring the road all through the night disturbing your sleep?
Not so much as a ‘you- have-no- choice –but- be warned’ memo?
(And don't try to be smart and ask me what I could have done if they had informed me. May be I'd have sound-proofed my house? packed bags and moved to the Himalayas? or bought enough sleeping pills?At least I would have been mentally prepared!)

Why is it that people who come to lay the roads or water pipes and dig up your roads act as though it is a huge favor being done to you? Why are honest tax payer treated like they are on relief supplies in a refugee camp? Do they know we actually “pay’ for these ‘services’ many times even ‘before’ they are provided?

How come these road-diggers get paid even when they leave the place like an archeological ruin after they are supposed to have ‘completed’ their work?

Why is it that my BSNL landline hasn’t been working for 6 days and every time I call to check status I am informed by an irritatingly cheerful voice that my complaint has been registered already and my docket no is .... And yet no one has come to repair the line? Has BSNL gone out of business and did the postman forget to deliver me the memo?

Why is there a Postal department when I don’t seem to receive half the mails that are sent to me?

Why do we pay our taxes and where do our taxes go?
Why do we elect a government and what does the government do?
Oh ya I forgot, we are supposed to SHUT UP and vote!

That, in short, is what is happening in my (rocking) life this Wednesday morning. So when this half-full-glass –types annoying- optimist friend called me now, I had to rant and let off steam.
And she said ‘ come on, count your blessings!’
‘Like what?’ I asked
‘You are A.L.I.V.E! Isn’t that a blessing?’
Y.e.a.h... I.am a.l.i.v.e. And that is a blessing ? Like how?

this is my friend, let's call her X

“Myself Rajinder, yourself?”
“I am Mr.Paramasivan. you are...?”
Once at a seminar someone introduced himself as
'I am ****, eminent economist'!

In India we have so many ways of introducing ourselves to a stranger unlike the West where the cliched 'Hi, I am Phil' meets 'Hi, I am Jack' over a firm or limp handshake. Even this one can elicit interesting responses here.
Once at a party given by an officer in the army a couple were seated at the same table and while the husbands were busy fetching their drinks I extended my hand and said 'Hello, I am Usha' and waited hoping she’d give her name. She shook my hand and said 'glad to meet you.' Not one to give up too easily I persisted 'Sorry I didn’t get your name' and she replied 'Mrs.Ramaswamy'. SIGH....

There is a reason why 'My name is Bond, James Bond' style won’t work in some parts of India. Let us try a desi version of this style:
I am Sai
Venkata Sai
Srinivasulu Laxminarayana Siva Venkata Sai
Rajashekara Srinivasulu Laxminarayana Siva Venkata Sai
.......
You see?
And hence, “My good name is Ajay. Your good name?”

While I can manage routine introductions rather comfortably as long as they involve just the name- marital status – how many kids routine but if it is one of those occasions when I am compelled to make an impression or say something ‘interesting’ about myself I get all wound up. Remember I am the person who, at my son’s wedding, told a guest from the bride’s side ‘I am the son’s mother’?! That is what happens to me when I am under pressure to charm people with my introduction.
This was an ordeal when I was learning French. As part of the orale exercises, when you introduced yourself, you were expected not just to give your name, age, profession etc but were supposed to add some ‘interesting’ information about yourself. First of all, I cannot think of anything ‘interesting’ about myself. And even if I did, how am I to be sure that others will find the information ‘interesting’? For example would it be interesting information if I told them that I solved the code word puzzle this morning in 4 mins 33 secs? or if I told them that I exceeded my career best and ate 8 idlis for breakfast?
I don’t know. I’d assume that the details of our lives are pretty uninteresting to strangers others unless you lead a spectacular (or scandalous) life the details of which you are willing to share with others. How do you make your mundane life sound interesting to a bunch of strangers?
I am 51 and I have a blog which 100 people read! ( Pause for effect...)
Yawn. Ok. whatever. What IS a blog?

