This incident happened a couple of years back, however the
relevance of the event is applicable more so today.
I’m an oddity in todays Bangalore, a person who was born
here and raised here and have not really stayed elsewhere. I’ve seen the change
it went through in the last decade. For example, the little village of
Kempapura, which had little or no inhabitants and a single private school in
the middle of nowhere has become this a bustling township with its own mall, 4
international schools and colleges, a whole lot of houses in an area which was
over grown with parthenium. (Something we were warned about back then, though I
do not have much recollection of the problems it causes)
I was driving down Sarjapur road towards the village to meet
someone who has recently moved to Bangalore though he is yet to convince me
that the place he is staying is in fact apart of Bangalore. There seems to be
new townships cropping up from every little plot of land, and a place, which
was once a farmland, has been transformed into a concrete jungle. The overall
drive left me with a sigh as I see new developments and people encroaching into
areas and calling themselves Bangaloreans. As I drove past yet another set of
apartments, I noticed a couple of school kids asking for a lift. I suppose we
have all done this some point of our childhood, when we feel too lazy to walk
to where ever,
Anyhow, I let them in and drove them to the closest point to
their tuition class, a few kms from where I was. The kids have lived in
Bangalore all their lives, but rarely visited MG road and don’t know where
cantonment station comes. ( I’m not sure if they even knew it existed.) Their
entire life revolved around the hosur shajpur road and the layouts around it.
Schools were 10 minutes drive, college would be 20 minutes, and grocery is
around the corner, playgrounds, friends, movies and everything a kid would
imagine is not more than 20 minutes away. The whole place gave off a stench of
a Bangalore suburb, which had culminated into a city on its own. People who
lived their still held on to the identity of being a Bangalorean, but have
never been to malleshwaram, or known what a walk in Jaynagar feels like.
I was reading this article the other day about how all
little villages got integrated into this one large monstrocity(pun intended)
called Bangalore. There were little villages Sunkenahalli has become Gavipuram
/ Hanumanthanagar, Sarakki - J.P. Nagar, Puttenahalli - 7th phase J P Nagar,
Chunchagunta - Srinidhi layout and so on. We loose a little bit of
history by the day and a lot of the identity by the generation. We forget where
Bangalore comes from and know what it is today, and can only guess what it will
be tomorrow. I strongly recommend a history class for all kids in their
formative years to know the city, be proud of it and remember the people who
built it and respect the people who have called it their home for generations.