And it is even worse when I find myself in the position of having to introduce someone else. Given the tricks my memory plays with me, on a lucky day I can remember either the face or the name of most of the people I know. And so you can imagine my plight when I am expected to introduce people.
It happens usually like this. At a wedding this friend from my past gushes over to my side with a ‘heyyyyyy’ and nails me to the place with a swift volley of questions on covering me, my health, my family’s health and wealth, details regarding my dog and so forth. She could be a colleague from a past job, a customer in one of the bank branches where I worked, a neighbor – I have no clue. The face is familiar and she seems to know a lot about me and I wear my fakest smile and answer all her questions while searching my memory for some helpful hint. And this is when another friend joins us. I know she is chitra as I am regularly in touch with her and after some mutual exchange of pleasantries and banter I turn hoping friend1(stranger) would have left but she is standing there with an indulgent smile expecting to ‘mingle’. I rise to the occasion bravely and say “hi, meet my friend Chitra” and I keep talking about Chitra hoping to avoid having to get to the black hole that is the second part of the introduction. Sometimes the Chitra on the scene takes the hint and asks the stranger the question that begs to be asked about her name and who the hell she is. But my friends being MY friends they usually ask me pointedly: ‘you still haven’t told me anything about your friend’.
and that is one of the rare occasions on which a feigned heart attack seems a good idea to divert the attention of all concerned.

One advantage in having a lifetime of experience with such goof-ups is that I can spot it on a person’s face when they are trying to place me while having a normal conversation with me. Sometimes I enjoy it and prolong their agony without divulging any details but most of the time I am generous and ask them :’you have NO clue who I am right?” and then I tell them. Although they protest I can see I am right from their grateful smile. A few days ago this happened at a wedding and after I gave out the details the man smartly said: ‘of course I remember you. As if I won ‘t. I was simply pulling your legs.”
Smart strategy, must try it next time!

A problem screaming to be addressed

April 29 was observed as international noise awareness day but in this country the problem seemed to have got drowned in the deafening noise of vehicles and people.
Proposals for a honk-free day were met with appropriate snickers and skepticism. A friend told me that everyday he only checks the horn in his vehicle to make sure it works - everything else is not an issue if the horn works. I think he was only half-joking and I think he is not alone in this. Noise levels in our cities are reaching annoying levels and what is even more scary is that no one seems to mind. We seem to have adapted to this even at the expense of our health.
Read on here in my post at Blogbharti
If the link doesn't work use this URL:
http://www.blogbharti.com/kuffir/environment/all-this-hustle-and-bustle/

Thank you Praveen for the image. :)

I am 15 going on 51, I know I am naive

A friend asked me if I was writing my customary birthday post studded with pearls of wisdom gathered along the way to being 51. It then occurred to me that I had no urge to do a post this time ; perhaps that is an indication that wisdom was finally on its way?
'In any case what is there to write about?' I asked.
‘Yourself of course – what else are blogs for? write about your journey from 15 to 51’ she said.
My Journey! Wow, that sounded really impressive. – My journey!
Me at 15 embarking upon the adventures of life like a backpacker with only her own resources to rely upon! Shaped and strengthened by life’s vicissitudes and now finally settling down in the armchair with stories that beg to be told, experience that must be recorded for posterity to be inspired and awed.
So I sat and thought about all the wisdom I had gathered along this great ‘journey’. It seemed almost like a responsibility not to leave it all unrecorded.

At 15 my world was very small comprising of family, teachers and friends from school. The high points of one’s days consisted of stuff like getting attention from one’s favorite teacher or scoring the top marks or getting to listen to the current favorite song on radio. Boys existed –as pathetic creatures yet to evolve and become like girls. There didn’t seem much chance for that given their weird inclinations and interests. It was a dreadful thought that you might have to marry one of those creatures some years down the line. But for the moment it seemed far away and things seemed really safe.
In sum , the life of a small town girl? yes, Except that this was in Madras and it was a small town in many ways back then in 1973.

So any journey from such a protected life had to be an exciting adventure and the next 36 years have been quite a ride in terms of the people I have had the opportunity to know, places I have been to and experiences both good and bad. There were times while sitting in the room in Moscow’s Renaissance or dining at Jumeirah beach hotel in Dubai that I imagined that I had gone a long way from being the small town girl I was at 15. There were times in the initial days when it seemed so important to ensure that the humble beginnings did not show in one’s attitude or behaviour. I seemed to be running away from all that I was at 15 and succeeding well too.
Today as I sit here and see where I have come from being that girl of 15, it is such an irony to see that I am just the same girl – only no longer afraid of being so.

Turns out that all that my years of experience have taught me is nothing more than what people around me tried to ‘tell’ me when I was 15. Only they had all sounded like morals from fables then but which I I know now from my experience to be the only things that matter in the final analysis.
So if I had to sum up what I have learned along the way , the list would be something like this:

You are what you are . Do not try to become someone else.. Be the best you can be.

Every one can’t be the richest, prettiest or smartest; but it is possible to be happy even without being all these.

Happiness comes not from how much you have but from learning to appreciate whatever you have.

It is better to be honest and have fewer friends because in any case it is these friends who matter.
.
Never stop learning.

You are a special person – only to yourself.

The best way to repay someone who hurts you is to forgive them unconditionally. Life is too short to be spent in settling scores.

At the end of the day what matters is not how much you have accumulated but whether you have been able to make a difference to someone else’s life in a positive way.

Life is a zero-sum game. You cannot have it all. You need to give up something if you want something else. Finally it is all about your priorities.

It is the people in your life that ultimately matter.

These are the simple principles that guide my life since the past 5 years and I feel so calm, so much at peace. I do not pray or visit temples regularly but yes, I believe in a force far superior to me and derive strength from it when I am in doubt. The calm and peace come not from any spiritualism but from an acceptance of me and my life as they are and being guided by these simple aphorisms. Nothing ground-breaking, nothing earth-shattering; simple truths all of which I had heard all through my childhood from people who had learned it all from experience – their own and of those who had come before. Home-spun, old-fashioned, simplistic and small-town-ish perhaps. But as I said in the beginning I have not come too far from the small-town girl I started out as when I was 15. So then that is all this journey has been about – coming back a full circle to where I started, a little wiser and a lot humbler for the experience.

Plastic dosham and pollution karma

It was around 8:30 a.m yesterday. I was making the second cup of tea of the day for me. This tea needs be absolutely perfect for my day to go well. You see the first cup is like a quick fix after 14 hours of caffeine withdrawal and it is required to get the brain cells started in the morning. I gulp it down while multitasking – getting things ready for breakfast, boiling milk, cutting fruit or glancing through the newspaper headlines. But the second one – this follows breakfast when the morning chores are complete and I have the house entirely to myself having seen people off to work.. Now no compromises on this one. The colour has to be the right shade of brown – a little darker than ochre and a shade lighter than russet to be precise - with the right amount of sugar to set off the bitterness of the tea and enhance its taste and the temperature has to be perfect . Total ZEN. Ask me for anything after this and it is yours.

So it is important that I stay focused while making it because even a few seconds this way or that way can spoil it all and ruin my day. Now my architect was thoughtful enough to place a couple of windows in my kitchen in strategic angles so I can get a view of what goes on in the street while I am in the kitchen. So I was making tea and looking through the one that gives me a clear view of the crossroad junction at the beginning of my road and presently a young girl came in view – jeans, a short red kurta and red stole. About 19 or 20, definitely in college or just out of college. I saw her glance in all directions as she approached the junction and I thought she was looking for an auto to hire. The road was quite empty at this time on a Sunday morning. And she turned toward the pavement. Now I am familiar with men doing it all the time in preparation of using the road as a public toilet but this was a girl, a well-dressed young one and I decided that this can’t be her intention. I kept watching as she took out a plastic carry-bag from her purse, pulled out a coconut and broke it on a stone on the road. I have no clue what this was about as I have only seen people break coconuts outside temples. May be some kind of superstition – a way to get rid of evil spirits. No problem. Coconuts are bio-degradable. A cow might even eat it for breakfast. So I had no issues with that.

But what she did next, that was unpardonable. No less than all those crass men urinating on the roads. She started crossing the road pretending that someone else had broken the coconut there and casually tossed the plastic bag on to the middle of the road . Now this really got my goat. An 'educated young girl' throwing a 'plastic' bag in the 'middle' of the 'road'. Too many unforgivables. And the nonchalance with which she did it suggested that she was n’t even aware of what she was doing. As if that was just the way one is supposed to dispose bags after their utility is over!
I wanted to catch her by her red stole and drag her back and make her pick it up. But unfortunately, by the time I turned off the stove and managed to reach my gate she had gone past two houses. I clapped my hands and shouted ‘hellooooooooo’ but she did not hear it or ignored me leaving me to seethe over my second cup which was ruined in any case.

I do not know if I might have been less angry if she had at least shown some signs of guilt while throwing the bag in that manner or tried to do it stealthily like the way she looked around while breaking the coconut. No, she tossed it confidently as if she was flicking off a leaf from her kurta and walked on. This apathy is more dangerous. And this apathy from a younger, educated person is even more disgusting.. When I take a walk in our neighborhood park, sometimes I see small kids throwing biscuit wrappers around. They don’t know better, so I tell them to use the garbage basket. Usually they are brought there by young girl-maids who take care of them and they don’t know better either due to their lack of education. But at least they comply when you tell them a couple of times. But what do you do with people who know that they are not supposed to do it and still do it because they could not care less or there is no real penalty for doing it. Perhaps it is a good idea to have fines for littering the way countries like Singapore have. You try to reason with our ‘educated’ people and tell them why it is important to preserve our environment they don’t care. They always want someone else to do it all before they can do their bit. But tell them that there is a fine and they will fall in line. But then again enforcement of any rule or law is always a problem in this country.

Is it something new or is it part of our psyche – a part of being Indian? Was this the reason why our ancestors invented punishments by Gods when you violated rules and codes of conduct?
‘You are to keep your surroundings clean – otherwise the Goddess of wealth would be annoyed and decide against living in your house.’
‘You are not to waste food because it is an insult to Goddess Lakshmi who would curse you to a life of hunger.’
I thought that all this was to instill a sense of discipline among people who lacked the privilege of education and the ability to reason. But education doesn’t really seem to make a difference especially when people are so selfish and apathetic and cannot see beyond the tip of their noses. We need culture-specific solutions to these global problems. Tell an average Indian that it is bad for your environment. he can't understand why it concerns him/her. But tell him that it is bad for his family and fortunes, he will sit up and act."Only a threat to them and theirs and their material well-being will work with these people to shake them to do something for common good.

I am sure that is the thing that a crossroads-coconut-breaker would relate to. Had someone told her that there is a ’dosham’ for using plastic or throwing it on the street, she might have be terrified about throwing it. I have always lobbied for getting rid of superstitions but if that is the language people understand I am all for inventing and popularising a few of them – some dosham for indiscriminate use of plastic and bad karma for littering and for spitting which would follow you up to seven births or some such thing. I am sure the message will hit home. We just need to get a few swamijis to collaborate and we can have a clean country in no time.
We have so many of them already – a couple more can’t hurt especially if they help to save this planet. We seem to have so many rituals for pleasing other planets which are supposed to control our lives while forgetting the only planet that matters, this mother earth which is our home.

ask an old bloke for directions

In the days when we had just arrived in Bangalore we had some funny experiences when we asked people for directions to some place. I already wrote about our experiences with Rao uncle who was the owner of the first house we rented:
He had an interesting way of directing you to a place:
Me: Uncle could you tell me how to get to this RNR marriage hall?
Rao: RNR or JNR?
Me : RNR.
Rao: Sure it is not JNR? Nowadays nobody uses RNR. let me check. OK, it is RNR alright. Ok. See this road? Go to the end of this road and then take a right. Don't take the left- that will take you towards National College. National college is a very famous college in Bangalore and if you go further you will go to city market. But don't take the left, take the right.You will find a police station and a road next to it. Don't turn there. If you turn there you will find the Institute of World culture. It has a very good library and they organise many useful lectures there. But don't turn there. Go further. In the next circle you will see a park on the left and a bank on the right. If you take the right you will reach NR Colony. But do not take the right. take the left.....

It was not only with Mr.Rao but we had some peculiar experiences when we stopped to ask strangers for direction. Here’s one we will never forget:
We had reached the correct street but could not spot the house. Having gone up and down the street a couple of times we were thankful to see a middle-aged man come out of his house. So we approached him hoping he would guide us to the right house. He took the slip where we had noted down the address and asked us if it was the new number or the old number. We said we had only one number. He straight away dismissed our slip as all the houses had been renumbered a few months back and had both the numbers now. We gave him the name of the person we were looking for.
He: Is he the owner or the tenant?
me: Tenant
He: Where does he work?
I give the name of the company.
He: Is he tall, about six feet and he wears glasses no?
Me ( enthusiastically) Yes, yes
He: Did he move in here recently?
Me: No this address is about a year old.
He: Does he ride a scooter?
Me: I am not very sure...
He: mmmm, I am not too sure too. I keep seeing a gentleman like this on this street and I don’t know his name so I wondered if that was your friend. Please check with that iron gaadi (presswala) he knows most people on the road.
So we went to him and gave the address. The man asked us for the name of our friend’s kids and immediately guided us to the right house.
From then on we have found that a search using the kids’ names has a higher success rate than by searching on the parents’ names.

But what was most interesting was how people asked you so many questions and finally said “exact aagi gothilla” ( dont know exactly) so check with some one else.

Another time we ended up having a lesson in geology when we approached a gentleman for directions. We had gone all the way to the end of the road and failed to find the house. On our return, somewhere in the middle of the road we met this person and asked him for directions. We told him we had gone down all the way to the end of the road and he stopped us right there.
“Did you go down the road or up the road?”
We got thoroughly confused and pointed in the direction we had gone. He was quick to correct us:
“That is up. Not down. All those houses there have a water problem because they are up and when the pressure is low they don’t get enough water.”
!!!!!
But we did not regret asking him because he guided us correctly to the place we wanted.

If you are new to Bangalore and set out to find a place with just the address in your hand you are sure to have a couple of interesting experiences. Some people will confidently send you in one direction and when you come back drawing a blank they will say : “did not find a?. Oh then may be in this direction.” and send you in the opposite direction.
Of course the authorities do not make it easy for us either. Numbering of houses in Bangalore follows a complex system and crosses and mains are hidden in a complicated maze. My neighbour’s house number is 227 but the house next to him is numbered 212 and right across the road it is 170 on one side and 145 on the other. There must be some method in all this madness but no one knows what it is. I admire the postman on duty to our colony. And I also understand the reason why I never receive some of my mails.

So we used to make these elaborate jokes about getting directed in Bangalore until I realised how serious some people can be about it all. It was around 9 p.m and I was taking a walk with the dog. She had found something interesting and had decided to explore it a bit and I had to stop. My neighbour was outside his gate talking to his neighbour. Exactly at that moment a few young men in a car stopped to ask him for directions to Gandhi Bazar. He asked them where they were coming from and they said they were retuning from a trip to Mysore. Our man began to interrogate them on how they managed to find our colony on the way from Mysore to Gandhi Bazaar. Obviously they were new to town and had lost their way. But he had to make sure. Anyway finally he got down to giving them the directions and one of them asked “ you are sure no sir?” Poor guys had probably strayed all the way to our colony with a lot of ‘exactaagi gothilla’ directions and just wanted to make sure. But my neighbour was deeply offended by this question.
“you know I have just retired last month from *&^ bank where I was head of &*^% department. You think I will misguide you?”
And then he pointed to his companion and said:
“and my friend here, he used to be the G.M in %^&* company. You think he will misguide you?”
I was dazed. I wondered if he might bring out a Bhagvad Gita and begin to take the oath on it. The boys in the car were too stunned to answer, mumbled an apology and sped off.

So next time you are unable to locate a house, do ask someone for directions and come back here and share your experience. I assure you it will be interesting if not hilarious.